62 pages • 2 hours read
Al GoreAn Inconvenient Truth
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaSections 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 8 Summary
In the anecdote “The Politicization of Global Warming,” Gore says he thinks the reason so many people are resistant to his message is that the inconvenient truth about the climate crisis will force people to change the way they live. It is especially unwelcome to powerful people and companies who want to confuse citizens so they cannot respond properly. First, such people and companies called climate change a myth. Now, they say it’s due to natural causes and will probably be good for us. These opponents also say we can’t do anything about it, so let’s not try. They stress the uncertainty of the science in order to paralyze the political process, Gore asserts, and their propaganda has worked. But “we can’t cannot afford inaction any longer, and, frankly, there’s just no excuse for it” (287).
Gore now focuses on the positive. He starts with listing the American cities that have “ratified” the Kyoto Treaty in defiance of the US government, then works to inspire readers by discussing some of the accomplishments Americans have made. These include wars against fascism, abolishing slavery, giving women the right to vote, passing civil rights legislation, and landing on the moon. It even includes closing the ozone layer, which scientists once thought near impossible. He spends a page describing chlorofluorocarbons and how they depleted the ozone, and the impact of political action in that case. He says that readers should now choose to “make the 21st century a time of renewal” (296). He ends by saying he “believe[s] this is a moral issue” (298).
Section 9 Summary
The final section of the book outlines what readers can do to help solve the climate crisis, because “each of us can make a difference” (305). Because “all of us contribute to climate change through the daily choices we make,” we can learn and begin to take “effective action” (305).
Gore advocates for saving energy at home through choosing energy-efficient lighting, conserving hot water, and investing in better insulation, among other things. Then he moves to transportation, urging readers to change their driving habits, purchase a hybrid car, use alternative fuels, and reduce air travel. Citizens should consume less and conserve more by buying things that last, giving preference to less packaging, recycling, and using reusable totes for groceries. He makes other suggestions as well, such as composting, carrying personal water bottles, eating less meat, buying local, and purchasing offsets for carbon use.
Finally, Gore says that he believes that individuals can become catalysts for change. They can learn more, tell others, encourage schools and businesses to become more green, vote with dollars, and invest wisely. Taking political action and supporting an environmental group are other routes toward action.
Interspersed with these calls for action, Gore debunksten different myths about climate change, covering misconceptions that muddy the message. These include the idea that the hole in the ozone layer causes global warming, that global warming will make winters milder, and that what scientists are seeing in the atmosphere is just cities trapping heat.
Sections 8-9 Analysis
In his conclusion, Gore gets away from the gloom and doom of the climate change argument and starts wraps up his book in a more optimistic way. This accomplishes one main objective, which is to leave the reader with a positive sense that work can be done, both by themselves and by corporations and government, to help solve the looming crisis. Clearly, he means to inspire action.
First, he lays out a warning about “the inconvenient truth” he has been talking about all along:
There is only one Earth, and all of us who live on it share a common future. Right now we are facing a planetary emergency, and it is time for action, not for more phony controversies designed to insure political paralysis (287).
It’s a fitting way to start this section because it acts as a clarion call for readers to do something and to not be taken in by misinformation. Then, he goes on to inspire by reminding readers of the accomplishments humans have made.
All this is craftily designed to give a sense of hope. The text reads “[i]t is time to rise again to secure our future” (300-01), in large block letters over two pages, over an image of the Earth from space. He then goes into the final section, which outlines actual plans for individuals reading the book. He adds the misconceptions about climate change here, just as a reminder of what’s at stake, and gives practical advice that regular people can do in their daily lives to minimize their effects on the climate. Interestingly, many of the methods he outlines here are ones that are still pertinent and given much airtime more than a decade later. This may show that we have not made enough progress or that we have, because we are talking about it.
