Al Gore with former Mayor of Tacloban City Alfred Romualdez and Typhoon Haiyan survivor Demi Raya, in the Raya family home; Tacloban City, Philippines,
Ten years after An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore returns with a follow-up documentary about the threat that climate change poses to our planet, and our potentially fatal lack of action as a species in response to it.
As evidenced by the mere existence of a sequel, Gore acknowledges something of
a failure on his part to get the message across as effectively as he'd hoped in the earlier film, despite its perceived success. The fact is, as a planet, we still aren't stepping up like we should be to tackle the problem.
So when scientific consensus isn't enough, we turn to the power of cinema.
The first film took much of its structure from Gore's "slide show" about climate change, and the sequel features chunks of his updated live presentation. We travel with Gore as he promotes a world less dependent upon fossil fuels. The tangible legacy of the first film is also addressed, particularly in how many of the people featured have gone on to be heroes in the field.
There are plenty of extremely emotive moments, most of them involving big dramatic visuals, such as polar ice caps falling apart or devastating flood footage. And considering his reputation as someone lacking passion, Gore himself also gets pretty worked up a few times.
