Here’s some news that just ruined my day. Boing Boing reports that the National Science Teachers Association has refused 50,000 free copies of Al Gore’s documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth“. Why? Here the Washington Post op-ed article (written by producer Laurie David) quotes the NSTA’s reasoning in its e-mail refusal:
Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.
I saw the documentary film when it came out. I had a very selfish reason for not wanting to go see it: I believed I would just become more upset than I already am about our government’s role in perpetuating our abuse of our environment. But the facts and ideas were presented so thoughtfully and methodically that it was a pleasure to see it all laid out so clearly — sorry though that picture is.
At Wired Magazine, Lawrence Lessig wrote, about the film:
About halfway through, Gore cites two studies to explain why so many people remain so skeptical about global warming. The first looked at a random sample of almost 1,000 abstracts on climate change in peer-reviewed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 and found that exactly zero doubted “that we’re causing global warming.” The second surveyed a random sample of more than 600 articles about global warming in popular media between 1988 and 2002 and discovered that 53 percent questioned “that we’re causing global warming.”
See the trailer here. And then, if you haven’t already done so, rent the movie.
We will shortly return to regularly scheduled calligraphy and book arts programming.
I know not what to say about educators refusing that film. Here in Dallas,it was 80 degrees yesterday and theres snow on the ground today. Is that an inconveniant truth or what? I too have not YET seen the film(we go to see live theatre when we get a baby sitter ,but we shall soon have no excuse ,like you I am afraid to see the film.