Al Gore touts ‘An Inconvenient Sequel.’
AL GORE , WARRIOR FOR SOLUTIONS TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS, TRAVELS THE GLOBE PROMOTING HIS MESSAGE — AGAIN
Since the biggest climate news of the past year has been the decision to pull the United States out of the landmark Paris global climate accord, isn’t the most inconvenient aspect of “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” its timing? Isn’t the new documentary beside the point since the U. S. has gone its own way, leaving the rest of the world in the lurch?
Actually, watching this involving and unexpectedly passionate film will likely persuade viewers that just the opposite is true. The need to pay attention is greater now, and the possibilities of making a difference have increased, as well.
Though the actions of former Vice President Al Gore, the tireless warrior of the climate-crisis movement, are once again front and center, the new sequel’s directors — Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk — have used a different creative tack.
Cohen and Shenk’s previous climate documentary — 2011’s excellent “The Island President” — was about the battles of Mohamed Nasheed, leader of the Maldives, to keep his low-lying nation from washing away and his political career afloat.
While the original “Inconvenient,” directed by Davis Guggenheim, was largely a dramatized re-creation of Gore’s traveling scientific slide show, the new film shadows Gore for months, recording his frustrations as well as
his determination to do the right thing and awaken the world to what he sees as an existential crisis.
Though his efforts won him the Nobel Peace Prize, Gore has had plenty of opponents, and “Sequel” begins with a quick audio recap of some of the more confrontational things said about him, including Glenn Beck comparing him to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Like its predecessor, “Inconvenient Sequel” throws a lot of facts at us — some hopeful, including the fact that investments in wind and solar power have gone through the roof. Others, such as the continued rise in the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels, are decidedly discouraging.
The film is at its best following the former vice president as he travels the globe gathering evidence and promoting his message.
We see him in Greenland, talking to scientists who are “shell-shocked” at the way the glaciers are shrinking, and in Miami Beach where flooding has him wringing out his socks on camera.
If the trips have an emotional high point, it is likely Gore’s visit to Georgetown, Texas, which Mayor Dale Ross gleefully describes as “the reddest city in the reddest county in Texas.”
Georgetown is also, however, the first city in that state to be powered by 100 percent renewable energy — a decision the town made not for ideological reasons but because it made sense economically. And, as the mayor says, “Doesn’t it just make sense — the less stuff you put in the air, the better it is?”
The biggest chunk of “Inconvenient Sequel” is given over to that Paris climate confab, a landmark event that drew some 150 heads of state and culminated in a historic agreement.
A key obstacle to that success, however, was India, whose leadership felt the country’s coal-fueled economy was essential to ending poverty. How Gore became a key player in ensuring the India’s agreement is one of the film’s most persuasive sequences.
Gore admits this ongoing battle is a contest between hope and despair, but that doesn’t stop him from getting angry at times. “Didn’t you hear what Mother Nature was screaming at you?” he imagines future generations saying to today’s Americans. “What were you thinking?”
“Didn’t you hear what Mother Nature was screaming at you?” Al Gore imagines future generations saying to today’s Americans. “What were you thinking?”