It turns out Al Gore got it almost bang on. In fact, his report card 12 years later looks like this:
Extreme temperatures: 100%
Sea level rise: 100%
Arctic ice: 100%
Conflict: 100%
Hurricanes: 90%
Antarctic ice: 90%
Kapai Big Al, you were on the money, bro.
As for my report card with a scientific staff of one – that's me, I still hold on to what I have been saying for the past 18 years, "we cannot continue to poison Papatuanuku and ignore the opportunities of organic farming", and I said it again in a local marae on Saturday.
This was to an audience who I believe wanted to believe, but it was just too much to digest, especially the part where our own were among those pouring the poisons on to their beloved Papatuanuku.
Now fast-forward 12 years, to last weekend and the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The panel has just warned that urgent, unprecedented changes must happen immediately, to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5C; even half a degree beyond this will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
The real sobering sentence to come out of this was by former Prime Minister of Ireland and climate change champion Mary Robinson.
"Governments are not responding at all adequately to the stark reality that the IPCC is pointing to: that we have about 11 years to make significant change," Robinson says.
So what part of climate change are we not getting?
If Al Gore is right - and it turns out he was - and if Mary Robinson and many other leading environmental scientists throwing out a global warning on global warming are also right, then how come we aren't listening?
Turns out the headlines, as scary as they were, disappeared after four days - or in my case until the next korero came along about how whakapapa and te reo Māori were going to keep us all alive for many more generations to come.
For my two bobs worth of belief, it's much easier to measure success by money than it is mana, and it is the mana of our leaders who can turn global warming around, both here in Aotearoa and across the planet.
Te taniwha ki roto te whare – or the elephant in the room - is apathy, just as it was 12 years ago when An Inconvenient Truth came out.
Inconvenient truths come in many costumes. The latest inconvenient truth about global warming has been drowned out by far more important kaupapa as shown by Donald Trump, rejecter of the Paris climate agreement, who is riding high on the back of Brett Kavanaugh's elevation to the US Supreme Court.
As for Britain and the EU, Brexit consumes them both and Brazil is on course to elect a president who wants to open the Amazon to agribusiness.
Meanwhile, back at base camp here in the Spray of Plenty, kiwifruit is king of the kainga.
Perhaps I should hitch a ride on Virgin Galactic's first trip to space and try to escape this land of a long dark cloud of climate change?
Seriously, we as a collective who believe the taiaha of knowledge can guide us through these tough times, can start by breathing life back into Papatuanuku. It will take a global hongi – a breath of life, and it starts with us as individuals, family, whanau, hapu, iwi and then the wider communities of our country.
We do have the capacity and the means to do it but the climate change clock is ticking very close to midnight and 11 years is only a handful of summers.
Tommy Kapai Wilson is a local writer and best selling author. He first started working for the Bay of Plenty Times as a paperboy in 1966 and has been a columnist for 15 years. Tommy is currently the executive director of Te Tuinga Whānau, a social service agency committed to the needs of our community.
broblack@xtra.co.nz
