The great thing about “An Inconvenient Truth” is that it hammers home a basic point: global warming is real, it’s here, it’s very scary, and it’s going to get a whole lot worse if we don’t do something about it now. Common knowledge perhaps, but all too easy for us to block out, especially because nothing much has changed in our day-to-day lives.

The main value of this film is that it makes the looming catastrophe very tangible. Gore connects the dots between ice shelves collapsing into the ocean, melting ice releasing carbon dioxide, and staggering increases in greenhouse gas emissions. He explains that global warming will cause the oceans to rise, cause more and more catastrophic ocean storms and coastal flooding, and cause equally catastrophic inland droughts.

Anyone who sees “An Inconvenient Truth” will find it harder to stay complacent or resigned to business as usual. Now for the shortcomings. There are some truths that are missing from his film, apparently because they are too inconvenient for Gore himself to acknowledge.

Capital versus community

The United States, with only 4 percent of the world’s population, consumes close to 30 percent of the world’s resources. Gore never mentions this. He wants us to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs and more fuel-efficient cars—and we should. But to really address this crisis, we need to find ways to live meaningful, rewarding lives while consuming much, much less of the world’s resources.

The elephant in the room is capitalism—a system that prioritizes profits above all else and values limitless accumulation of material wealth. A system organized around the exploitation of natural resources can’t possibly move us toward stewarding resources and living in a healthy partnership with the Earth.

Gore touts eco-capitalism, the idea that environmental responsibility is good for business. Looking through a very narrow lens, individual companies can reap profits from energy-efficient and renewable energy products. Toyota is selling its hybrid Priuses faster than they can be made. Compact fluorescent light bulbs are a sure winner. Companies will make a lot of money on wind farms and solar panels. Reclaiming and recycling materials makes for more efficient production than flagrant waste.

Widening the lens, we begin to see the contradictions between capitalism and ecological recovery. Take wind farms and solar panels. Do new eco-companies price these products at top-dollar (“what the market will bear”) in order to maximize profits? Or are prices set to make renewable energy widely accessible because that is what the human community desperately needs for our collective survival?

Even more broadly: capitalism requires limitless growth and excessive accumulation and consumption. Ecological recovery will require strict limits on consumption and major reductions in our use of resources. Something has to give, one way or the other. Corporations and individuals need to answer this basic question: Is our priority to maximize profits for individual gain, or to serve the collective interests of the community? If our answer is to maximize profits and personal gain, we will go on destroying the Earth. If our answer is to prioritize the interests of the community, will capitalism morph into a radically different—and better—system?

The dwindling oil supply

We’re running out of oil. If you hadn’t heard of “peak oil” when you walked into “An Inconvenient Truth,” you still hadn’t heard of it when you walked out. Why Gore ignores this, I don’t know. Peak oil refers to the point at which we reach a limit to the rate we can pump oil from the earth. Globally there is only so much oil.

Peak oil is critical because the global economy runs on oil. Transportation, food production, industrial production, heating, cooling—every basic component of the economy relies on a limitless supply of oil. Once we pass peak, available supplies of oil will decline very rapidly. Lack of oil raises the real possibilities of economic collapse and social devastation. Peak oil needs to become a household term. People have a right to know that economic as well as environmental disaster is looming. Understanding can more likely lead to taking constructive action.

Despite the graphic images of “An Inconvenient Truth,” it remains all too easy for “global warming” to lapse back into an abstraction. But gas prices over $3 a gallon have gotten people’s attention, and when they reach $10 a gallon, people may be ready to turn to a new system based on sensible limits, care for the Earth, and saying goodbye to oil.