Did Gore deserve Oscar for "scare-you-mental"?

Former Vice Pres. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was one of five films nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Documentary Feature" category. Given Hollywood's enthusiasm for environmental activism, Gore's stature as a political icon, and the film's success at the box office (the third top grossing documentary ever), it would have been astonishing if "An Inconvenient Truth" did not win an Oscar. Actually, it garnered two as Melissa Etheridge's new anti-global-warming anthem, "I Need To Wake Up," part of the film's soundtrack, captured the Academy Award for Best Original Song for a Motion Picture.

"There's just one small problem," maintains Marie Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. "Gore's film isn't really a documentary; it's a 'Scare-You-Mentary.'" As Lewis points out, nearly every statement the former Vice President makes in "AIT" about climate science and policy either is one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong.

"Gore's warning that sea levels might rise 20 feet in our lifetimes or those of our children unless we follow him down the Kyoto road is science fiction," Lewis insists. "Too bad there's no Oscar category for 'Best Sci-Fi Film in the Guise of a Documentary.'"

Gore declares global warming to be a moral issue, but this film never considers the likely effects of energy-rationing schemes like the Kyoto Protocol on working families and the poor. Kyoto-type policies are supposed to reduce C[O.sub.2] emissions by making carbon-based energy--oil, natural gas, and coal--more expensive. Europeans pay six dollars a gallon for gasoline, due to high motor fuel taxes, yet Europe's carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 26% since 1990, the Kyoto baseline year.

"How much higher than European-level gas prices does Mr. Gore think Americans should have to pay?" Lewis wonders.

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