0088 | September 9, 2019

Climate Change:
Revisiting “An Inconvenient Truth”

How well does “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) hold up after ten plus years of scientific research and political upheaval? The hosts engage not only with the film and its nominal protagonist, Al Gore, but the effectiveness of film as advocacy.

C.T. WEBB: 00:19	[music] Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, and welcome to the American Age Podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor of the American Age. And I am speaking to you from Southern California.
S. FULLWOOD: 00:29	Hi, this is Steven G. Fullwood. I’m the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivist Project. I am coming to you today from Harlem. It’s a sunny day out, but I am inside because it’s my Sunday.
S. RODNEY: 00:42	And I am Seph Rodney. I am an editor at the Hyperallergic blog and recent editor of– or rather, writer. I’m a recent writer [laughter], author of the Personalization of the Museum Visit. And I am coming to you from the South Bronx where it’s sunny and I wish to God I were outside because I’m really lacking in vitamin D.
S. FULLWOOD: 01:09	Oh, wow.
S. RODNEY: 01:09	I think it’s a travesty [laughter].
C.T. WEBB: 01:09	Scurvy. Scurvy is a problem.
S. RODNEY: 01:14	Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 01:14	This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of what we call intellectual intimacy, which is giving each other the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. Today, we’re continuing our conversation about climate change and we’ve committed, I think, on Seph’s suggestion– was that right? We had committed to all watching an Inconvenient Truth. We are all somewhat familiar with it. We’d seen pieces of it but hadn’t watched the whole thing all the way through. I did. And I met that commitment. I know the rest of you did as well because I came in on your conversation this morning talking about it [laughter]. So friends, Romans, countrymen [laughter], which would you like to– which of you would like to start on our in-depth and riveting discussion of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth?
S. FULLWOOD: 02:07	In other words, which of us wants to start eviscerating it first [laughter], right?
C.T. WEBB: 02:10	Yeah, yeah.
S. FULLWOOD: 02:11	Why don’t you start– you had some pretty good comments earlier before the podcast. So I think, yeah, you should start, Seph. You suggested it.
S. RODNEY: 02:20	Okay. So here a couple of observations quickly. One is that he does this kind of folksy “Hail, fellow. Well met,” kind of approach. Like, “Oh, I grew up on a farm. My dad raised steers. I’m just an old country boy. I don’t really– I failed to get the presidency, and here’s what I found is this really crucial issue for our time.” It’s a little bit too folksy for me. And I’m going to talk just approach to making the film for a moment. What it does is it makes me– it reminds me of this moment in the, I guess– it came out in 2006, but it reminds me of this moment in ‘the 90s and early 2000s where all our politics were like that in the US, all our big party politics were all sort of folksy. My friends know me to be so-and-so.
C.T. WEBB: 03:20	Yeah, he has so many friends [laughter].
S. RODNEY: 03:21	Yeah. I know it’s ridiculous.
C.T. WEBB: 03:22	So many friends that are evolved [laughter].
S. RODNEY: 03:23	“My friend, Carl Sagan. My friend, blah, blah, blah. My friend who took this picture of the–” I’m like, “Oh, come on.” I don’t like that. I don’t like– I think there’s a lot of data in the film that is crucial, but I don’t like the fact that he goes on and on, essentially selling us as the hero. I think he could’ve got out of the way a lot more, and I would’ve been much more interested in hearing more of the data and seeing more of the effects of climate change; glaciers melting and so on and so forth. I’ll stop there.
C.T. WEBB: 04:00	Okay.
S. FULLWOOD: 04:00	It’s a good place to stop in the sense that he was selling himself.
S. RODNEY: 04:04	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 04:05	He was selling climate change, absolutely. And he’s been doing this work for a while. My thing was, “You lost a presidency or didn’t fight for it, and then you have this thing that you already kind of started developing that you probably feel very passionate about. But it’s hard with Gore because he sounds so robotic. And so the part of selling the idea and the person, whether unconsciously or consciously was, “He’s not a robot. He’s a sensitive man. He wonders how he can look into the soul of America or the world and see what needed to be changed, right? And then become an advocate for that.” I remember before we got on, Travis, Seph and I were talking and said, “It was like a TED Talk with a little bit of footage.”
