By Moira Romano

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) starring Al Gore, certainly took the world by storm winning an academy award for its insightful portrayal of the dire state of the world in which we live. An urgent call to action by a high profile politician who had recently run for the most powerful public office in the world, President of the United States. Who would have thought it was a propaganda piece, that it was created to play on peoples’ emotions? Enter Bjorn Lomborg, a scientist and lecturer from Copenhagen that few people had heard of until he published The Skeptical Environmentalist. Bjorn Lomborg had the audacity and intelligence to dispatch his best team of scientific experts to track down every key point made in An Inconvenient Truth, to challenge its validity. Guess what they found?

When Bjorn Lomborg decided to present a new point of view regarding the interpretation of environmental predictions so alarmingly portrayed in An Inconvenient Truth he was not praised. His academic and personal integrity was challenged in a tribunal, labeled diabolical and dishonest with his career threatened. Why?

Cool It (2010) is the remarkable documentary that resulted from the fall out of the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, a rebuttal to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Point by point the basis for the CO2 (global warming) debate is examined. Experts the world over are consulted and the answers seem to confirm that we may have been duped. The CO2 crisis is shown to be inconclusive at best, and at worst a colossal misrepresentation of facts. These misrepresentations to the public and politicians serve only to create huge profits for corporations such as the now defunct ENRON, while doing little to improve the serious environmental issues at hand. The best that can be said is An Inconvenient Truth raised environmental awareness. Cool It corrects the record about what the issues are and how we could go about rectifying them effectively. Cool It traces the alarming forces that come into play when an individual such as Bjorn Lomborg tries to challenge ‘the powers that be’ on matters of the environment and the flow of billions and billions of global dollars.

Directed by Ondi Timoner, Cool It is a very important environmental documentary for everyone. It is a tad long and could do with an edit. It is well documented and accurate about the details of global warming and their economic and personal implications. The 10-year old child’s point of view given at various times during the documentary is appropriate. Bjorn Lomborg remembers how he himself became an ardent environmentalist at the age of ten as a result of the controversy over nuclear power. We meet other 10-year old children at school today who speak of the fear they live with that the world will become uninhabitable. In the third world, 10 year olds are dealing with the reality of aids, no fresh water, slum living and no education. Cool It connects the dots and we emerge with a clear focus on the actual truth rather than the inconvenient one. The good news is there are cost effective and practical approaches to the problem that make a real difference. Cool It shows the way. You decide.

A must see. Highly recommended.