(Environmental) Rhetorics of Tempered Apocalypticism in An Inconvenient Truth

Abstract

An Inconvenient Truth has inspired a wave of public concern about global warming. The film's environmental rhetoric invokes a millennial apocalypticism inherited from canonical works like Silent Spring. However, Truth moderates its apocalyptic tendencies with scientific rationalism and constructions of audience agency. In so doing, Truth offers a tempered apocalypticism that embraces the affect of a more fiery tradition while maintaining an authoritative voice, thereby appealing to a broader audience. Truth makes clear that there can be no singular environmental rhetoric, but a mixture of rhetorics that mirrors the contentious climate of environmental politics.

Notes

¹I am indebted to John Schilb for his patient readings of multiple incarnations of this manuscript; his advice was, and continues to be, invaluable. Thanks also to RR peer reviewers Ken Zagacki and Keith Topper for their apt critiques and suggestions.

²Two brief examples of global warming's salience since Truth's 2006 release: President Bush mentioned climate change in both his 2007 and his 2008 State of the Union addresses, but made no such mention in 2006. Secondly, a LexisNexis® search for “global warming” yields 129 articles for 2005, the year prior to Truth's release, and 471 for 2007, the year after. The increase in visibility must partly be attributed to the attention Truth brought to the issue.

³I would not go as far as to call this ambivalence a strategic ambiguity, as it seems less than calculated.

⁴My thinking here is influenced by Jenny Edbauer's “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies,” which posits place as similar to event. Edbauer sees places “not so much as enduring sites but as moments of encounter, not so much as ‘presents,’ fixed in space in time, but as variable events; twists and fluxes of interrelation” (qtd. in Edbauer 5). This focus on dynamism draws on ecological criticism, which also informs my thinking. Marilyn Cooper's 1986 “The Ecology of Writing” is a foundation of this focus. In Cooper's case, the most noteworthy interactions seem to be social; networks of social interaction are “inherently dynamic,” and in this sense they have an ecological character (368). Edbauer moves a step beyond Cooper to make place itself variable. For Edbauer, while place is socially constituted and material (not unreal), it is decidedly impermanent.

⁵Nordhaus and Shellenberger describe rhetors' use of degradation images to motivate audience action: “Environmental leaders and activists today overwhelmingly believe that these images are the lifeblood of their movement …” (24). Nordhaus and Shellenberger position the use of such images as rhetorically ineffective because it feeds the view that environmentalism is ultimately negative and seeks to constrain human activity. They argue that environmental rhetors must motivate human potential rather than enumerate human failures.

⁶The first three categories overlap with those Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown name in an adaptation of the ethos-logos-pathos triangle in their introduction to Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America.

⁷Similarly, the division of the Nobel Prize between Gore and the IPCC raises questions about the nationality of an internationally authorized environmental rhetoric. How might the inclusion of the committee compromise Gore's centrality, even his agency as rhetor? Or does the committee's relative anonymity—because they have not been individuated or made famous to the same degree Gore has—effectively recentralize Gore's voice?

⁸I'm obliged to recognize that traditional definitions of “apocalypse” do not imply only doomsday disaster but also salvation and paradise for those who embrace certain tenets; however, it is the pessimistic view of apocalypse as cataclysm that seems dominant at present. See Lois Zamora's 1982 The Apocalyptic Vision in America (especially her introduction [1–10] and contribution [97–138]) for a deeper discussion.

⁹The element of “joy” is somewhat overlooked in Killingsworth and Palmer's essay as well, as it is featured only in the footnote I have here made central. For more on this element, see Zamora.

¹⁰Recall the Simpsonsesque cartoon in which the greenhouse gasses beating Mr. Sunbeam carry cash, or the scene in which Gore critiques a political cartoon of gold bars balanced against Earth.

¹¹Representable, and therefore somehow distanced from us, stuck in silent freeze-frame, or worse, available to the same kind of aestheticizing gaze I described earlier.

¹²At least, we are led to believe that they are his, that he wrote the presentation solo while sitting in offices and on airplanes.

¹³I don't think that the counterimpression of Gore as lamenting or brooding compromises this authority. While it may be at odds with stereotypes of authority, the construction of Gore as a personalized, human authority has its own cultural currency.

¹⁴I'm thinking particularly of the first figure Gore presents, that of the earth, which appears to be pulsing, alongside a rising red line representing CO₂ levels over the past few decades. The combined effects of rising line and pulsing earth create a sense of inevitable danger. Overlying this, interestingly enough, is Gore's narrative of his political career in terms of his efforts to address global warming.

¹⁵Recall his introductory statement, “I am Al Gore; I used to be the next president of the United States of America,” suggesting that his persecution by the political process is ultimately his most significant identifying feature.

¹⁶Alternatively, if we read Gore's apocalyptic rhetoric as overbalanced and tempered by scientific rhetoric, there is a sense in which he is overtly rejecting apocalyptic rhetoric even as he embraces a weakened version of it. From here, we might read Truth as rejecting (or tempering) antiprogressivism by refusing to indulge a vividly apocalyptic eschatology.

¹⁷Term from Edbauer.

¹⁸Knowledgeable because we have embraced and understood scientific explanation, because, as Gore says early on, he needn't spend much time on the mechanics of global warming because we already know them.