S. RODNEY: 04:45	Mm-hmm.
C.T. WEBB: 04:46	Mm-hmm.
S. FULLWOOD: 04:47	It was a TED Talk. So I had to go and find out when TED Talks began; 1984. But the first ones that they actually– one of the first five included an Al Gore speech around– because an Inconvenient Truth was out around that time. But it’s interesting to think about how– I swang the pendulum today. I was like, “It’s really helpful because a lot of these things happened in the 13 years where more people are using solar energy and reducing carbon emissions and trying to think about those things,” to downright despair that we’re not going to be able to change our lifestyles to do this. And I want to know what you think– or what you guys are thinking about as well when it comes to when you saw it, and we’ve been doing these podcasts on it, what’s possible? I think everything is possible. But then I look next door, and I see the person who’s not doing nothing [laughter] and they ain’t trying to do anything [laughter]. I’m like– so where exactly does this person fit in this worldview? So anyway, I don’t know.
C.T. WEBB: 05:49	Yeah. I completely agree with both of your assessments. I had a couple of thoughts watching the movie. One was I understand why he lost the election in 2000 [laughter]. I’m like, “Wow.” And the second thing was– I kept trying to think of a clever pun on Inconvenient Truth, but I didn’t see, unfortunately [laughter]. But, I mean, the truth is that that film was about Al Gore’s cognitive dissonance at losing the election–
S. FULLWOOD: 06:20	Right.
C.T. WEBB: 06:20	–is what that film was about.
S. FULLWOOD: 06:21	Right, right.
S. RODNEY: 06:21	Wow. Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 06:23	It’s like, “Well, I lost the election, but really, it was for this greater good thing [laughter], which was for me to return– and, of course, it was very important– so he’s clearly a bright guy. It was very important for him to situate this struggle pre-the-election, pre-political career–
S. FULLWOOD: 06:41	Yes.
S. RODNEY: 06:41	Right.
C.T. WEBB: 06:42	–to give it a through-line, to give it some kind of contiguous fight, right?
S. FULLWOOD: 06:43	Right. Oh, yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 06:45	So is it– this is the thread, and this really– “I swear this is not me trying to grapple with losing the 2000 election to George Bush.” And so, yeah, the friend thing. He has such an anecdotal life. I nearly– I mean, the only thing that didn’t happen is he had a cousin that was killed by an out-of-control oil rig or something [laughter]. He’s got every other thing, like, “My sister died of lung cancer [laughter].” Just like every [laughter]–
S. FULLWOOD: 07:19	So where is the charisma with this guy? I mean, I think what you just described so very, very well in terms of the information is that that kind of politics did impact– it was impactful for the people, was that “Everyman” thing what we talked about earlier.
S. RODNEY: 07:35	Precisely.
S. FULLWOOD: 07:35	Everyone’s talking like, “They want to have a beer with the president.” I don’t want to have a beer with the president [laughter]. Let this man go do– or woman or trans person do their job. That’s what I want them to do. So that relatability thing was really– to me, Al Gore is still very visible to me as a personality and also as someone who sort of talks like a midway politician [laughter]; not enough facts in here, not enough facts in there. He’s just an interesting guy to me. I’m like, “Wow. No wonder it got an Oscar. It is boring [laughter].” I mean, half of the things that Oscars do are just terrible. Half-amazing. That’s it.
C.T. WEBB: 08:08	Yeah. I mean, I guess to try and say something positive, I did appreciate, I mean, a couple of things. One he clearly– assuming that he gives that talk straight through, he clearly has a solid understanding of the facts, at least as they stood when that movie was made and a particular interpretation of where rising sea levels are going to end up. And he had a solid and realistic message that was thematically organized around hope, right? I mean, so, “We do this little bit. We do this little bit. We do this little bit, and we make an impact.”
S. FULLWOOD: 08:49	Yeah.
C.T. WEBB: 08:50	And I appreciated that approach because that is– in my opinion, that is the only viable approach. We are not–
