Inconvenient Sequel drives message home
An Inconvenient Sequel is a fine film, picking up where the original left off, writes John DeFore
THERE are two things wrong with the title of An Inconvenient
Sequel: Truth to Power, Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s followup to the 2006 Al Gore climate change documentary. One, the moniker’s silly first half lacks the original’s gravitas – though this fine film is a match for the first.
More importantly, its second half suggests the documentary will address a question that surely keeps Gore, and millions of people worldwide, up at night: What happens when the powerful – for instance, the US president – have heard the truth and just don’t give a damn?
The movie, in which Shenk and Cohen (makers of the stand-out eco-documentary The Island President) take the reins ably from Davis Guggenheim, can hardly hope to create the sensation of its Oscar-winning predecessor. But it finds plenty to add, both in cementing the urgency of Gore’s message and in finding cause for hope. Largely, it watches the man in action: leading “climate leadership training” sessions with hundreds of eco-evangelists; visiting researchers to see warming in action; hammering out deals with those who understand the facts, but believe they still need fossil fuels to survive.
Gore is still giving that famous slide show we saw in An Inconvenient Truth, continuing to add data to answer his critics. Such as this fun titbit: 14 of Earth’s 15 hottest years in recorded history have been since 2001. He can now show sceptics the routine flooding in Miami Beach, or the increasingly violent weather caused when warming oceans pump more moisture into the atmosphere. Naysayers mocked a scientific projection he used in the first film, showing rising seas flooding the site of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan; now Gore can ditch the animation and show footage of Super Storm Sandy doing just that.
That’s about as explicit as he gets here in responding to right-wing attacks on the first film. But he addresses climate deniers more generally, arguing that we need to “fix the democracy crisis,” in which decision-making has been “hacked” by corporate interests. He admits to sometimes feeling it “was a personal failure on my part” that the world’s leaders were not yet taking action to wean their nations off fossil fuels.
An Inconvenient Sequel devotes much of its running time to behind-the-scenes action at the UN’s 2015 Climate Change Conference, where some viewers may suspect it gives Gore an undue share of credit for the Paris Agreement.
Having determined that India’s plans to build hundreds of new coalfired power plants had much to do with the expense of financing solar power projects, Gore spent hours on the phone wheeling and dealing. We see him talk with friends at the California-based SolarCity, asking execs to give away some of their technology to make solar power attractive in India. Details are sketchy, but we walk away with the impression that this was the turning point in getting India to sign the accord.
Gore has many exciting things to report when it comes to wind and solar power, like the mind-boggling increase in solar projects in Chile during the past few years. Perhaps more amazing is the news that Georgetown, Texas – “the reddest city in the reddest county” – is about to get 100% of its energy from the wind and sun.
Less hopeful is the movie’s handling of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax. But when Trump is elected, and Gore visits Trump Tower, the movie gets nothing from its star about his approach to the new president. This is one area in which the movie cannot inspire hope for the future.