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| Bono pays homage to the Former Next Imperial Planetologist Al Gore’s Pivot to Idiocy Millionaire climate activist practices his own form of denial |
"MTV AND AL GORE BOTH GAINED TRACTION IN THE EIGHTIES, achieved cultural saturation in the nineties, and have been fighting for relevance since. They made a coquettish couple at MTV’s “Inconvenient Special” with Al Gore, two ailing brands negotiating the foibles of the digital era, courting each other like divorcees on a Tinder date.
The event had been billed as a town hall, an opportunity I wanted to use to grill the Vice President on how to combat the corporate executives pouring billions of dollars into our eroding democracy. In fact, the MTV special would turn out to be nothing more than a promotional stunt for Gore’s new film An Inconvenient Sequel, ..,
A dutiful member of the studio audience, I clapped when asked to clap and laughed when asked to laugh, but I admit I was sceptical... we had been treated to a pre-screening of Gore’s sequel, which I found to be turgid and tone deaf. It begins, more or less, with Gore in 1998 heroically unveiling the Deep Space Climate Observatory, nicknamed GoreSat... that Gore chose a satellite stripped of its climatic functions for an emotional peak in his narrative is indicative of the soullessness to come in the rest of the film... the only thing about the sequel to suggest that it is no longer 2006, when the first instalment in the “Inconvenient” franchise came out, is that Gore now uses hashtags.
“#BeInconvenient,” the final frames of the film implore.
“#BeInconvenient,” our MTV moderator chirped.
“#BeInconvenient,” the sage Gore counseled.
“#BeInconvenient,” the final frames of the film implore.
“#BeInconvenient,” our MTV moderator chirped.
“#BeInconvenient,” the sage Gore counseled.
But who were we supposed to be inconveniencing?...
In An Inconvenient Sequel, the universes of technocratic politics and comic books converge—Gore plays a superhero without a villain...Instead the bulk of the film’s action occurs in Paris during the 21st Conference of the Parties.
This is Gore’s arena, where he can shine as envoy and entrepreneur, dealmaker and democrat, without too much, well, inconvenience.
This is Gore’s arena, where he can shine as envoy and entrepreneur, dealmaker and democrat, without too much, well, inconvenience.
“I’ve got an Indian problem,” Al Gore quips into the phone... Never mind that Gore just compared the modernization struggles of the globe’s largest democracy to the genocidal mania of manifest destiny—he’s on a mission. India threatens to scuttle the whole international climate deal because it demands wanton fossil fuel use, much like that the United States enjoyed during its own industrial period. But not on Gore’s watch. Not while he has the full force of Silicon Valley on speed dial.
Less Sorkin-esque than Monty Python-like, Gore seemingly leaves voicemails for every misbegotten billionaire he has ever bumped into. Finally—“Elon suggested I call,” he mumbles to, for some reason, Larry Summers, and we know that the day must be saved. Gore has hatched an irresistible scheme to entice Musk’s SolarCity to come to his aid.
Gift India the intellectual property of your latest solar-panel-techno-mumbo-jumbo, Gore advises SolarCity’s CEO, and in exchange revel in the ovations of heads of state, who will deem you the “corporate hero of Paris.” And with this union of SolarCity, a benign billionaire benefactor, and Al Gore—the man who saved the Paris Agreement—the film climaxes. Here’s the thing though: India’s Energy Minister suggests his government’s deal with the clean-tech firm is a fiction..."
Gift India the intellectual property of your latest solar-panel-techno-mumbo-jumbo, Gore advises SolarCity’s CEO, and in exchange revel in the ovations of heads of state, who will deem you the “corporate hero of Paris.” And with this union of SolarCity, a benign billionaire benefactor, and Al Gore—the man who saved the Paris Agreement—the film climaxes. Here’s the thing though: India’s Energy Minister suggests his government’s deal with the clean-tech firm is a fiction..."
