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.
