Al Gore has made a sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth.”
‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’ assesses climate change progress
There’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask Al Gore about rising sea levels and climate change: Why does he, of all people, think it would be so terrible if Florida were to sink into the ocean? “Don’t go there,” Gore said. “I carried Florida.
I love Florida.” He has a point. The former vice president, and the winner of the popular vote in 2000, Gore lost one of the closest-ever presidential elections to George W. Bush. Or, if you look at it another way, he actually lost a Supreme Court decision, which prevented a recount of Florida’s votes, which resulted in Bush’s installment. In any case, after recovering from that setback, Gore has devoted himself to the climate crisis, traveling all over the world to warn people of the dangers of global warming.
Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 film adaptation of Gore’s slideshow, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won the Oscar for best documentary, and in 2007, Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. A sequel to the 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” will open in the Bay Area on Friday, Aug. 4.
He spoke in May, while at the Skoll Foundation in Palo Alto. At the time, he was reluctant to criticize President Trump’s climate change policy — he believed there was a “better than 50 percent chance” Trump would keep the United States in the Paris accords. Since then, he has taken off the gloves: “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and indefensible action,” he wrote in a statement. “It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: If President Trump won’t lead, the American people will.”
In person, Gore is notably genial and informal, careful with everyone as if acutely aware that most of the people he meets are in awe of him. He is also, he says, “a big movie fan. I loved ‘Hidden Figures’ a lot. It’s kind of a Frank Capra movie for the 20th century. A little corny, I guess, but I loved it.”
But the main thing that comes across when meeting Gore is that he is very, very smart — perhaps too smart to get elected president, or at least too smart to be elected by a significant enough margin for the result not to be contested. This became especially clear when transcribing the tape of the interview. Gore speaks in long, grammatically complicated sentences, which only a transcript can adequately convey.
Q: Did you ever think of this? If no one listens to you, and climate change turns out to be a disaster, you’ll be remembered as one of the great men of the century. But if people do listen to you, and we get through this, people will look back and think, “Oh, they would have taken care of that problem one way or the other.”
AG: I’ll pick Door No. 2! One thing, back when I was VP, (President Bill) Clinton asked me to take up the response to the Y2K threat — you remember that? That is actually a case in point. I put together a terrific team who, unlike me, knew what they were doing with this stuff, and rode herd on them, and we really put a full court press on the deal. And we were able to 100 percent insulate the federal government from Y2K and to work with industry groups, and when it came, people said, “See, that was nothing.” So it would be so great — oh my God — if we can have an outcome like that.
Q: How bad can climate change get? Is the scenario in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” actually possible, that parts of North America would actually freeze? AG: When that movie came out, I remember being asked by journalists, “Isn’t this fiction?” And I said, yes, it is, but it’s not as fictional as the current White House’s view on global warming. About six years ago, (scientists) started downplaying that scenario, but in the last couple of years, it’s come back again, because they’ve started measuring a slowdown in the gulf stream. The truth is, they just don’t know. There could be places that could get colder.
Q: How do you recover from a disappointment like 2000?
AG: Well, it’s only been 17 years. I’m not sure if I’m qualified to answer the question yet. I’ll tell you one thing that was very important to me. I had been through worse. I had a child who was almost killed in 1989. And during that period that was so unbelievable — the story ends well. He’s made a full recovery and is the most won-
derful guy you’d ever want to meet — but during that time I was helped enormously by people who reached out to me, the majority of them I didn’t even know. And I became acutely aware — and I’m embarrassed to say that in emotional terms it was probably the first time I ever really sunk into this awareness — that if we go out here on the sidewalk and pass 50 people, there will be a significant percentage of them who are carrying tragedies and burdens that they don’t really talk about, and there are millions of people who have gone through an experience infinitely worse than losing a Supreme Court decision and the Electoral College.
Q: George Washington said, “It is among the evils, and perhaps is not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel, before they will see.” It seems that the climate deniers have figured out a way to make a portion of the public feel something that closes them off to scientific argument. Does this make you pessimistic?
AG: I think today’s neuroscientists or behavioral scientists would not be surprised by that insight from President Washington. And I think it’s broadly true. And to the extent that the forces of climate denial have been more effective in exploiting the dark arts of advertising and public relations, it’s because they have more money, and they’ve had a longer head start.
But I have an idiosyncratic view of why we are in the communications space we’re in now. I think that we’ve been through three successive revolutions and we’re just now in the early stages of a third one. The print revolution, beginning 500 years ago, matured by the beginning of America’s founding into a fantastic new information ecosystem where individuals could use ideas and facts as determined by the collective wisdom of the literate masses as a substitute for force of arms. But then the revolution of electronic communication began to change that. The telegraph was the start, and then radio made a big difference in the 1920s. The addition of the picture led to a development in the early 1960s where television overtook print as the source of information for the majority. And that really gave an advantage to those who could pay the gatekeepers who all of a sudden charged for access to the public mind. Now the third revolution, the Internet, is beginning to replace electronic broadcasting/ satellite/cable.
And so, it does not make me pessimistic. I do believe that the essential architecture of the information ecosystem defined by the Internet replicates the important features of the print ecosystem, in that individuals can now join the conversation very easily and can attract others with the power and clarity of their ideas. It makes it much easier to exercise the freedom of assembly. Every reform movement lives and breathes on the Internet now.
Q: What would you say to someone who’s on the fence about whether to see “An Inconvenient Sequel”?
AG: I believe this is the most important challenge humanity faces, and if you are among those who don’t yet feel that way, wait a few years and I’m betting you will. This movie will give you the answer to the three most important questions regarding the climate crisis. (1) Do we have to change? The consequences of not changing are severe, really unthinkable. But it’s not a depressing movie because the answers to the second question — can we change? — are really exciting. And the third question is “Will we change?” And I’m convinced we must, we can, we will.