‘Sequel’ brings climate change to Trump era
Al Gore’s follow-up to “An Inconvenient Truth” a more intimate view
On June 1, President Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, an international agreement aimed at helping countries reduce the effects of climate change.
It was a devastating blow for former vice president Al Gore, a tireless environmental activist who drew heat for his Oscarwinning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. He’s back with its follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel:
Truth to Power (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide Aug. 4), which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January to respectable reviews.
Despite having several conversations with the president, Gore has been unable to sway Trump, who has called global warming an “expensive hoax.”
“I tried as hard as I could, and even though hope springs eternal, I don’t think there’s any realistic prospect of Donald Trump coming to his senses on climate,” Gore says. “I would love to be proven wrong, but I’m not going to hold my breath. We’ll just have to work around him.”
Like Truth, Sequel is loosely framed around a presentation Gore gives to environmental activists-in-training, listing findings about climate-related weather events and touting alternatives to burning fossil fuels. But the docu- mentary also moves into the real world, as filmmaking duo Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk follow Gore across the globe as he meets with political leaders and typhoon survivors, and attends the United Nations’ climate-change summit in Paris in 2015.
“For so long, it was very difficult for people in the environmental movement to personalize the issue and make it immediate for people’s everyday lives,” Shenk says. “As storytellers, we had an ‘aha’ moment of ‘If we tell the stories of people who are actually suffering and dealing with the front-line issues of climate change, then it could be film drama.’ ”
It was jarring at first for the politician to be shadowed so closely.
“It does take a little adjusting to have them following your every move practically for two years,” Gore says.
With the sequel, Gore wanted to show what’s changed, both good and bad, in the decade since
Truth. At the original film’s release, he was criticized for using a simulation depicting the flooding of lower Manhattan to illustrate how cities could feel the effects of rising sea levels. That came to pass in 2012, when the World Trade Center memorial was underwater during Hurricane Sandy.
But Gore has reason to be optimistic. As shown in the film, Georgetown, Texas, is one of the first cities in America to be 100% powered by renewable energy, with others such as Atlanta and Pittsburgh pledging to follow suit.
“The will to survive is itself a renewable resource,” Gore says. “With Mother Nature playing an increasingly prominent role in the discussions about the climate, more and more people are realizing if the president won’t lead, the American people must.”