AL GORE FILM
As Al Gore revisits our global crisis in An Inconvenient Sequel, several developments offer hope for the future
It’s been 11 years since Al Gore was in Vancouver to promote his then-new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which sent several loud warning shots across the bow of S.S. Planet Earth.
He spent some time with the Georgia Straight, and most of what we talked about then still pertains, unfortunately. The jury-rigged Iraq War, then at its peak, was horrible but a mere blip compared to the melting polar icecaps, he was sure. In fact, the projected changes in the environment as a result of climate change are moving many times faster than most models then predicted.
In 2006, well-funded climate-change deniers were filling the airwaves with their own toxic pollution, and now they’re in charge of NASA, the EPA, and most other instruments of power. Currently, we have to explain to our children and grandkids why they can’t necessarily trust world leaders anymore. It’s in this brown-tinged environment that Gore presents An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
The former U.S. vice president—who won the popular vote for president in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush in a still-controversial Supreme Court decision—was in Toronto recently to talk about the new movie (which opens Friday [August 4] ) and what he’s seen since the first one.
“There are really two changes that have taken place,” Gore says by phone, in his light Tennessee accent. “The climate-related extreme events are way more common now. I know that B.C. has some really big fires right now. We had a hundred new fires break out in California just last night, and many more throughout the American West. There are big downpours and floods, as well as drought, and sea levels rising everywhere. The other big development is that some real solutions are here! The price of renewables for electricity has come down so far and so fast that it’s really changing, well, everything.”
Also in Hogtown is one of the new doc’s lead producers: Jeff Skoll, a Montreal-born filmmaker who helped make advocacy docs like Citizenfour and The Merchants of Doubt as well as politically minded features like Fair Game, Spotlight, and Bridge of Spies. He continues the theme.
“The economics for clean tech offer incredible opportunities,” Skoll asserts. “Many of the leading next-generation companies are embracing this. I think back to a recent chat with your mayor in Vancouver, and with Catherine Mckenna, your [federal] minister of environment and climate, and they have mandates, and budgets, to do good work on innovation, technology, and climate mitigation. For American entrepreneurs who are seeing a frosty atmosphere in the U.S., the opportunity to partner in Canada has been very compelling, and I believe there will be a number of interesting announcements to come out of this before the end of the year.”
For Gore, climate deniers aren’t just wrong; they are also small-minded in the business sense.
“There’s a lot of free-floating anger about things that are unconnected to climate, and that colours the discussion. But in the U.S., solar employment is growing 17 times faster than other jobs, and the single fastest-growing job is windturbine technician. These new economic realities are starting to take hold.
“There’s a law in physics that has become a cliché in politics: for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Back in the Reagan years, when he scared the hell out of people by accelerating the nucleararms race, it led to the Freeze Movement and, eventually, to meaningful arms control. Now, with Trump on climate, there’s a huge upsurge of progressive activism in the U.S. like I’ve never seen before.”
Indeed, recent catastrophes can be read as supplementary slides for Gore’s travelling presentation.
“Every night,” he says with a sardonic chuckle, “the evening news is like a nature walk through the Book of Revelations.”
Skoll picks up the thread: “These days, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been affected by floods, fires, monsoons, or freak storms. This is not a coincidence. And we have to take action now to protect ourselves from what’s going on. The website inconvenienttruth.com has a beautiful 10-minute version of Al’s slide show that you are free to take, and there are a number of ways there to get involved.”
With cable and free media swamped by corporate demands and fake news about, well, fake news, this Canadian expat figures it’s up to filmmakers to keep things moving.
“You can’t underestimate the power of storytelling to affect the human condition,” Skoll declares. “It’s something we’ve done since we lived in caves. But the modern version of storytelling has been corrupted by money, and this is pretty important to our future as a democracy and a civilization. We certainly have a battle on our hands.”
