‘I am Al Gore; I used to be the next President of the United States of America.’ This is how Albert Arnold, Al Gore, the American former U.S. Vice President, start his speech. He has given a lot of speeches about the global warming. He wants to educate citizens about the changing of the climate. This film is about his speech and moments in his life which determine where he is standing now. He visited many places to tell the story about global warming, he says that he can only influence people city by city, family by family and person by person.

Gore is telling us that the atmosphere is the most vulnerable part of the Earth ecological system, because it’s so thin. Everyone knows how it works: the atmosphere collect the gases of the greenhouse, the sun’s light is shining onto the Earth’s surface but the heat that reflects back up into the atmosphere stays. A lot of gases are coming from burning fossil fuels by cars, trains and planes. Gore uses a lot of graphs about global warming (greenhouse gases, CO₂  levels and the Antarctic ice coring). The numbers in the graphs are getting higher and higher. He says it is unethical letting grow these numbers.

When he is talking about the global warming, he tells the audience also about why he is interested in this issue. He tells about his school and what he learned there from climate experts, his sister’s death and his son’s car accident which had a big impact on his life. He want to save the world of global warming, the world is not only for us, also for our children and grandchildren.

The spring begins earlier, the fall begins later, there is more sun on the Earth and the ice is melting more and more. Gore shows a short movie about an ice bear who is swimming in the ocean. He is searching for ice. If he finally finds the ice, it breaks and it melts. The home of the ice bear is gone. The ice sheets in Greenland or in West Antarctica disappears because it’s getting warmer and warmer. The ice changes into water and that means that the global sea levels are raising and coastal areas are flooding.

Gore thinks global warming is not a political issue, so much as a moral one. At the moment nobody is taking actions because people are not conscious about the issue. The climate is changing so slowly, that people forget what the effect are. Gore shows a picture from a scale with on one side golden bars and on the other side the world. Is it really too difficult to choose between these two?

At the end Gore is saying: ‘Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that.’ You can change it with the things you buy, the electricity you use and the car you drive. Each one can take actions which releases less CO₂, the solution are in our hands. 

Written by Marla