Review of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017) by John M — 13 Aug 2017

I saw this film on Friday, and my take on it has changed dramatically since then, which is very unusual for me.

I had hoped for a different film, one based on solutions, since the main criticism of the first film was in the form of the question, "But what do we DO?" This wasn't that, but it's not fair of me to criticize a film based on what it wasn't.

No one has done more work on climate, or for longer than he has. He indirectly even started CCL, since our founder watched the first film, went to a training with Al, and from there decided that he wanted something specific for people to do. He based his idea on Results, which has successfully battled world hunger for decades. But the impetus for Marshall's work was Al's film.

100 years from now Al Gore will be considered a saint or a prophet, and everyone who opposed or ignored him will be recognized as responsible for the misery to come. I can't imagine what his dark nights of the soul must look like. But he, like few others, ought to be greeted with tickertape parades everywhere he goes. I may go see it again.

The point of seeing a hero's journey, which his story is, is to learn that they are messy things pursued by flawed people - and to remind us to check our "maps" to see where we are on our own journeys. Do we have his tenacity? His devotion to evidence? Can you imagine being Al Gore and walking into Trump Tower after the election? Just think about that for a minute. Take two minutes.

This is a remarkable human being by any measure. He's a mirror for us, because even given all that he has done and tried to do, we - the left and the right - casually fling criticisms in his direction without daring to look at our own performance with the same metric we use to abuse him.

All that said, these ruminations may be idiosyncratic. I don't so much want to recommend the film as I want to recommend that we re-evaluate Al Gore, and closely inspect our attitudes toward him. This man deserves a whole lot more from humanity than we are giving him.