S. FULLWOOD: 08:59	Agreed.
C.T. WEBB: 09:00	–we’re not in a sort of Gary Snyder, kind of the nature poet, late-Beat Generation– we are not going to fundamentally transform our relationship to the natural world. That’s simply not going to happen. And so I think these aggregated approaches– Seph, you’re about to say something. I’ll just to stop there. I think those aggregated approaches are– that’s the quiver and that’s our bow and that’s what we have to do.
S. RODNEY: 09:29	Well, I think we need to precisely to do that. Sorry to interrupt, Travis. But I think we precisely need to take that approach because politically the other approaches– or I should say, the approach of imagining that we are going to fundamentally change the way we live, doesn’t work. I mean, this is precisely what the GOP’s banking on. So when AOC and– AOC’s really the pointy end of that particular movement. So I’m just using her as a short-hand, but when AOC and other supporters of the Green New Deal make their proposals– and these are just sort of wide, sweeping sort of, “Here’s sort of what we need to do.” It’s not–
C.T. WEBB: 10:17	Inspirational?
S. RODNEY: 10:18	–right, they’re aspirational plans. What Republicans come back and say is shit like, “Yeah, she doesn’t want anybody to fly anywhere. She wants all the cows to stop farting [laughter]. She wants–” no, really, they say ridiculous shit like this.
S. FULLWOOD: 10:36	Oh, no. They do.
S. RODNEY: 10:37	But it’s premised on the notion that we should not be inconvenienced, right? I mean, and this is where the title of the film really has purchase, right? We should not be inconvenienced in any way. We should be able to drive as large a vehicle as we want–
S. FULLWOOD: 10:53	Mm-hmm.
S. RODNEY: 10:53	–essentially, pollute as much as you want. Why are we drinking out of stainless steel straws? We should be using good, old plastic straws. But we should not– the idea is that there’s nothing that we should have to do. So the idea of making incremental change, I think, is the only way forward, politically.
C.T. WEBB: 11:14	Yeah. Yeah– oh, go ahead, Steven. You were about to say something?
S. FULLWOOD: 11:17	No, go ahead, Travis. I’m still–
C.T. WEBB: 11:18	I was just going to say, just to piggyback on that, yeah, the inconvenience thing is absolutely right. You get that in sort of the umbrage that people take around straws or light bulbs. I mean, in the United States, at least. Like, “Well, I shouldn’t have to change the light bulb I use. I shouldn’t have to change.” I’m not saying that those are the critical policies that need to be implemented. I honestly don’t know what their– I know the light bulb one is a big deal. The straw one I’m not sure about. Not meaning I’m skeptical. I just don’t know how effective it is when it comes to waste and recycling. But that being said, the response, the knee-jerk response to everything that has been the same should continue to be the same in perpetuity–
S. RODNEY: 12:03	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:03	Mm-hmm.
C.T. WEBB: 12:03	–because [laughter]–
S. RODNEY: 12:04	Insane.
C.T. WEBB: 12:05	— like, “Which body do you live in [laughter]? What world are you moving through in which that’s the case [laughter]?” because this is not at all how it works. This isn’t how this show plays out. So anyway.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:19	No, what you– I just feel like we have a very skewed idea of freedom because this is what we’re talking about here; this idea that one should be able to do whatever he or she or they want to do whenever they want to do it. And so being inconvenienced is a part of that– a big part of it because– and this is funny because people never ask for world peace [laughter]. They ask for a million dollars. I mean, people do ask for world peace. I’m saying that–
C.T. WEBB: 12:42	I understand. Yeah.
S. FULLWOOD: 12:43	–but the idea of being– because I was asking myself, I said, “What would’ve made me think of climate change differently as a 20-year-old, 1986?” And I think–
C.T. WEBB: 12:55	We’re you out at that point when you were 20?
S. FULLWOOD: 12:58	Yeah. I was out. But it was incrementally–
C.T. WEBB: 12:59	Okay, so probably a hot guy that was into environmental politics?
S. FULLWOOD: 13:06	No, I’m sure I wasn’t [crosstalk] [laughter]–
C.T. WEBB: 13:08	No, no, no. I’m saying this is– you know what I mean? This is one of the ways [laughter] that we compel people to care about things is things that hit really close to the bone.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:18	No, completely.
