Crimes Against Nature was my "Aha!" moment as well. In college I was a teaching assistant in the writing department, and each semester I ended up with a differently themed freshman seminar to assist. My last semester as a TA, the theme was the environment, and I entered with little more than your average good-natured progressive's investment in the subject. But the book totally provoked me to translate my thoughts on power and privilege and their abuses to active concern about the environment.

Kate Sheppard

it was Tim Flannery's book, The Weather Makers. I read it while I was in Scotland, during the summer solstice, and it was freezing outside but I couldn't stop thinking about how the planet was warming.

This sentence is positively thrilling:
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RFK's book -- with its contrast of political and corporate greed on one hand and democracy-driven environmental stewardship on the other -- spoke my friend's language ... and now he won't shut up about tragedies against the commons and government-subsidized pollution.
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Clearly, the book should be required reading for all Democrats in office now or seeking office in the future.

But, Maywa, I am confused: you say your friend's Aha! moment did not come by reading (or seeing) "An Inconvenient Truth."  Does that mean he did read it (or see it), and was not impressed?  Or does it mean the opposite, that he never read Al Gore's book or saw the movie, though he did read RFK's book?  Actually, Al Gore touches on the subjects that you mention, even if he does not quite present them in a thorough, sustained way.

I do not think I had an Aha! moment myself.  It was more a feeling that grew through the 1960s and 1970s.  I remember the powerful impact of that old TV commercial, with the faux-Indian quietly weeping by a polluted river; accounts of endangered wildlife; "Diet for a Small Planet"; "Silent Spring."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Canis---I am actually not sure whether my friend has seen An Inconvenient Truth or not. (I believe he has but I'm not certain). I agree with you, though---Gore definitely touches on many of the same subjects discussed in Crimes. Why these ideas merely bounced off my friend's forehead in the movie theater but not when he read the book may have been a personal preference of messenger (my friend has a long-standing soft-spot for the Kennedy's)or it may have been the more sustained delivery, which you mentioned earlier. Nonetheless, it just goes to show that people can hear the words a thousand times, and then suddenly hear the message.