Al Gore with former Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez and Typhoon Haiyan survivor Demi Raya, in the Raya family home. Tacloban City, Philippines, March 12, 2016.

Let’s face it. The people who really need to see this film are never going to go near it. Why you can trust us By Mark Rahner 4 MIN READ

What’s changed since Al Gore first gave us An Inconvenient Truth?

It’s hotter. In 1999, Seattle friends thought I was an asshole for having air conditioning in my car. Now everyone does. Have air conditioning, that is.

Gore is older, grayer, and maybe thicker in the middle.

There’s an anti-science party running the White House and both chambers of Congress that would make Galileo feel like he really didn’t have it so bad in the Inquisition.

And there’s a sequel.

Gore wants us to call it the “climate crisis” now.

A decade after the former vice president’s Oscar-winning documentary comes his follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. I went to a screening in Seattle where Gore stopped on his tour to promote it, and he might think I’m an asshole, too. Because as effectively sobering, terrifying, and infuriating as the documentary is, it doesn’t go far enough.

Another change: Gore wants us to call it the “climate crisis” now. Seems fair, if not an understatement.

Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, the film follows the tireless Gore—understandably weary—as he visits glaciers that aren’t just melting, but also exploding like strings of firecrackers; wades with local officials through waterlogged Florida; and works behind the scenes to get India on board for the Paris climate agreement. Meanwhile, he gives slideshows similar—but more dire—to the ones in the first film to climate leadership training groups.

More dire, because the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters have increased along with the denialism funded by the Koch brothers and other polluters. Gore notes the barbs aimed at him for predicting climate change’s threat to New York’s 9/11 memorial site, then shows footage of it being flooded by Hurricane Sandy just a few years later.

The U.S. boasts the only major party in the industrial world that denies climate change science.

Someone sitting behind me sighed heavily and a couple minutes later said, “Jesus …” They continued doing that throughout the entire film.

I fought back my own profanities watching the climate-caused deaths in the Philippines and other horrors documented.

After the credits rolled, Gore walked out to a standing ovation and a fawning fluff session of a Q&A with an awestruck moderator. I was in a theater full of Seattle liberals who didn’t need to be convinced of any of this.

The people who really need to see the movie—in red states or even red regions on the other side of my state—won’t go near it. They wouldn’t listen to Gore if their houses were on fire and he was standing there with a hose. And they’re no more likely to listen to any graduate of his climate leadership groups than they are to read David Wallace-Wells’ July 9 gut punch of a New York magazine article, “The Uninhabitable Earth.”

If I’m raining on and submerging the parade, look:

From oncology to engineering, if 97 percent of the experts in any field other than climate science warned us of something, everyone would listen to them and not the outliers. The U.S. boasts the only major political party in the industrial world that denies climate change science. There’s some American exceptionalism.

Deniers appear not to understand that skepticism toward basic science literacy should consist of more than “No, it isn’t,” and that the scientific method has already been applied to climate science. (See: Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt and “red team.”)

“If President Trump refuses to lead, the American people will.”

These are people who think we can treat the environment like a toilet for 150 years with no repercussions. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe bringing a snowball to the Senate floor is our real-world equivalent of Kryptonians laughing at Jor-El before their planet goes boom. Inconvenient Sequel includes footage of an exchange between Gore and Inhofe in which the senator won’t even let Gore finish a sentence.

I’m saying the people who really need to see this movie are The Unreachables.

Now add a president who said climate change is a Chinese hoax and has promised to bail on the Paris agreement. Consider his picks to run the EPA, departments of Energy, Interior, Education … and here we are.

Actual headline, July 31: “EPA museum to scrap climate change displays, add coal exhibit.” Heavy sigh and Jesus, indeed.

Gore and the filmmakers don’t spend a lot of time documenting The Unreachables (my term, not his) and the political polarization that threatens the poles as much as carbon emissions. Trump’s Paris betrayal comes near the end, but Gore leans heavily on optimism. He compares the climate crisis to the fight for civil rights and marriage equality in a moving climactic speech.

“If President Trump refuses to lead, the American people will.”

It’s appropriate to mock and shame ignorance and lies, particularly with stakes this high.

To that end, Gore urges people to vote the Kryptonians—I mean, deniers—out of office, and the film offers resources for action. You can sign a pledge, organize a screening of the film, download a 10-minute version of Gore’s slideshow, follow the movie across social media. There’s information on voting, reaching out to lean on elected officials, and more.

It’s not nearly as aggressive as the situation demands, given the added threat of The Unreachables.

I think this would be an appropriate action: Trump and every other Republican who’s blocked efforts to mitigate climate change should be charged with crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and everyone at Exxon Mobil who knew about the damage for decades.

Short of that, I have some other suggestions:

Demand that news media end the phony “balance” that gives deniers a platform, let alone equal time with those who understand climate science.

Research the deniers’ talking points so that you can refute them any time they come up in conversation or social media—from Al Gore’s carbon footprint making him a hypocrite to all that sweet dough climate scientists stand to rake in.

Be less polite. No, you don’t respect deniers’ opinions. It’s appropriate to mock and shame ignorance and lies, particularly with stakes this high.

More climate-related lawsuits. Evidence and facts matter in courts.

Protest by phone, email, town hall, or social media any time a science denier or science illiterate is put in charge of a government science department at any level. Remember Rep. Paul Broun who called evolution and the Big Bang theory “lies straight from the pit of hell” and who served on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology? And Inhofe, who chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works? People like that need to go do something else.

Agitate to get the money out of politics. That’s at the Koch-fueled root of denialism. Always follow the money.

Until then, no matter where you live, you’re gonna need a car with air conditioning.

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Mark Rahner is a journalist, talk radio host, comic book author, and podcaster. Connect: LinkedIn Twitter