C.T. WEBB: 13:19	And that’s all I was saying.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:21	No, but– kind of wish I could’ve [field?] that joke better. I was like, “Oh, that would’ve been great [laughter].” Cradled it, and I was like, “Why are you at the door? I’m trying to do this [laughter].” So as a 20-year-old, I was aware of apartheid. I was aware of different kinds of movements and the issues with the Rockefeller Laws. And that’s what it’s– no, it wasn’t. Rockefeller Laws came in the ’90s, right? No, ’80s. Was it ’80s?
S. RODNEY: 13:49	I’m not sure.
C.T. WEBB: 13:50	What are the Rockefeller Laws?
S. RODNEY: 13:50	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:50	The laws that– it was the law that– three strikes, you’re out. It was that, right?
C.T. WEBB: 13:55	Oh.
S. RODNEY: 13:56	Oh.
C.T. WEBB: 13:56	Sure, sure, sure. Okay.
S. FULLWOOD: 13:58	But I was hyper-aware of this notion of the disappearing black man; the endangered species because that gained purchase in the media. And I’m thinking, “What would’ve made me interested in this thing?” And I was like– I couldn’t– I didn’t come up with anything, but what I came– well, I didn’t come up with anything that I thought was useful, totally. But just using your joke, Travis, about the whole idea of a hot guy; a hot idea, a hot– something that caught fire on campus in the imaginations. Something like that, possible. But it was hard even to get racism wrapped around my brain that much. And thinking a lot about the generation that is going to inherit more of this than they can handle. And I’m like, “What would–” other than wanting to be called woke, “What would ignite that passion in more people because there are some people. But anyway. Those are the things that I’m thinking.
S. RODNEY: 14:51	So one of the things– and I’m going to do my curmudgeonly– what’s the word for a person who doesn’t like people very much? What is that called?
C.T. WEBB: 15:05	Misanthrope. A misanthrope.
S. RODNEY: 15:06	Misa– yeah. My misanthropic– I’m going to put on my misanthropic hat for a moment [laughter], and say that part of the problem that we’re talking about is that human beings respond only to certain kinds of stories, certain kinds of compelling action. One is the romantic punter, right? So if someone came into each of our lives at that point, probably when we were in our 20s and was really passionate about this, we would hold hands with them, and we’d be like, “Okay, yeah, I can get behind this.” Like, “Yeah, this is starting to make sense to me.” Charismatic leadership, romance. The things that fall to the side that don’t tend to move the species very much, and this is where I guess– well, it’s only slightly misanthropic– I’m disappointed in us in that we’re not moved by data. We’re not moved by sort of large– we’re not moved by the long view. We’re not moved by that idea that 50 years from now, Miami may very well disappear because of glacier melt. That’s difficult for me to swallow because I just want to say, “It’s logical, people. Let’s just put our shoulders to work. Come on.” The consequences of not paying attention to this, this crisis are so grave that we just have to. But that actually makes no difference.
C.T. WEBB: 16:47	It’s not that I disagree with your assessment of people’s general kind of–
S. RODNEY: 16:58	Latitude?
C.T. WEBB: 16:59	–self-interest– yeah, sort of navel-gazing, self-interest and lack of rock-solid commitment to principles. Of course, I think that’s basically true. I don’t necessarily wish for a human community that was lashed to data sets, though because I don’t trust our scientific acumen that much. I mean, I do around certain things. I think science is the best cultural invention that we’ve yet managed to create. Absolutely. I’m not anti-science at all. But we’re wrong all the time. And yet, we are not easily or readily convinced of how incorrect we are. You could take– for example, the cutting edge science in the 19th century was that white men were superior intellectually, emotionally, and physically to all other men. That was–
S. RODNEY: 18:10	But is that pseudoscience rather than science?
C.T. WEBB: 18:12	No– so I don’t– see, I don’t think you can– so you could make that argument.
S. RODNEY: 18:15	But you don’t think it would–
C.T. WEBB: 18:16	I would go after that argument. I don’t think that’s right.
S. RODNEY: 18:19	You don’t think there’s a useful distinction?
