As penance for saying earlier that Northern California is crazy for not having A/C everywhere, I went out to see An Inconvenient Truth at the Rialto with Mark tonight. It was good. I mean, I’d heard it was good, so I pretty much expected it to be.

I didn’t expect the film’s format to be a very polished, if not beautiful “powerpoint” presentation (Keynote actually). I thought it’d be more of a Discovery Channel style strum und drang with Al Gore doing the dramatic narration (a la March of the Penguins) which is maybe why I wasn’t chomping at the bit to go see it.

The movie’s tagline was “by far the most terrifying film you will ever see.” I wasn’t really phased. Maybe it’s my optimism, or maybe, global warming just isn’t news to me. I believe in science. And I’ve been exposed to protecting the environment and recycling since grade school. What is depressing is how out of touch I feel with my government and elected officials, how I don’t feel like they are doing much to protect the health, well-being, and future of individuals over the interests of corporations.

But I want to do something. So my first something is this post, and a link to the movie’s website climatecrisis.net. And a suggestion that you, dear reader, might want to go see “An Inconvenient Truth” if you have the desire. See a matinee showing. If only for the graph that shows the automobile emissions requirements for new cars by country over the next several years. The US is so dead last it’s embarrassing.

Which brings me to my last thought, which is really a message intended for Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim (the film’s director). Since I don’t know how to contact them directly, here’s hoping the blogosphere will carry this suggestion on my behalf:

Once “An Inconvenient Truth” leaves the theaters, rerelease it under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Make it available via BitTorrent, YouTube. Allow people to re-edit it, excerpt it, put clips on their blogs. You may discover that people will translate it, subtitle it, annotate it, mash it up with other films. Allow this work to go farther than the theater.