Review — An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

Seamus Maher
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

I’ll give away my overall impression of the film straight away. It was a really nice watch. It had a positive tone, and I think that it was a fair reflection of where the climate change movement (if that’s a thing?) is at now and what needs to be done for its progression.

If I was in charge of naming the film, and I didn’t have the pressure of giving it a name that would stimulate interest in the movie, then I would call it “Al Gore — an autobiography of the last few years and his continued battle towards getting the world to sort its shit out and reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.

I’d give it this name because the movie touches on some really relevant points about climate change, power being one of them, but the main theme that runs through the film is Al Gore. His personality, his perseverance, and his passion.

It’s for that reason that I liked the film. He’s a likeable guy. He’s a fantastic speaker and when he talks about something that fires him up, he gets this American grit in his voice that sounds like a finely tuned engine revving up. It makes you wanna go “yeah!”. Especially right at the end of the film (.. spoiler alert) when he says that reason always prevails. Or something to that effect.

Anyway, getting on to the content (which is secondary to Al Gore being Al Gore). Solar panels are presented as a solution. It’s not the only solution, obviously. And, from a New Zealand perspective, there are arguments alive that suggest that it’s not really a solution for our country at all. But, worldwide, it’s an effective solution. He showed a graph (love graphs!) showing the reduction in the price of solar panels over the last wee while. And they’re pretty bloody cheap these days. So cheap that Chile (as shown in another graph) has increased the amount of solar panels that they’re installing by fuckn heaps! That was a good positive moment.

Another massive focus of the film was the Paris climate accord. Al was there. He was talking to people like Justin Trudeau. Justin made a fantastic cameo appearance as a man with places to be, but just enough time to introduce himself as “Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada” and thank his mate Al for all that he’s done.

The main country that the Paris part of the film focused on was India. It seems that they put up some resistance (which wasn’t presented as an unfair position for them to have), and Al Gore called up a mate to try to get them to give free solar panel technology to India as an incentive. I don’t actually know if that was successful, but maybe it was, and maybe it had a really big effect .. Because my impression is that India is actually well on board these days with the “climate change movement”. I’ll fact check that later.

Lastly, the film talked about our mate Donald in the White House. It was a refreshing anti-Donald Trump argument because it didn’t focus on the idiosyncrasies of the man, rather his totes inappropes response to climate change. He didn’t go on about it either. The focus of this film was Al Gore after all, not Donald, Donald Truuump. Read that last bit in a Forest Gump accent to get the desired result of the sentence.

So well done Al. I look forward to seeing what you have to say in another 10 years time.

MakeitRain

MakeitRain aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand by providing knowledge and support around climate change

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