Sadly, many of Gore’s allies, including the Clintons, don’t seem to find the climate threat worth talking about—and that certainly had an effect on last year’s election.
“I think it’s finally beginning to change,” the former veep says after a long pause. “There are many members of Congress that have recently taken up this issue. There have even been a number of Republicans who have changed their positions. There’s something called the Noah’s Ark Caucus, which is not only a reference to the Great Flood but also because they have to join in twos: one Democrat and one Republican. We are close to a working majority on climate now. But you’re just not hearing about it yet.”
That might have something to do with the alleged man at the top, who—beleaguered by accusations of treason, corruption, and other problems of his own making—has taken time out to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Suddenly, people are getting used to working around America’s leadership instead of counting on it.
“If you look at what [Gov.] Jerry Brown is doing in California, and [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo in New York, you see that,” Gore insists. “Lots of cities are making the commitment to go 100 percent renewable. Hey, if Atlanta, Georgia, can do it, any city can do it.”
Skoll, a founding figure of ebay who put most of his money back into media, adds that he “happened to be with” a group of tech moguls, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the day of Trump’s infamous announcement.
“The response in the room was absolutely unanimous,” he recalls. “They said, ‘We are going to double down on clean technology. We’re going to find ways to win this, with or without the U.S. administration.’ ”
A constant theme here, and in the movie, is that adversity is actually speeding up the resistance. In fact, Gore is sure the Paris terror attacks, coming just before the climate-change conference, probably deepened the resolve of those gathered to fight back where it matters.
“I really think it had a galvanizing effect,” this Inconvenient Truther concludes. “It’s really hard to put it into words. Every one of the 150 world leaders who spoke there began with condolences and then moved on to solidarity with the others. They said, ‘This is a real opportunity to make something good out of the evil that occurred here.’ I believe it had a very profound effect on the success of the conference. And I believe it still will. We’re all in this for the long run.”
A documentary by Bonni Cohen and John Shenk. Rated PG
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Starring Steve Coogan. Rated PG
In which Steve Coogan and Rob 2
Brydon continue their joint sojourn through the eateries of Europe, this time taking Coogan’s Range Rover from London to the coast of España and further south. Once again, this team of rivals is working on tasks relating to food and travel, with Coogan again positioning himself as the senior partner.
Actually, I should say that about Coogan’s character, as well as Brydon’s, who only happen to be named after the stars. The frequent references to Philomena and other past projects are real enough. But domestic scenes and phone calls with Brydon’s wife and young children, as well as Coogan’s current (and married) girlfriend, are invented, as is a subplot about Steve losing his agent and being asked to share his new script with an up-and-coming writer. “I’ve already up-and-come,” complains the two-time Oscar nominee.
These side stories add notes of
Starring Kyle Mooney. Rated PG
Saturday Night Live’s Kyle Mooney wrote this bit of thin whimsy with lifelong pal Kevin Costello, and their basic concept is pretty nifty. At age 32, Mooney plays 25-year-old James Pope, kidnapped as an infant and raised in a Utah desert bunker by his abductors (Mark “Not Actually Your Father” Hamill and Jane “Bearly There” Adams).
The shaggy-haired lad has only been exposed to one form of (what he thinks is) popular culture: a longrunning series following the quasieducational exploits of someone in a giant ursine head. When finally transported back to that other fallout shelter known as suburbia, he discovers that the titular show was created specifically for him.
The movie’s start exhibits the most charm, in a Michel Gondry kind of way, with VHS clips of the Brigsby Bear series. But even that wacky French stylist had trouble sustaining his ideas over more convoluted efforts like The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—which likewise examined the fate of innocents navigating pitiless reality.
With pedestrian direction provided by SNL veteran Dave Mccary, Mooney and company drop the ball just when they decide to ground James in the world he left behind. Someone must have called the FBI and the local sheriff’s department, but their military-level response includes neither a social-services counsellor (despite one briefly played by Clair Danes) nor the detective