Tag Archives: Al Gore

Losing Glaciers, Losing Steam

Released less than a year after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, causing an estimated 1,833 deaths and $125 billion in damage, the 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, follows former Vice President Al Gore’s campaign for Earth. Gore travels around the Country and the globe to present his PowerPoint containing extensive scientific data and compelling imagery documenting the stark effects of climate change to our planet delivered in a relatable, often humorous, and profoundly emotional manner. Director Davis Guggenheim weaves the climate science with Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to educating environmental managers and the public on the dire consequences of human induced global warming and the resulting climate disasters that are becoming more frequent and intense.

Gore has been fascinated with climate change data since his college professor, Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to study anthropogenic global warming, shared his long-range study of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere with the classroom. The correlation between the drastic increase of CO2 produced by human activity since accelerated industrialization, and rising average global temperatures is unequivocal: “Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero,” Gore states in the film. Global warming is very real and exceedingly urgent. If humankind does nothing to address it, the planet may reach a “tipping point” wherein the breakdown of Earth System’s natural climate processes will cause dramatic shifts in weather and precipitation patterns, vastly altered species diversity, population and distribution, and devastating consequences to human civilization.

Time lapsed images of shorelines retreating, lakes shrinking, and glaciers disappearing depict the powerful effects climate change has already had to the environment in many regions of the world. And projection graphs and imagery indicate what our future may hold if humankind fails to take immediate action to halt and reverse the climate crisis. How can we achieve this as a global population? We need to collectively stop burning fossil fuels and make serious transitions to renewable energy sources. And according to a 2004 article in Science, by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, “humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem.” For Gore, it is a moral issue and deeply unethical to not take the steps necessary to solve the climate catastrophe we have found ourselves in.

Although the scientific community is in “100 percent agreement” on climate change and its dangers, a small group of world leaders has sought to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact to perpetuate the reign of big oil business. The political corruption goes even as far as coercing scientists to alter reports. Al Gore, wants to know: “Do we have to choose between the economy and the environment?” He thinks not. However fast forward to about ten years later, and globally we have not made the appropriate and necessary adjustments to our carbon emissions yet.

The 2017 film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, further drives home the point that we are heating our planet to the point of irreparable damage. And Al Gore is heated too. Becoming visibly frustrated and angry in his speeches at the lack of political response to the climate change crisis that he has dedicated his life to, Gore still will not give up. He treks through flooded streets in Miami, meets with coal mine developers in China, and consoles survivors of a devastating typhoon in the Philippines bringing us with him deeper into the social and environmental justice issues that are inevitably tied to climate change. Gore evokes the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in his speech at an event wherein he compares the challenges and accomplishments of the civil rights movement to those of the climate movement. And there are some noteworthy accomplishments including huge leaps in renewable energy development.  

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was the largest and emotionally charged hurdle overcome in the film to which Al Gore’s hard work no doubt contributed. The situation in Paris was initially looking bleak with terrorist activity two weeks prior to the conference and then the Indian Prime Minister originally unwilling to concede to the terms of the agreement. He insisted that: “energy is a basic need” and India still needs conventional energy and fossil fuel because “denying them that would be morally wrong.” This is reminiscent of Al Gore’s claim in the first film of the moral duty of humanity to act in the face of climate change but instead of from the stance of American white privilege, we are seeing the opposite prospective.    

We get a bitter-sweet ending to the film with the Paris Agreement adopted, a huge win for the Climate Movement, yet the final minutes of the movie show Al Gore grief stricken after Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States. Trump’s criticism of former President Obama’s attendance at the Climate Change Conference was a foreshadowing of exactly what level of support for climate action to expect of the new administration.

While An Inconvenient Truth may have had the ability to leave viewers startled, engaged, and inspired, An Inconvenient Sequel somehow falls a bit short in comparison. Maybe it is because the audience has become numb to the exhausting problem of climate change, or perhaps the film did not push the envelope quite far enough.

A “Convenient” Model: Gore’s Behavioral Approach to the Climate Crisis

Perhaps the underscored theme in the film An Inconvenient Truth is hope. But it is a certain kind of hope, a hope that is entrenched in perseverance and commitment. While Al Gore’s lectures all around the world seem heavily pronounced with this hope, despite the “inconvenient truth” of global warming, the tonal aspects of the film ultimately function as an accordion playing out signals for hope and alarm for the audience.

Al Gore, a quintessential underdog who has travelled all around the world, in order to save the world; for decades, doing the same work and improving upon it, even as time reveals more damage around the world from global warming; persisting, even when the naysayers call him a “hoax” or a threat to American society; he preserveres in his commitment and rings tirelessly the alarm bells of a “moral issue,” “not a political one,” all while reminding his audience that they have a choice and humankind can do anything, even the unthinkable, even the impossible.

