Representation of Global Climate Change
From Envirowiki
| This article is similar to An Inconvenient Truth, and the two probably should be merged into one article. |
In Al Gore’s recent book entitled "An Inconvenient Truth"', the issue of rising temperatures and their dramatic effect in the world around us is prominent from cover to cover. From rising CO2 concentrations to desertification, Gore touches on a huge overview of increasingly worrisome problems facing the world today. He uses a wide array of data and evidence to reinforce his arguments. Gore uses large font sizes, pictures, charts, and graphs to help exemplify some of the points he is trying to make.
He spends quite a bit of time discussing disappearing ice and snow in the glaciers of the world. Glaciers in Alaska, Argentina, Glacier National Park, and Africa are all diminishing at an alarming rate. Furthermore, the Himalayan Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, which provide over 40% of the world’s population with drinking water, may present a serious water shortage to those who rely on it if nothing is done to alleviate global warming. Gore realizes how great of a threat this situation presents to the world. He uses an uncommon way of writing to stress the significance of this threat and to emphasize it to readers. Instead of uniform writing on every page of his book, he includes many vivid pictures, sizeable diagrams, and informational charts to get his points across is a very distinct manner. These visual messages can help emphasize and depict distinct differences between the past and the present in terms of receding and disappearing glaciers.
There is a method to the madness in which Gore presents the material in his book. In most cases, human beings will not react to risks and threats unless the consequences are apparent and near at hand. By publishing all the pictures and graphs in his book, Gore lets reader witness the astounding impacts, and not just read about them. Pictures oftentimes convey the significance and imply the immediacy of the loss of many natural objects with inherent beauty. The aesthetic values, as well as the instrumental values of these glaciers are stressed in the content of An Inconvenient Truth. The pictures help create a more accurate representation of the crucial situations at hand. Gore’s pictures serve as an example of how he utilizes environmental representation.
The way we portray our environment today often represents many of the ways we think about and act towards nature. The way we represent our environment is also reflective of our culture, attitudes, and views of nature – in turn, it also persuades the way we act. The way we represent nature is highly reflective of many aspects of our cultural paradigms and ways of life. Unfortunately, our society and mindset to do bode well for sustainable interactions with the environment – this has become evident with the global environmental problems we now face. Al Gore takes on a major global environmental problem in his book/movie An Inconvenient Truth.
However, many criticize Gore for An Inconvenient Truth. Some people claim that he is using his book as a platform to gain more political favor if/when he should decide to run for President again after losing to George W. Bush in 2000. Other skeptics, such as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, refute Gore’s arguments, saying his data is inaccurate, or that many top scientists would beg to differ about what he claims to be true. Inhofe also brought up the point that Gore was backed by the media and the Associated Press, and that he was working to make money for future Democratic Presidential Candidates. The epistemology involved in deciding what is true, as well as how we know it is true, is essential in situations such as these. Many people might feel that Senator Inhofe is correct, siding with his arguments that Gore could not possibly prove everything in his writing to be 100% accurate. This creates a problem for Gore. People reading his book or viewing his movie might have trouble finding the entire movie believable if they become skeptical about just one fact. In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore even talks about how Global Climate Change may have been responsible for the destructive Hurricane Katrina. This is a very large claim, which places a lot of blame for natural disasters on human interference with nature. For this reason, it is a risky claim, since there are so many other variables that could be proven to have played a role in Hurricane Katrina. For these reasons, representing the effort to counter global climate change as Gore has done is a great risk. Keeping all facts straight and true can prove to be challenging when one is trying to persuade an audience.
Of course, both sides of the argument about global climate change are going to have personal biases about the topic in general. When news about global climate change is brought to the media’s attention, it is a very fine line between an objective and a subjective report. In many cases, scientific findings must be summarized and condensed (or even translated) into terms that can be easily understood by the general population. Objective reports are often based around empirical evidence, hard facts, and scientific data. However, even when these things are included in a report, the tone and style of writing in a report may or may not reveal biases from the reporting agency that will affect the way the reader thinks about the report. As an increasingly important subject to the world, global climate change is gaining more and more coverage in the media. For this reason, attention must be paid to the representation of global climate change towards the masses. The news is an extremely powerful force in determining how people react and respond to crises, and the manner in which a crisis is framed in a news report has an immense impact on how the reader interprets the crisis. While Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is just one of many outcries about the devastation global warming could continue to have on our world, Senator Inhofe’s stance on the subject is essentially the opposite. These men’s biases play a major role in how they each represent the issue of global climate change.
Throughout An Inconvenient Truth the environment is represented through pictures, graphs, and informative articles. Gore shows through these simple and straight foreword stimuli that the environment is in a state of peril and we as a global community must take action. He utilizes methods of environmental representation that highlight this fact, and in turn hopefully leave a lasting impression with audiences – having changed their minds on issues regarding the environment, or at least leaving them better informed and more aware. An Inconvenient Truth serves as an example of how representation is used to influence peoples opinions and in turn actions for a favorable cause. Perhaps others could look to Gore’s utilization of that tool for further use in aiding the global climate crisis and other environmental issues that face us today.
If Gore had taken a different approach to writing this book, the urgency of the implications would have quite possibly been lessened. Had he written page after page of mundane, monotonous writing, fewer people would be able to get through it all and fully appreciate the consequences than if he had used large pictures and other graphics. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
