On Tuesday, March 29th, Paramount Pictures released the official trailer for An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

This occurred the same day that President Donald Trump signed an executive order to trigger a review of Obama’s Clean Power Plan and to scrap many other environmentally related initiatives from Obama’s administration.

In a room filled with applause from miners, coal company executives, and staff from industry groups, Trump loudly announced, “I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations.”

Trump then signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start a formal process to review and (if appropriate) to revise, rescind, or suspend the Clean Power Plan. This plan was introduced by Obama in 2014, but never implemented, as it was blocked in court, in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican-controlled states.

The Clean Power Plan requires that (by 2030) states should have collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent less than the 2005 levels.

According to Bill Becker—director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a group of state and local air pollution control agencies—despite the fact that the rule was not implemented, some 85 percent of U.S. states are on track to meet the target.

The head of activist group NextGen Climate said that billionaire environmental activist, Tom Steyer, responded to Trump’s order saying, “These actions are an assault on American values, and they endanger the health, safety, and prosperity of every American.”

The tagline for Gore’s latest movie is: “Climate changes. Truth does not.”

The trailer for this film—which is the sequel Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth—is a timely release for all who are increasingly concerned about global warming and also those who are trying to raise awareness to fight against climate change.

The opening clip shows Trump mocking climate change while on his campaign trail, saying, “It’s supposed to be 70 degrees today, it’s freezing here. Speaking of global warming, where is…we need some global warming. It’s freezing.”

Later in the trailer, Trump is seen again speaking on his campaign trail, stating that he will cancel “billions in climate change spending” and plans to “end the EPA.”

Alarmingly, Trump has previously stated that he believes climate change is a hoax that was started by China. He went on to halt funding to the EPA, and he forced it to remove the mention of climate change from its documents.

Today, the Chinese media, the Global Times lambasted Trump’s plan to undo the regulations Obama attempted to rule in, saying, “In front of nature’s destructive power, mankind is a community of common destiny. Runaway global warming will have disastrous results, and no one will be left untouched, including the U.S.”

The article in the Global Times added, “Western opinion should continue to pressure the Trump administration on climate change. Washington’s political selfishness must be discouraged.”

Christiana Figueres, who helped broker the Paris accord and is the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, responded to Trump’s executive order saying, “Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean, renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics.”

Gore, who travels the world to spread awareness about global warming, recalls being strongly criticized for a scene in his first film, which suggested, “That the combination of sea level rise and storm surge would flood the 9/11 Memorial site.”

Gore explains how he was told this was “a terrible exaggeration,” and although the claim was dismissed at the time, the next clip in the trailer proves how the prediction came true, showing footage of devastating scenes from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy flooding lower Manhattan.

The trailer also shows that new technologies have been designed to quell environmental problems, showing shots of renewable energy farms, as well as plans and agreements that have been created to prevent further damage. It also mentions the Paris Climate Deal, where almost every nation “agreed to get to zero greenhouse emissions.”

Although Gore explains in his movie trailer that the positive steps and progress being made to combat global warming are “unprecedented,” he also adds, “It’s still not enough.”

Gore is determined to keep working hard to convince government leaders around the world that it is essential that they unite and invest in solutions to the problem.

The trailer concludes showing protests and a growing resistance to the damage being done to the environment, and the final words are an impassioned and empowering speech with Gore urging for a call to action, “Fight like your world depends on it.”

In 2012, Gore altered his lifestyle by opting to become vegan and has since said he intends to be vegan for life. He explained the effects of the meat industry on the environment, “It’s absolutely correct that the growing meat intensity of diets across the world is one of the issues connected to this global crisis—not only because of the [carbon dioxide] involved, but also because of the water consumed in the process.”

James Lawrence Powell studied over 2,258 articles that were published between November 2012 and December 2013, and out of the 9,137 authors who wrote the articles—9,136 agreed that global warming was caused by human activity, and only one person disagreed. Powell believes that a clue to the motivation of the one who disagreed was written in the author’s opening page, “The switch of world powers first to decreasing the use of fossil fuel, and then to carbon-free energy within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol, may lead to economic collapse for Russia as a consequence of the reduction, and probably even loss of the possibility to sell oil and natural gas on the world market.”

Powell’s research clearly shows that a vast majority of scientists back the theory that humans are responsible for global warming. They believe that that human use of oil and coal for energy is a main driver of climate change, causing a damaging rise in sea levels, droughts, and frequent violent storms.

Despite repeated and serious warnings from scientists all over the world, sadly there will always be some who fail to see that global warming is a very real threat.

If we are passionate about saving our planet, we have to consider what needs to be done to maintain it for our future generations.

 

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Author: Alex Myles

Images: screenshots

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina