The roots of such worrisome totalising can be traced in the more academic realm to the 1960s and 1970s, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Paul Ehrlich’s the Population Bomb and the Club of Rome’s the Limits to Growth. More distal influences, such as Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848, also merit consideration, as we shall see.
There is another source, however, unmatched in its combination of scientific pretension, charged emotional tone, policy impact and mass appeal: former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which this year marks its 20th anniversary.
More than any other single work, this glossy, visually dramatic production translated the abstractions of climate modelling into a compelling, emotionally charged narrative – one that struck fear into the hearts of tens of millions. It did so by framing mankind’s industrial activity and consequent increase in CO2 production as the driver of a truly dangerous increase in global temperature. It did so by warning of severe and impending ecological devastation and economic disruption. It did so by arguing for the necessity of emergency response, while casting dissent as the most serious of modern sins....<<<Read More>>>...
