The movie "An Inconvenient Truth," which is currently showing in Israel, has succeeded in surprising and raising the concerns even of veteran environmentalists and earth scientists familiar with the dangers of global warming and have long warned against it. This impressive film, which is based on sound research and features Al Gore, describes the frightening and engrossing reality of the threat to the existence of all of us on earth, in a way that is at once clear and easily accessible.

The most worrisome finding that Gore presents is that global warming is not necessarily a slow and defined process, which takes place over hundreds of years. There have already been, and will be more, leaps and bounds in the process. When we were in high school, for example, they taught us that the melting of the ice covering southern Europe as far as Scandinavia took hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.

Up-to-date and detailed research in the fields of climatology, geology and oceanography now indicates that we are talking about something far more dramatic. It is very possible that the retreat of the ice shelf from the Mediterranean Sea to northern Europe took place over the course of 10 or 20 years - a geographic drama of Biblical proportions.

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If such events can take place, it is not surprising that Tony Blair and Bill Clinton - two individuals who are not trying to be reelected to high-ranking posts - said recently that global warming, rather than terrorism or nuclear warfare, was the number one threat to mankind.

The struggle to save mankind from global warming is first and foremost a battle for awareness. The evasive human consciousness specializes in denial, and in denial of widespread dangers. We know how to devote ourselves to the sweet joys of life and to transfer responsibility for mending the world to technology or to politicians. Sometimes this denial is naive and sometimes it is fed by economic interests; but it imprisons mankind in a situation that is reminiscent of a critically injured person who is being taken to the operating theater on a stretcher, rushing through the hospital corridors. A doctor runs alongside the patient, talking all the while. The doctor realizes that the patient must remain conscious to survive and begs him not to fall asleep.

But it is difficult for us to stay awake when the evidence is being presented from places and times, which are distant and divorced from our reality. What do we care about the carcasses of North Pole bears that have recently been found in the icy seas of the North? It transpires that these bears drown while swimming northward in a desperate search for sufficiently large and stable blocks of ice on which to spend the summer. These blocks, which until a few years ago floated in the region, can no longer be found there. At the current rate of global warming, within 20 to 30 years there will no longer be any ice left at the North Pole in the summer. This information may sadden us for a moment. However, immediately afterwards, we will tell ourselves that even if all the polar bears die, we will be sure to take pains ahead of time to raise their progeny in zoos. Are the currents that regulate the earth about to change dramatically? What do we care about the coasts of South America or the Pacific Ocean?

In actual fact, we should care a great deal. If there is no longer ice at the North Pole in the summer, that part of the sun's energy, which over millions of years was reflected back from the frozen poles to outer space will now be absorbed into the earth's central heat storage system. Global warming could melt the ice in Greenland and Antartica and raise the level of the oceans by almost 100 meters. The vast areas of land that will be flooded will cause hundreds of millions of people to become refugees from the environment; their lives will be the kind of nightmare that political refugees today encounter.

The environmentalist movement, which for 20 years now has been playing the part of the doctor pleading with the patient not to fall asleep, has been joined by another strong and important player - the British Stern report, which was embraced in full by the Blair government. The report found that the economic price to be paid for damages caused by climate changes that have already occurred is several times higher than the price involved in lowering the emission of greenhouse gases and stopping the process of global warming.

Just as in the case of Andrew Marshall, the senior Pentagon futurist who several years ago wrote a secret report warning that global warming was threatening world peace, this time too it is worthwhile for the injured man to open his eyes and ears.

It is difficult to listen, and the material is complicated, but internalizing it and translating it into political decisiveness are the only chance. Instead of driving ourselves crazy with fears about the next war or terror attack that will kill one in a thousand of us, instead of worrying about the price of the Playstation 3, it is worth our while to start thinking seriously about how children and grandchildren will survive the 21st century.