Al Gore in 2007 discussing the impact humanity has had on the planet's ecosystem. Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images

Al Gore in 2007 discussing the impact humanity has had on the planet’s ecosystem. LLUIS GENE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The film’s incessant framing of Gore as a hero can be distracting to the significant messages in the film, such as the damaging effects of 2005’s hurricanes, the loss of polar bears , the increasing heat over the current years , and major potential disasters arising for Beijing and Calcutta. At each circumstance, I am waiting for more information, left with questions. What measures are being drawn up to prevent these issues? What new technologies could help us gain “dramatically altered consequences”?

But, at the same time, despite the film getting nowhere close to any resolve for any of these issues, it is, essentially, this certain hope of Al Gore that is to set the precedent for global warming awareness-raising. It is Gore’s universal commitment that is emphasized in the film. He travels the world, seeks out scientists, has been involved for decades, he thinks about the future. In some way, Gore is the “hero” of the [first wave of] climate crisis attention.

An Inconvenient Truth, despite its shortcomings or its conceits, ultimately presents a model for a behavioral approach to climate crisis: stick to truth, and stay with it, because, no matter what you may lose, nothing compares to losing the planet.

For more, check out: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/conservationists/inconvenient-truth-sequel-al-gore.htm

Trying and Failing: A Loser’s Journey.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 documentary following former vice president Al Gore’s attempt to educate and empower the public about global warming, comes this follow up feature, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. As in the first film, viewers follow Gore around the world on his mission to empower the public about the existential threat facing us all, and to convince governments, both local and national, to stop using fossil fuels and switch instead to renewable energy. The narrative of the film builds from some devastating updates on how rapidly climate chaos is coming at us towards COP21, the 2015 United Nations Climate Conference where nation states are set to meet and figure out a united front to tackle the crisis.

This hero’s journey style documentary is spliced through nicely with some private moments, Gore removing his sopping socks after trudging through a waterlogged Miami street, and some very sweet moments of levity. On a field trip, Gore shares a joke with a Swiss scientist about the ice melt looking like Swiss cheese, “You call it Swiss Cheese, we call it Emmenthaler” their laughter is poignant in contrast to the look that comes over their faces as they watch the melted ice flow away. An elegiac score and powerful sky-eye camera work drive home the scale of this unfolding nightmare, it’s huge. TV news and personal phone footage of various climate catastrophes propel the movie forward with an impressive sense of urgency.

Gore himself is an amiable but melancholy character, somewhere between Winnie The Pooh and Eeyore. From a once thrusting young politician with the world at his feet, he quite literally conceded defeat to the powers that have since overwhelmed this country. The anti-science conservative movement was cemented in place by the victor of his 2000 Presidential race, George W.Bush and while he does not connect those dots, he speaks candidly of feeling deep levels of personal responsibility for how badly the planet has fared these past few decades.

He insists at various points throughout the film that there are reasons to hope for a brighter future where we successfully switch to renewable energy, but the facts out-weigh him and he says somewhat balefully “It’s not happening fast enough.”

The reason why it isn’t happening fast enough is not explicitly stated, and this is a mistake. Intensely neoliberal policies and late stage capitalism have allowed the fossil fuel industry to take a deep and toxic hold in the U.S. It is one of the most powerful industries when it comes to lobbying against restrictions or taxes that could impact profits. According to a recent IMF report, in 2015 the government spent $649 billion subsidizing the industry, that’s 10 times the federal spending on education. Instead of taking these giants on, the film seeks out small victories with traditional opponents, with Gore gamely taking photos with a conservative Texan mayor who uses solar power. Hurried phone calls and brusque meetings with Indian government officials provide some narrative tension, and demonstrate well enough the void between the Global North and the Global South when it comes to who needs to take responsibility for what, but it’s just not a satisfying story.

I believe the story does not work because it’s an incomplete one. Chummy mentions of ‘Elon’ (Elon Musk, of Tesla and white savior fame) and the dogged belief that some start up corporate solution will save the day combine with flashes of Gore’s own insider status at the Paris talks to show us that he is too close to strike hard enough. The rampant race, gender and economic issues intersecting with the injustice of climate change are barely touched on, aside from a trusty Martin Luther King quote at the end of the movie, and more’s the pity. The looming presence of Donald Trump, soon to undo all of Gore’s work in The Paris Agreement is the nail in the coffin for this particular strain of crusading white environmentalism. That, at least, is well captured here, for all of posterity.