An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

On Friday, I saw the documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

Anyone who watched the Oscar-winning first installment, An Inconvenient Truth, could tell that former Vice President Al Gore would make saving the environment his life's mission. This film confirms that.

Although there are flashbacks to his time in office, and scenes of him lamenting the results of the election that could have made him president, he has moved on with a Jimmy Carter-like spirit for making the most of his post-political career.

The crew follows him to Paris when the original Paris Agreement was made in the shadow of the horrific terrorist attacks of 2015. He was in the heart of the city when those incidents occurred, and his remarks afterward will make even the toughest among us shed some tears.

The triumph of that global victory was unfortunately short-lived due to our current Commander-in-Chief pulling out of said Agreement just two months ago. Mr. Gore shows us why that was such a devastating blow to the progress that had been made and what we must do as citizens to continue the fight.

He can't resist bringing along his beloved PowerPoint presentations again to share some shocking bar graphs. He advances the slides that prove his point with blatant satisfaction—trouble is, we wish he weren't so right.

This is a crises of epic proportions. Future generations (if we haven't killed the human race by then) will shake their heads in disbelief at America's stupidity if we don't turn things around and make this right.

My favorite part of the film shows Gore meeting with a conservative Texan mayor who is on the right side of history, making his town an environmentally friendly model for the rest of the nation. Though he may disagree with liberal politics, he says that taking care of our earth is just "common sense," and has found a fiscally responsible way of doing it.

Unfortunately, the people who need to see this film probably won't. But if it gets just a few people to change their votes, to write some letters, to make some noise, it won't all have been for nothing.

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Recount

Tonight I watched Recount, starring Kevin Spacey.

It was exactly as I thought it would be—definitely painting a somewhat silly (if not deserving) picture of the republican party and the lawmakers in the election-challenged state of Florida.

Recalling the crises that was the 2000 presidential election, the film shows how both sides handled, maneuvered, fought, schemed, prayed and cried their way through the count, recount and all of the lawsuits in between.

It showed how our system was (is) clearly flawed and that politics were (are) well...ugly.

In other words, it didn't really tell us anything about the incident or about the country that we didn't already know, it just revived the stomach ache some of us still have from that fateful decision eight years ago (and when I say fateful, I do mean it—how many lives wouldn't have been lost if Bush never made it to office?).

And since we're in an election year now, it only makes those of us who are somewhat involved in the campaign all the more determined to see our part through, as well as reminding us that if we want our votes as Americans to truly count, we should stay out of Florida.