Five years ago, Participant Media released An Inconvenient Truth, a film documenting former vice-president Al Gore’s campaign to raise public awareness about the climate crisis. The film was met with scorn; critics dismissed it as a massive exaggeration, one cynical reviewer going so far as to suggest the movie be renamed to “Al Gore Wants Attention.”
Today, with global temperatures at a record-breaking high and the land ice of both Antarctica and Greenland having shrunk 300 cubic miles, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Schenck teamed up with Al Gore to release a follow-up film. This time, the cynics seem to have backed off.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, a behind-the-scenes look at Gore’s effort to inform a generation of environmental activists, was released this July. The new film features Gore’s fight to create international climate policy in order to reduce both the rate and symptoms of global warming. The sequel includes 2015 footage of Gore at the Paris Climate Convention, as well as at his own leadership seminars that aim to facilitate aspiring advocates in promoting awareness in their own communities.
Gore, a self-described “recovering politician” traded his work in the West Wing for research on Greenland and Antarctic melting land ice after losing the 2000 presidential election to George Bush by Supreme Court decision. Although Gore was involved in environmental policy during his time in the White House, by implementing a carbon emissions tax as well as programs to increase student awareness of the climate crisis, it wasn’t until leaving D.C that he decided to devote his life to mitigating the effects of global warming.
In 2007, Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize along with The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Nobel citation commends his effort to raise awareness on man-made climate change and work in lessening the effects. Now, as environmentalism and climate change become political issues, Gore is called on as an advisor to inform and persuade both the corporate and political worlds.
The movie is neither a plea for panic nor debilitated by a bad case of climate fatigue. While the opening shots do display terrifying images of massive flooding, and later graphs illustrate the exponential rise in our planet’s temperature, the story’s arc is a passable canyon rather than a downward spiral. It ends on a hopeful yet somber note, as President Trump rescinds the Paris Agreement (a UN instated regulation on greenhouse gas emissions) that was shown triumphantly on screen just 20 minutes beforehand. Mile long solar farms in India provide stark contrast to smoggy Beijing and oxygen-masked infants.
“Bonni and I were ready to walk off a cliff after sitting down for the first morning with Al, but by mid afternoon we were brought back up again because we had heard the success story of renewable energy that had not yet reached much of the public.” said co-director Jon Schenck, when asked whether they struggled to frame the sequel in a more positive light in order to appeal to skeptical viewers. Continuing the theme of a backstage view at Gore’s efforts, the filmmakers bring the audience on a similar journey of initial despair followed by hope, and concludes by stressing the acute need for continued progress. It lends itself to positive responses from both liberal and conservative viewpoints, eloquently and insistently working hard to advocate for both the preservational and economic advantages of clean energy. While the damage human-induced global warming is doing to our planet is certain, often overlooked is the economic advantage to the individual that can result from switching to clean sources of energy. In California, the transition to solar power can yield as much as $28,000 in savings on electricity over the course of 20 years. Towards the end of the film, Gore travels to Georgetown, Texas, the “reddest city in the reddest county in Texas”, which has uncharacteristically switched to almost 100% renewables. Mayor Dale Ross frames it as a stability issue, reasoning that, “We’ve got an endless supply of wind and sun, I’ll take that bet over fossil fuels any day of the week.”
Progress between Gore’s political and post-political career is made concrete through DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory), a satellite built to gather data on weather systems, solar energy, cloud patterns, and UV light. DSCOVR effectively serves as a gauge on the process of global warming. The satellite was conceived during the Clinton/Gore administration, but after Bush’s inauguration in 2001, the project was quietly put on indefinite hold. After Gore’s defeat in the election, DSCOVR became politically volatile because of its association with Bush’s electoral opponent. The majority-Republican congress scoffed at “Gore-sat”, and the “million dollar screensaver” was wheeled away from the launchsite and into a NASA storage closet.
The Obama administration’s approval and launch of DSCOVR is highlighted in An Inconvenient Sequel, along with the resulting satellite photo of earth, only the second ever taken of our planet from afar. The framed print decorates the wall of Gore’s office in Tennessee, serving as a constant reminder of the planet to which we are loyal. Or as he acutely puts it: “Don’t let anybody tell you we are going to get on rocket ships and live on Mars. This is our home.”
For Gore it’s a personal, not political matter to protect the planet. Unhindered by the need to pursue votes for re-election, he is able to voice unpopular opinions about our government. Gore is a passionate activist who does not have to face the consequences of losing an election. “In order to fix the climate crisis, we need to fix the democracy crisis,” Gore emphatically states to the audience during his environmental leadership training. He impresses that democracy has been “hacked,” oil companies contaminating elections by funding candidates who have promised to endorse Exxon Mobil, Chesapeake Energy, or corporations of the like.
Jon Schenck likened Gore’s passion for promoting environmental awareness to the famous Chariots of Fire line, “I believe God made me for a purpose… he made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.” After speaking with the co-director of the sequel, who had spent several months shadowing Gore while overseeing the filmmaking, I began to see Gore’s public service as a spiritual quest. Quotes from the Bible, philosophers, and other activists give character to his seminars, using his own sources of inspiration to communicate how seriously he takes his work. Finding beauty within the pursuit itself, beauty within building a body of knowledge for the next generation, seems to be the only way to maintain hope in a field where such dramatic and frustrating setbacks so constantly occur.
