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 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 4 Summary
The Antarctic and the Arctic “serve as canaries in the coal mine” (126) because they are especially sensitive to global warming effects. Gore outlines the problem of cracking ice shelfs, melting tundra, and the warming of permafrost. This leads to infrastructure damage in places like Siberia and Alaska and complicates the plans of oil companies who wish to drill for oil.
Gore includes a primer on alternative fuels in this section. He discusses ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen-based fuels, pointing out that “hydrogen may be the ultimate clean fuel of the future” (137). He says that decision-makers must understand what works for each state, ecological system, and industrial system to boost local economies without worsening crisis trends.
In “From Pole to Shining Pole,” Gore speaks of the travels he undertook in order to understand the problem of global warming. He briefly narrates excursions to the South Pole, to Antarctica, and to the Arctic ice cap. Everywhere he went, even at the equator, he discovered “dramatic evidence of significant effects” (142).
The author now takes us to the Arctic, where he provides information about the melting of the Arctic ice cap and why it’s happening so quickly. This, he says, is bad news for animals like polar bears. But it also affects the climate’s “nonlinear system,” (149) an engine that redistributes heat from the tropics to the poles. This shifts wind and ocean patterns in a way that humans have never before experienced.
In the ocean, the “Global Ocean Conveyer Belt” (150) is like a pump that powers the water’s continuous flow. This can be disrupted by an influx of fresh water, Gore says, ushering in extreme weather conditions such as an ice age. Scientists are worried that such a thing could happen again. The rhythm of seasons may change as parts of the world heat more rapidly than others, “disrupting delicately balanced ecological relationships” (153)and inviting invasive species in.
The personal anecdote “Across the Wilderness” allows Gore to talk about his camping experiences and how they instill in him a sense of renewal. Nature, he says, is in danger of being forgotten and lost because it is slow-moving, undemanding, and sometimes underwhelming. When you don’t get out into it, one may think of it as trivial, unless it is somehow of value. But, he finishes, “what we do to nature, we do to ourselves” (161).
Section 5 Summary
Gore next turns to the threats to species around the world. He reviews many of the factors contributing to mass extinction rates, including how higher ocean temperatures cause coral bleaching. He believes that the chemical transformation of the oceans is causing “dead zones,” algae blooms, Florida’s red tide and additional disease vectors, such as the proliferation of mosquitoes. As a result, “new diseases have emerged over the last 25 to 30 years. And some old diseases that had been under control are now surging again” (175).
Gore then turns to Antarctica, a neutral desert governed by international treaty. Threatened animals in this region include the emperor penguins featured in the documentary March of the Penguins. These birds rely on sea ice to breed and hunt, and its disappearance will harm them.
Signs of melting are everywhere along the ice shelfs. When this happens, water levels rise worldwide. Those who live in low-lying areas—from Pacific Islanders to Londoners—will be at risk. Greenland, for example, has seen accelerated changes in the ice. If that country melted, or if Antarctica did, sea levels everywhere would rise by 18-20 feet, Gore says. He quotes Sir David King, a U.K. science advisor, in saying, “The maps of the world will have to be redrawn” (197). Florida, San Francisco, the Netherlands, Beijing, Calcutta, Bangladesh, and Manhattan would also suffer.
In the personal anecdote called “Serving for the Public Good,” Gore explains his journey in becoming an elected representative. He describes the thrill he felt at “making democracy work”(212). And though he purports to understand people’s discouragement, he finds American democracy powerful. He describes a spirit of freedom “always present, just waiting for the right spark to ignite it” (213). He ends by saying that in writing this book, he’s chasing the thrill he felt when he first made his congressional rounds.
Sections 4-5 Analysis
This part of the book focuses on negative effects reportedly associated with climate change, such as melting ice caps, changing ocean patterns, species loss, disease vectors, and rising sea levels. Here, Gore packs quite a bit of information into almost 100 pages, tackling everything from the bleaching of coral reefs to mosquitoes. He bookends Sections 4-5, which are not divided by him in any organizational way, with a section on melting icecaps in the Arctic, and similar melting leading to rising sea levels in Antarctica and around the world.
All this requires some oversimplification of complicated issues. It may also be an inevitable result of the fact that the book very much relates back to the film that was release at the same time. In that format, too much information can lose people who may be trying to pay attention both to the speaker and to the visuals at the same time.
Here, it would be easy to play on people’s emotions when he talks about cute animals, but Gore mainly focuses on the facts and science, without bringing in too many dramatic images of charismatic megafauna that might tug on heartstrings. However, there are wordy sections within these chapters that may lose casual readers due to an overabundance of scientific terminology.
Readers should note at this point that at the time this book was published, 2006, Al Gore was a polarizing personality. Although his star was on the wane and his public appearances decreasing after a failed presidential bid in 2000, many people in both political parties looked at him very differently than before. When reading criticism of An Inconvenient Truth from other sources, it may be useful to consider this.
Also, the reader’s own perception of Al Gore as a person may influence how he appears to them throughout this book. Generally, those who are predisposed to like Gore will find in his reflections proof of a thoughtful, intellectual mind. Those who come in with a negative opinion of him could very well find his wording manipulative, and even somewhat boastful in places, as when in these chapters he talks about convincing the Navy to release secret information that “told an alarming story” (143).
