Rhoterical Analysis

Al Gore "An Inconvenient Truth" a documentary film premier at the 2006 Sundance film festival. In this film Al Gore aims to campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show. Personal anecdotes (interesting account), contrast, comparison and rhetorical appeals (like pathos, ethos and logos) are techniques Gore skillful uses to create a strong, convincing documentary film. As a saying goes "A stitch in time saves nine" Gore's main focus is to highlight the downsides of global warming and its immense negative effects on man and the environment as a whole. In this perspective, Gore has an environmentalist approach to the subject in the sense that he sheds light on the need for both ethical and political movement to all the factors of environmental harm (especially global warming) and he re-echoes its financial loss to the economy. He begins his documentary by saying “ Hi, am Al Gore, I used to be the next President of the United States of American” and also with a personal interesting account describing the question his fellow classmate asked her high school teacher “ Can the East Coast of South American and the West Coast of African be fit together ". This technique immediately establishes the film as informal and personal because it’s a great way to capture the audience (citizens) interest or attention, as well as establishing background information for this first point on global warming. Gore made us to understand that the debate about global warming has always been whether it’s a hoax or whether the global temperatures are really increasing. For example, he makes in the following paragraph that " The Era of procrastination of half measure, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to the close; in its place we are entering a period of consequences”. It’s quite easy for citizens to relate to personal experience because as human being every action we take in life have consequences and as such the consequences of not doing nothing about global warming can have a great deal of impact on the nature such as floods, droughts and killing of wildlife species. At the end of the paragraph Gore stated, " The death of my protector and my beloved sister through lung cancer 1964”. A strong pathos statement because, its tend to build an emotional connection with the citizen and also lighten his mood at that particular moment. This is directly followed by ethos statement explaining the necessity of "Death” being part of his motivation towards the investigation of global warming. Examples of such personal interesting account include employing his professor Roger Revelle who propose the measurement of carbon-dioxide in air atmosphere 1958, intensive scientific research and experience on natural occurrences, visiting the north and south poles, and conducting slide shows in many place such as Europe, Asia, North American and South American, clearly provides evidence and support for the fact on global warming indicating his knowledge and credibility about the issue of global warming. Shortly after capturing the citizen's interest and attention, Gore begins using logos. The numerous examples of date, graphs, data and statistical values throughout the film portray that indeed global warming is something we need to fight against so as to preserve the nature for our future generations. Gore uses the national security data on sea ice which indicates that the sea-ice has dropped by 1.5 million km2 since 1970 and also given an account on estimated dead of 2003 heat wave in Europe which resulted from global warming, France 15,000, Netherlands 1,400, Portugal 13,000, Italy 20,000, UK 900 and Spain 100. About midway through the documentary, Gore makes a transition from contrast to comparison, focusing on projection concentration after 50 years of unrestricted fossil fuel burning. Stating the 200 cities in towns like Florence (SC), and New Orleans (LA) that have been experiencing high increase in ocean temperature from 1940 to 2003. Comparisons like peer-reviewed scientific article 928; percentage in doubt as to cause of global warming is 0% and articles in the popular press 636; percentage in doubt as to cause of global warming is 53%. These comparisons are shocking and have causes the citizen to reflect on the question, as to why have not succeeded on the issues of global warming? Gore quoted, “ It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" this mean that most of our business owners and politicians are benefiting from the issues at hand and therefore it is very hard for them to stand up and fight for what is right for nations. In a nutshell, all the various components of “An Inconvenient Truth” boil down to the fact that the environment is obviously degrading and loosing its natural value. Gore does point out several causes of global warming and unfortunately, man is the main causing agent in this issue. If the environment is polluted now, what will be left for the next generations? Think of the golden rule: do unto others, as you want unto you. In this sense, we have the right as individual citizens to leave a contaminated environment for the future generation. This wake up call will do more good than harm if it does not fall on deaf ears but instead held in high esteem by all citizens. However his techniques for the documentary film worked effectively because citizens were well convinced, allowing him to create documentary that were beneficial in helping citizens to solve the problem of global warming as he quoted from Stephen Pacalo” Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical and industrial know how to solve the carbon and climate problems”.