In class we watched Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, a documentary detailing the causes and effects of climate change. It is unfortunate that even after the production and release of several other documentaries like Gore's that the same concerns and topics are discussed. I feel as thought the documentary route is a bit like crying wolf. Every time someone makes a new documentary it encompasses the same vernal bulk of the issue. And because nothing fully detrimental happened in the 10 years since the Inconvenient Truth was released, many people may lean to the notion that nothing will happen again after other films are released such as Dicaprio's Before the Flood. I feel as though environmentalists need to take a new approach on relaying climate change, because with each deadline we give for the "end of the world" we are only hindering our cause. That is because we have broken though many of the declines for change and yet nothing has changed of the average person and thus the average person will loose respect for the notion of climate change. This is something we must work on as a field. We need to find a way to cause a severity and understanding of the lack of time we have without sounding like another wolf scenario.
Source: David, L., Bender, L., & Burns, S. Z. (Producers), & Guggenheim, D. (Director).
(2006). An Inconvenient Truth [Motion Picture]. United States: Paramount Classics.
Wow! Interesting reflections - there may be something to this. I didn't learn about climate change in my K-12 science classes (hell - my biology teacher was super take-it-or-leave-it about evolution!!), but I'm glad my children are learning about it - that seems to be a good start too.
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