Film: An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Director: Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk
Cast: Al Gore, Donald Trump, Barrack Obama, Narendra Modi
It has been eleven years since An Inconvenient Truth released. Al Gore is now approaching 70, and has more grey hair now. But once he stands on that stage fully decked, and begins talking about global warming, you can see that his passion has not died down even a bit. The message is more pressing than before and the rise in the frequency of extreme weather events has only vindicated Gore’s position. The droughts and heat waves are getting more extensive, and in Karachi, people are building anticipatory mass graves in anticipation. There is even an extended video on the Chennai floods. The video hits closer home than before.
The film opens with the senate questioning the credentials of Al Gore’s claims in 2007 and the Bush administration closing down the DSCOVR satellite project that Gore had painstakingly built with NASA to map out the changing climatic conditions. Gore sees the lack of climate change conversations as a personal failure. You’re then shown Gore training people on climate change. These sessions which started out with 50 trainees now see close to 793 attendees from 58 countries taking part. The DSCOVR satellite is in orbit again, and Al Gore is the leading voice on climate change. There is a lot more hope in his voice now.
An Inconvenient Sequel though does not have the panache of the previous one. The sequel is a lot less about preaching the message to us than it is to the people around the world who are in a position to make the change. Filled with meet and greets, the film’s last half hour is a showcase of Gore’s statesmanship. The former Vice President quips, “I am a recovering politician,” but it is his astute maneuvering that is crucial to the Paris treaty getting ratified by India, which is seen as the biggest roadblock in this film.
The first was an angry film which ended with hope, but the second is different. Muhammad Ali’s quote is used: “Everybody has a plan until he gets punched.” The election of Donald Trump is seen as the biggest threat as evidenced by the USA pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement on June 1, 2017. Gore is angry. But he ends with this Wallace Stevens line about his life so far, “After the last no, comes a yes, and on that the future of the world depends.”