C.T. WEBB: 18:21	No, I don’t. I think these were– I mean, how do we identify something as scientific? I mean, you have to look at the social sort of strata. So are these people practicing scientists? Are they paid to be scientists? Are they practicing the scientific method? I think if you tick off those boxes, yes, those people in the 19th century were absolutely scientists. Now, here’s the great thing about science is that it is a–
S. RODNEY: 18:47	But the scientific method, they weren’t actually practicing that–
C.T. WEBB: 18:51	No, they were–
S. RODNEY: 18:51	— because they came up with the pseudoscience, right?
C.T. WEBB: 18:53	–no, no, they were practicing the scientific method, but the scientific method is one aspect that led to them abandoning that– it’s a constantly forward-moving process. It’s just that at any moment in time, if you are to arrest that process, it’s going to be rife with error.
S. RODNEY: 19:13	So it’s framing that bothers you? The framing of scientific knowledge as the end-all-be-all versus an ongoing process?
C.T. WEBB: 19:21	Yeah, that’s a helpful way to characterize it. As if there is any moment in time– for most things, not all things, right– as if there is any moment in time in which we have sufficient information about the world to render a rock-solid judgment, definitively, about what should be done. I am suspicious of that.
S. RODNEY: 19:44	No, right. But to talk about the scientific method with a little more precision, I think what we are getting at is that, one, it’s a process. So as Travis essentially is saying, at any point in the process, we have imperfect data because, essentially, one of the bedrocks of the scientific method, as I understand it, is that we are experimenting. We are taking data from that previous experiment, and we’re putting it up against what previous experiments have shown, right? So in that process, they’re clearly– along the lines of, let’s say, developing a particular medicine to treat a particular condition. At some point, you have to keep asking more questions, right? Or the processing tails keep– one, it [inaudible]– what am I trying to say?
C.T. WEBB: 20:45	Iteratively.
S. RODNEY: 20:46	Thank you. Iteratively [laughter] asking more and more specific questions. So at any point in that process, we may very well be wrong. And what we’re also saying is that– what am I actually also saying? That questioning has to continue. Oh, that’s right, that’s what I was getting at. You said something about, “We’re never going to arrive at rock-solid data or rock-solid definitions.” Right, but the scientific method isn’t about rock-solid definitions, right?
C.T. WEBB: 21:25	Yeah, I was only– yeah, no, you’re right. I was being overly long-winded about just responding to your disappointment in our inability to work reliably and dependably with data. And I’m okay with that aspect of human beings, at least where we are right now because I still think that it is feasible for us to grapple with climate change, not in a way that there aren’t consequences because, again, we’ve talked about this many times on the podcast, there are always consequences for the poor. Always.
S. RODNEY: 22:02	Right.
S. FULLWOOD: 22:02	Well, yeah, absolutely.
C.T. WEBB: 22:04	Absolutely. I definitely believe that there will be awful consequences for the people that the current geopolitical system doesn’t really care about or doesn’t easily care about, right? So I’m not saying that there aren’t going to be consequences. But at this point, I am hopeful– and I don’t think in a naive way– that we will grapple with these challenges and that society will look different in 100 years, but that it will continue. It’s certainly in a less pristine way that the most hopeful believe. I don’t think we’re reaching the singularity or tipping point or anything like that, but I think we’ll figure out levies. I think we’ll figure out rising sea levels for certain coastal communities that have the money to deal with it. I think we’ll figure out food supplies for certain groups of people. I think we’ll figure out farming and those kinds of things. I do think that the degree to which people suffer in that process is an open question and one that concerns me a great deal.
S. RODNEY: 23:19	I suspect that we may– I suspect that we will figure out a lot of these. The laundry list of things you just gave us, yes. I suspect that we won’t until we’ve had significant loses in population and land because I don’t think that– this is part of the problem with being a human being is that I don’t think that we are moved enough until we see dire consequences happening right around us.
C.T. WEBB: 23:51	Right. Right. Steven?
