Al Gore Explains Why 2017 Is the Right Time for 'An Inconvenient Sequel'
Al Gore admits he was resistant to the idea of participating in a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 documentary that became a box office hit, won two Oscars, and brought the issue of global warming to the forefront of the public consciousness.
That was “until the 10-year anniversary kind of gave permission to take stock and say, ‘What’s happened in the past decade? Where are we now? How have things changed, for the better, or for the worse?‘” Gore told Yahoo Movies in a recent interview (watch above). “And it happened to coincide with a lot of significant events, like the Paris [2015 UN Climate Change] Conference, like the [2016 presidential] election, and some of the extreme weather events that were unfolding at the time.”
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, takes the former vice president out of the conference room and around the world to survey the escalating threat of global climate change. “Some of the dire consequences that scientists have been warning us about have been occurring sooner than was predicted,” Gore said.
Unfortunately, that’s made the original film prophetic. Gore points to one of his most criticized claims in the 2006 doc — that the site of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan would one day be flooded due to sea level change and storm surge. Yet that’s exactly what happened when Hurricane Sandy slammed New York in the fall of 2012.
“I saw fish swimming in the streets of Miami Beach, Florida, a long time before some people said that would happen,” Gore added. “The sea levels got to the point where just a high tide will bring in the ocean. And that’s happening in Norfolk [Virginia], it’s happening in Mumbai [India], it’s happening in Guangzhou, China. It’s happening in lots of low-lying coastal cities around the world before people thought it would.”
An Inconvenient Sequel is now playing in select cities and opens nationwide Aug. 4.
Watch Al Gore talk about his experience at the 2007 Oscars:
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