Citizen’s review — An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

Ryan M Harrison
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read
Spoken like only a white savior can…literally

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a tour de force of the white savior [Trailer].

Al Gore, stage-left as white Jesus, uniting the goodly white people of the world against the black/brown people who want the economic dignity of affordable electricity and Revelations-style climate doom [1].

In blistering montages of IPhone calls and first-name relationships with power, Al single handedly brings together the white wealthy founder of a tech company, the wealthy white heads of international debt institutions, and white wealthy world leaders to “promise” technology and slightly cheaper debt to the Indian delegation, so they’ll sign-on to the Paris Accords.

The Indian minsters, stage right.

Grateful to have been shown the light, of the poorest countries paying for the fossil fuel derived riches of the wealthiest.

Grateful, that their proud country, “underdeveloped” because of white colonialism, is now shackled and oppressed by the new and greener colonialism of a neoliberal world.

Grateful for cheap debt and “access” to technology so that India too can debt-finance on the futures of their children, the “green” products of the very wealthy white countries who have systematically oppressed and exploited black/brown people, from da Gama to Obama.

Grateful for the light of Al’s unifying white goodness. All to the thunderous smug smiles and snaps of a pleased upper middle class white audience.

…but wait, there’s more…

High production values of the sort that only a mainstream progressive budget, and even larger distribution partner, can buy.

Despite all this, the most biting irony of the film is the title. Truth to Power.

A man, whose father was a senator, inherited a ranch and reached the heights of American power — with all the plundering and oppression that entails — in complete sincerity, claiming the term “truth to power.” Farce at its finest.

But no, this was only a prelude. In the Q&A that followed the film screening, the directors had the audacity to refer to watching the film as “an act of activism.” For the upper middle class white audience of the screening, maybe this is what “activism” has become: to sit on ones ass, in self-important judgement, followed by a call to tweet. Yes. Activism.

Let us all band together, buy a ticket in solidarity with Al “white savior” Gore, and sing the praises of the hero of the Paris Climate accords.

Let us ignore, the role we each individually play in supporting, in silence and complicity, the manifold injustice of this world. For example, the climate injustice that the world’s poorest will pay, some with their lives.

I would like to thank the New England Grassroots Environment Fund for sponsoring public seats to the screening, the film makers for hosting a Q&A and the oppressed workers of AMC theaters — minimum wage of close to it — for making it all possible.

Footnotes

[1] To be clear, anthropogenic climate change is real. As real as wealthy country’s collective passing of the buck for the damage they have caused the world in the name of economic development for some members of their population. Climate injustice and economic injustice are linked. The marginalisation of developing nations with respect to climate is just another outcrop.

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Ryan M Harrison

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Software for life-sciences and health IT. Basic Income. Solidarity Investment.

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