This fall I finally watched Al Gore’s documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” I hadn’t watched it before out of pure stubbornness. No sooner do friends (and even strangers) start telling me that I just “have” to see this or go here then the last thing I want to do is see that or go there. Blame it on my Prussian heritage or evil spirits, but I didn’t see Gore’s film back then because too many people told me I had to.

Well, now I’ve seen it. And they were right, much as it is hard to admit that in public. This is not to say that I don’t have any issues with the film; I’m too much of a skeptic about everything to take that view. Plus, the film seems geared to work on our emotions. Outside of horror films, I don’t like someone trying to scare me. But there is one thing he said more than once that I do now believe to be true: the problem of global climate change is a moral one.

I watched the film this fall because of a philosophy course I help teach. The focus of the course is on “critical thinking and problem-solving” and we ask students to consider different aspects of those processes as portrayed or utilized in six different films. This means I must watch the films also, both before the semester begins and with the students during class. They organize discussions over the issues in the film and course and write essays stating and defending their own ideas.

The discussion of this film was lively, though mostly respectful, and in one essay response, a student actually gave me a word I like better than either global “warming” or “climate change.” She called it global “climate rearrangement” and I can’t think of a more useful term to express the concept. Some places may actually get cooler, at least for awhile. Some places will get more rain, some less. Humidity will increase or decrease. Earth’s atmosphere is a dynamic and complex system — not completely chaotic, but poorly understood — and it’s going to be difficult to predict precisely what will happen everywhere.

That the world is getting warmer overall is not something that can be denied. That there is more CO2 in our air now than there was as far back as a million years ago can also not be denied. The rise in temperatures and CO2 levels — from whatever cause — is as close to a “fact” as humans can find.

On the other hand, the causes for those changes are open to debate. Is it a natural process? Is it caused by human pollution? Is it both: a natural process influenced by human behavior?

Many skeptics don’t believe humans are “powerful” enough to have any influence over something as large and complex as the Earth’s atmosphere. But humans have already altered ecosystems — even large ones. The huge dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi is a fact. The radical alteration of watersheds and ecosystems as mining companies cut off mountain tops to get at coal deposits in the Appalachian mountains is also a fact. Clearly human activity has had a profound effect on big sections of the world. Why should that be any different for the atmosphere?

But, still, is there room for skepticism about causes? Yes. Even after seeing the movie, I insist on maintaining skepticism. Much more research has to be done to support current theories. But a refusal to believe it’s happening regardless of cause? That’s a reckless, immoral position that is blocking effective responses to the changes climate rearrangement has already begun to make. People are going to be displaced by rising ocean levels. Droughts and floods are going to be more common and more devastating. We need to figure out how we’re going to live with those changes.

What scares me more than the fear mongering in Gore’s film is the manipulation of scientific debates and skepticism by people who don’t want this problem to be seen as a moral one, who only want to discuss the economic and political consequences of doing something. One can only speculate as to why they take that route, but I’m fairly certain selfish greed is involved.

Confronting the morality of the situation and dealing with the damage we cause to this planet means making decisions that are going to be “inconvenient” today. It’ll be hard in a society — in a world — dominated by the dubious morality of those who refuse to make any “inconvenient” changes to their lifestyles. But that’s the way it often is with moral problems.

David Rask Behling teaches at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and lives with his wife and children in Albert Lea. His column appears every other Tuesday.