I went to see Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth tonight. (http://www.climatecrisis.net/) My mom later asked, "was it good?" Well, no, it wasn't good. As the title suggests, the truth can be quite inconvenient. It requires change and sometimes even accepting you were wrong, perhaps even very wrong. Several weeks ago, Oprah said on her daytime talk show, "You learn better, you do better." Once you gain knowledge of something, you can no longer claim ignorance. Action is the only effective place you can go. The truth is that if we don't do something, and fast, the world we love will most certainly not be the world our children will see.

According to what we all learned in science class, the atmosphere lets in all the sun's rays and traps some of those rays in order to keep the earth at a steady, warm temperature and livable for all it's inhabitants. However, global warming is slowly making this atmosphere thicker, which traps in more and more of the suns rays. This is why the temperature as well as the CO2 levels are steadily increasing, leading to alarming consequences such as an increased rate of natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunami's, plants and animals are being forced from their natural habitats, and the glaciers are melting at alarming rates just to name a few.

The issue of global warming and the environment is not simply a political issue, it is a moral issue. If we neglect the responsibility to take care of the earth God gave us and give our children all the burdens that will most surely come from our lack of action, we will most certainly have committed an ethical travesty.

I really only hate one thing: ignorance, and most of all when I find it myself. Sure, I recycle and walk when it may be easier to drive and try to inform others of what's going on, but on the whole environmental activism didn't really appeal to me. It was very scientifically related and I didn't understand much of it. (I used to say the same of politics.) I never had a very good grip of what was really going on or why we should all be passionate about it. However, being an environmental activist makes all other activism possible. Sure, activists against poverty and hunger and for better education and so many countless other causes are all completely necessary (and please don't think I'm saying they aren't, as I too am very concerned about such issues), but if there isn't an earth to do it on, such activism isn't even possible.

I went into the documentary kind of expecting some partisan politics thrown in here and there, if for no other reason but because of what Al Gore has experienced politically. However, I met a man who is intensely passionate and profoundly eloquent and deeply prophetic. At times, he was surprisingly quite humorous. I couldn't help but be overcome with sadness at "what might have been" had the voters seen this side of him in 2000.

An Inconvienient Truth is a documentary version of a slide show Gore to people on college campuses, in town halls, and basically to anyone who will listen not just since 2000, but well before that. The movie is also punctuated with clips of Gore's life, as he takes us to places such as his childhood farm in Tennessee or to meetings and discussions he has had with scientists or while he reflects on his own life. The audience begins to understand what makes the protection of the environment such an intensely personal issue for him.

There is a large number of people who would say that global warming is a fallacy. However, the fact is that scientists remain in complete agreement as to what is going on here. As Gore points our in the documentary, recently a group of researchers have published a study about current scientific investigations on this topic. Of the 930 or so published studies pertaining to global warming, every single one of the scientists were in basic agreement about what caused global warming, where it is and where it's going, and what we must do to stop it. So, where do we get the uncertainty about this issue? A common source of misunderstanding, the media. While I'm certainly not saying the media is the sole part of the problem, it is perpetuating it to a large degree. The same study examined recent newspaper articles and the like and found that 53% of them are not in agreement about global warming. So, the real question is: are we going to believe the scientists who have devoted their life's work to such issues or the people who also find Paris Hilton's latest escapade to equally newsworthy?

As Gore said, "What changed in the U.S. with Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences." This problem of global warming has been brewing ever since the Earth began. However, in the last century we have dramatically (on a scale that few only imagined) increased the intensity of it's effects primarily because of the lifestyle of the Western World. As noted in the documentary, scientists have been trying to understand global warming ever since the late 1960's. The only reason the science of the issue is where it is now is because of the people who, in the beginning stages of the understanding of the topic, investigated what they saw and then were determined to tell the story of their findings, despite the enormous amount of ridicule and criticism they faced in their own lives.

Go see it. Please. You can go see that delightful romantic comedy or the action-packed thriller some other time. Go see it. Then, go home and begin recycling, change your light bulbs, write your congressperson and do anything else you can do to give those global warming bullies a run for their money. Mother Earth will love you for it.

There is no doubt that we are all part of the problem, but we can also be a big part of the solution. The writing is on the wall. We can no longer turn away and pretend we didn't see what is there. We must read it. And then we must do something.

Katie Griffin is a member of the Student Ecumenical Partnership (STEP) Leadership Team and is a member of Bethany Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Evansville, Indiana. Her opinions are not necessarily those of STEP or affiliated organizations.