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Planning on seeing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? If you live in Arkansas (like your’s trully at BSB) your only chance to see it locally will be at Market St. in Little Rock on June 30th.

I just finally checked out the official website and was very impressed. Organized, clean, professional, dynamic and respectful. I’d like to hand it to Mr. Gore and his crew on this one. The website is built with visual intelligence and smart but non-condescending language. It is impacting in its photography and color and direct in its point. I understand that it a lot of money probably went into hiring skilled designers, copy writers and developers, but, and for that reason, there is much that young, excited, concerned, poor, curious and amatuer ecologists and concerned politicians can learn for free here: Speak astutely, respectfully and with style.

Around every corner here in northwest Arkansas there is someone speaking out against global warming, the Bush administration, Wal-Mart and the war in Iraq. Sadly, the majority of them are either preaching to the choir or making jaded pessimists of the uncoverted. There is, of course, a time and place and necessity for the “loud and proud” approach to speaking out and finger pointing. I’m all for finger pointing. And I’m all for (peaceful) political dissent. However, I am quickly turned away by disorganization, rudery, ignorance of a subject-matter and ego. The slightest sign of it will turn away most people, in fact. The advantage the folks behind ClimateCrisis.net have given themselves is through their focused, singular voice, a rich presentation and the feeling that they’re talking in the same tone of voice to everyone. I know just by a visit the website, they’ve put in their time, researched everything possible, and made sure they have the right to speak.

I think it is safe to say that the film will be built on scare tactics and probably a fair amount of the blame game. But I also think that this is one of those rare cases where it’s just about the only way you can talk about it and retain some amount of honesty and accuracy. The idea of the earth slowly getting hotter and hotter, dryer and dryer, and ultimately unlivable? That is scary. I’m predicting a backlash of people people saying that the “scare tactics” are cheap and unnecessary and that Mr. Gore is really just a sore loser and that the rest is just hippie-dippie nature boy stuff.

On a side note, there is an excellent section on living sustainable lifestyles by and with technology, Al Gore and the “Neo-Greens” in the May 2006 issue of Wired. If you see a copy, I’d recommend grabbing it and reading it and passing it on when you’re done.

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