Photo credit: m01229/CC BY 2.0

Note: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the work of Colin Beavan and the No Impact project, with apologies. I am embarassed to say that the original misrepresented his work in quite profound ways.

It’s a black and white scene. There’s a couch on the pavement in front of the US Senate. On that couch are Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the house, and Newt Gingrich, Republican former speaker of the house. The pair look straight into the camera, and declare that while they don’t always agree on everything, they do both believe that America can and must take action on climate change.

“Together, we can do this.” declares Pelosi

Released in 2008, this televised ad was part of the “We Can Solve It” ad campaign sponsored by former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. And while it seems like a quaint, even surreal throw back now — especially given Gingrich’s decidedly mixed record on climate, scienceand the environment— it does represent a brief moment in time when it seemed like America might start taking climate change and the related ecological crisis seriously.

A few years before, in the late Spring to 2006, Mr Gore had released An Inconvenient Truth. With the help of a powerpoint presentation, some implausible b-roll of its protagonist wandering around airports with suitcase in hand, and the somewhat surreal use of a pneumatic, aerial work platform, the movie laid out the devastating impact that climate change was already having on communities around the world.

For those of us who had been protesting environmental destruction for years, this was an important moment. Here was a high-profile politician engaging with the single most important topic facing our species. And, finally, people were beginning to take notice. In fact, the movie went on to become the 11th highest grossing documentary ever in the United States.

Yet for all the talk of bipartisan consensus that followed the release, it’s hard not to look back now and suspect that the moment was always going to be squandered. For while An Inconvenient Truth clearly and urgently laid out the dangers and causes of the climate crisis, it provided much less clarity about what we should actually do about it.

In the book that accompanied the movie, the section on solutions—which itself was buried at the back like an afterthought—the message was clear that the primary responsibility for solving the greatest systemic crisis that humankind had ever faced was being laid firmly at the feet of each individual citizen. From insulating our homes to composting, and from purchasing carbon offsets to choosing reusable totes, the scale of the solutions being offered were radically out of step with the scale of the crisis that had just been outlined.

Sure, there was a short section on “becoming a catalyst for change” and being more politically active, yet here too there was very little explanation of what that actually meant. No grand vision. No overarching policy goals. Just a vague and fuzzy call for us to demand more from our leaders.