S. FULLWOOD: 23:54	I said, “What?” looking up from my cellphone, “What did Seph say? What did he say [laughter]?” That’s all I have to say [laughter].
C.T. WEBB: 24:03	I guess, yeah, I mean– I guess we’re wrapping up, which I think is fine. We all kind of acknowledged at the beginning [laughter] that we weren’t– this is not our– oh, yeah, yeah, yeah– Seph, jump in, please.
S. RODNEY: 24:13	Yeah. Just one more thing. I made a note when I was watching the film. At some point, Al Gore calls this a “moral issue.” Do we agree with that? Is this a moral issue?
C.T. WEBB: 24:24	I wish you’d said that earlier in the podcast. I had thought the same thing when I was watching the movie. Steven, please, I’ve talked a lot.
S. FULLWOOD: 24:31	No, no, no. I actually want to think about that because I had other issues with things about the moral consciousness of America, and the will to do something, to change something was very, very fraught– I’m reading 1619 right now. I’m like [laughter], “No. No. The change in the US did not happen solely for abolishing slavery. It was to draw an imbalance in the South and to win the Union. So yeah, there are a lot of things I felt that Gore said were problematic. Were very problematic and just ad for a new presidential campaign. They were just very general.
C.T. WEBB: 25:11	Yeah. I think he is right in the way that he doesn’t intend. Meaning that I think that our morality is tightly bound up with our social structures and our judgments about what is acceptable behavior in our social group that, of course, it’s a moral issue because we make everything a moral issue. We make colors and clothes a moral issue. I don’t think that’s how he intended [laughter] it. And in the way he intended it, I don’t really agree [laughter] in the way that he meant it. I don’t think it is a moral issue in the sense of how I consume that I need to eat or get to work and whatnot is not a moral issue in the same way like, “How do I treat the two of you? How do I treat my family? How do I treat the stranger on the street?”
S. FULLWOOD: 26:09	Absolutely.
C.T. WEBB: 26:11	That, to me, is a rock-solid, clear-cut moral issue. How my car is powered, I don’t think is a moral issue in the same way that he wants it to be. So anyway.
S. FULLWOOD: 26:24	Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I generally agree with you, Travis. I think that I generally agree in this respect that Al Gore– and this is, perhaps, the flaw of this film– Al Gore speaks like a politician all the time.
C.T. WEBB: 26:44	Yeah.
S. FULLWOOD: 26:44	And those kinds of [inaudible], those kinds of cliches seem to still have some purchase with people within the sound of his voice. But for me, that is exactly the kind of rhetoric that I want to move away from because it’s just not compelling. And I want to say, yeah, let’s be clear about what we mean when we say, “We are making a moral choice,” because you said it correctly, how you treat your friends, how you treat your family, those are places where the theoretical sort of notions of freedom and justice actually hit the road. This is where they are meaningful.
C.T. WEBB: 27:37	Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I’ll– and Steven, I’m happy to have you walk us out if you feel like [inaudible]– there are a lot of other things Al Gore could’ve decided to do. Making a movie about climate change isn’t a terrible choice [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD: 27:52	Agreed.
C.T. WEBB: 27:53	I mean, that’s better than a variety of other pursuits he could be following.
S. FULLWOOD: 27:59	It’s way the fuck better than George Bush painting self-serving images of Iraq veterans whose lives he helped fuck up.
S. RODNEY: 28:08	Do you understand?
S. FULLWOOD: 28:09	So let’s just– yeah. Let’s just say that.
S. RODNEY: 28:13	I always got that move as a guilt-move, a big guilt-move, but also just weird sort of resonance that he has work to do there, right, emotionally, whatever. And I was like, “Oh, it came out in art? Okay, that’s what that guy did.”
S. FULLWOOD: 28:25	Right.
C.T. WEBB: 28:26	So, friends, thank you very much for the conversation. And I’ll speak to you next week.
S. RODNEY: 28:31	Thank you.
S. FULLWOOD: 28:31	Thank you. Bye.
	[music]

References

Al Gore – An Inconvenient Truth

“Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Al Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change in the most talked-about documentary at Sundance.” Amazon

Climate Change: Revisiting “An Inconvenient Truth”

0088 | September 9, 2019

Climate Change:
Revisiting “An Inconvenient Truth”

References

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