An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. A Review

AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is billed as a sequel to the Oscar-winning global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In truth, I found An Inconvenient Sequel not so much about how the first film has been proven correct and how we are hurling down towards the eve of destruction. It really ends up as All About Al, or on how former Vice President Al Gore is now no longer going to put up with your crap anymore. He and he alone is going to fix the world Al by Himself.

The film touches on aspects that An Inconvenient Truth hit on. Among those is his prophesy that the World Trade Center Memorial was going to be underwater unless global warming was arrested.  What was dismissed as ridiculous back in 2006 has now come to pass. Superstorm Sandy flooded the September 11th site in 2012.

This is a bit of a misdirection; his prophesy said that the Memorial would be underwater due to rising water from melting ice caps. He did not say that it would be due to a massive hurricane. 

We get slicker graphics that detail both negative and positive information on the global warming front (no pun intended). Most of the film, however, revolves around Gore's own actions.  The presentations are almost all about his various training sessions where he imparts his information and methods. He will have his disciples spread the Gospel of Climate Change.

We then shift to the Paris Climate Accord negotiations where Gore is a major player.  He has already talked to Indian officials prior to Paris. They collectively scoff at his suggestion that they go for clean energy. The Indian delegation points out how the U.S. used coal for 150 years.  If it was good enough for the United States, the Indian officials essentially say, it is good enough for them now.

In Paris, Gore plans a 24-hour global special. Unfortunately, those pesky terrorists started attacking all over the city and he is forced to suspend this spectacular. Once Paris rebounds however, Gore is in the thick of the action. He meets Senators. He works the phones with environmentally conscious companies. He pulls off a last-minute solution to get India on board.

India, the major stumbling block to the Accord, has finally come around. Now, the Accord is agreed to.  Pity Donald Trump came along to withdraw from it. Gore ends An Inconvenient Sequel by continuing his claim that this is a moral issue. Just like the Civil Rights Movement and abolitionist movements, His truth will be marching on.

What could have been a strong follow-up to An Inconvenient Truth is sidelined by Gore's own grandiose view of himself. We see Gore more as a man of action than a man of intellect in this film. There he is, jumping on glaciers and flying about the globe. There he is, literally wading into the floodwaters of Miami. There he is, consoling Filipino typhoon survivors. There he is, conducting seminars to send his messengers off; unlike Christ though there is no mention if he sent them off in pairs of two. There he is, all but saving the Paris conference through his personal work with private companies to provide India that clean energy they didn't want and at a discount to boot.

All this has the effect of making An Inconvenient Sequel less about whether climate change, or global warming as it was known back then, has gotten worse or better. Instead, it is more about how Al Gore's almost messianic touch saves the planet. One suspects that Al Gore believes that he is God's messenger, sent to save us not from our sins but from our plastics.

Even Captain Planet had his Planeteers.

Perhaps the worst moment in An Inconvenient Sequel is when he reflects on the 2000 election again. At a certain point, it goes beyond whining into perpetual self-pity over something that happened sixteen years ago. You think, "Is this guy going to keep going on about 2000?"

If I wanted to hear a Democrat go on about how unfair it was that they lost the Presidential election to an imbecile who "stole" the Presidency that belonged to them almost by divine right, I'd listen to the audiobook of Hillary Clinton's What Happened.

Odd how history seems to repeat itself.

The film works best when it takes its focus off Gore and how He is doing all the heavy lifting and instead focuses on uniting people.  There is a scene in Georgetown, Texas, which is according to its mayor the reddest city in the reddest county in Texas. Mayor Dale Ross is a conservative Republican. However, he has eagerly joined the green revolution, working to get Georgetown to be 100% clean-energy dependent. Mayor Ross' views are that it is an economic as well as a moral solution, a need to leave the Earth in better shape than how you found it.

Those moments, along with some more information, would have elevated An Inconvenient Sequel to being close to the original.  Some moments are astonishing. Among those is when we see Indian streets almost literally melt, forcing people to leave their footwear in the sticky ground.

Gore could have focused on action from both sides of the aisle, or on what local communities have done to clean up their act. He could also stop using the term "deniers" and/or "denial agents". I find the use of "deniers" a very loaded and deliberate term. It is one that I am wary of. I could go along with "skeptic". However, in using the words "deniers" or the more insidious-sounding "denial agents", to my mind it comes close to suggesting something I find very concerning. I think such terms are deliberately meant to evoke someone like a Holocaust denier. Whatever one feels on the subject, vague suggestions that suggest equating doubt on global warming to denying the mass murder of millions is distasteful to me.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power was a lost opportunity.  It could continue to send out the warnings so desperately needed on climate change; it could focus on the good An Inconvenient Truth and the growing environmental movement have accomplished with more to be done. Instead, by taking so much time to showcase Al Gore in all his Gore Glory, An Inconvenient Sequel ends up shifting attention from the power of solar energy to a different kind of wind energy.

DECISION: C-