July 9, 2006

By ROGER SIDEMAN
STAFF WRITER

Hoping to stir dialog about global warming, Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, treated an overflow crowd of nearly 300 people to a screening of the Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth."

On Saturday, local government and school officials crammed into the Nickelodeon Theater in Santa Cruz along with members of the environmental community for the screening, which was followed by a short discussion.

Laird wanted to create a greater discussion about the problem of global warming, taking the lead from the former vice president, who informs his film audience: "If the issue is not on the tip of constituents' tongues, it's easy to ignore."

Adapted from a slide show Gore has presented over two decades, the film aims to jolt viewers into action to fight global warming.

"The question now is how to take it to the next step," said Laird.

For the discussion, Laird gathered a panel including Ecology Action chief Gine Johnson; Jennifer Smith Grub, president of Sustainable Silicon Valley, and Dr. Lisa Sloan, a professor and director of the Climate Change and Impacts Laboratory at UC Santa Cruz.

Sloan's impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly — the world is getting hotter and it is a catastrophe-in-the-making caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"The Gore team did a real good job at getting across the facts, but one thing he didn't look at, is that when we look at the records, we see that the climate has been changing all along," Sloan said. "We're just the newest part of the mix and it's going to have a dramatic effect."

Smith Grubb, a self-described "planetary healer," said the film will help engage groups of people on a large scale.

Over 1 million people have seen the film since it opened in May. Showing on 587 screens, it has grossed nearly $15 million, making it the third-highest grossing political documentary of all time, behind Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine."

While the film is doing strong business with a wide range of audiences nationwide, including places not known for environmental activism, that does not include Washington's top science decision makers.

President Bush said he won't see it. The heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA haven't seen it, and the president's science adviser said the movie is on his to-see list.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.