Summer Movie Night: “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” comes out in July!
Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” was eye-opening when it came out in 2006, and today is the tenth largest grossing documentary in the country; and as climate change- centric media tends to turn out, it was loved and lauded by most yet also laughed at by many.
But of those who viewed it, how many took that message to heart? How many of those individuals took action? Has progress been made, or is doom only more closely impending? With the sequel, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” coming out July 28, we may soon get the chance to see where we are, where we’ve been in the past decade, and now how to move forward as the stakes get more tense and the political climate gets more dicey.
Solar energy is something mentioned as a solution across these and other climate films like “Before the Flood”, but many hesitate to turn to this solution due to worries about cost. In reality, solar is far cheaper when you look at the bigger picture; once the panels themselves are purchased and installed, it gives you your own means to generate electricity. This often means little to no more monthly bill, and in some cases depending on your weather and location, you may have the option to either store excess energy in a battery to use on cloudier days or sell it back to the power company for a profit. This means that even though there’s a large upfront cost, you’ll be paid back that price and then some in what you end up saving on energy! And with multiple loan and funding programs available it’s only getting cheaper to save more- in terms of money, energy, and of course, the environment. And if this sequel tells us we need to step up our game (which I think I can safely predict it will) then solar energy is one of the most impactful changes you can make, with some of the best longterm benefits.
A couple other fun tidbits: the film, which has yet to come out, has almost five hundred ratings on IMDB. The voter demographics show that ratings are highest in the youngest age range and decrease with each subsequent age category, which can be easily understood, but interesting to me is that in every single age range, women gave higher ratings than men. Whether this speaks to a gender trend in movie reviewing or a gender gap in environmental activism, I cannot say, but when women are half the population and near nowhere in politics it definitely suggests that a more balanced gender distribution in public office could help push environmental action in this renewable energy enthusiast’s favor.
By Danica Bergmann
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6322922/
Photo Cred: Paramount Pictures
