So the ‘Al Gore’s sequel’ is screening at local cinemas and has created some excitement among Malaysians that are concerned about climate change.

Public concerns over climate change are indeed growing and this film and its predecessor released in 2006 would have had some contributions towards that, no doubt.

I watched the film at a free screening last Wednesday and was really curious about the impacts it would have on the audience. As I would expect majority of them are climate change believers and would surely be convinced that we are at the precipice of runaway climate catastrophe in the very near future and we all have the collective moral responsibilities to do all we can to halt this
planetary crisis.

However, it got me wondering if the audience would not question the over-the- top self-glorification.

At this age of IT, it is not too difficult to check if the claim that Al Gore brokered the deal that delivered Paris Agreement was indeed true.

I did just that. And the result didn’t really surprise me. 

It is a bit too far-fetch that a non-governmental individual, regardless of the fact that he was a former vice president of the United States of America, could yield so much influence at the highly-political climate negotiation space.

That the whole climate negotiation at Paris was saved because one country had its demand for affordable solar technologies fulfilled - all by that one `powerful’ phone call by Al Gore to an American solar company CEO, is, to say the least, incredulous.

It could well be that all those horse-trading on the sideline of the formal negotiation in Paris did happen and it’s believable that India would have requested for cheaper solar technology for its ambitious solar energy plan but the portrayal of India as that one country standing in the way of a
global climate deal is way too far-fetched.

India is a member of the negotiating group called Like-minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) that fought off attempts by developed countries to erase their historical emissions and the attending obligations to lead in cutting their carbon emissions in the post-2020 framework of international cooperation. If at all there was a force that could derail the talks, it would have been a group of
countries or several groups of countries. Then again, it should not be seen as ‘blocking’ instead of countries trying to reach a compromise.

Interestingly, Al Gore steered clear from mentioning IPR – Intellectual Property Rights – the toxic phrase and the super red line of the US delegation which was supported by its allies, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, despite noting the crux of the ‘brokered’ deal was on the cost.

Transfer of climate technologies has been one of the contentious areas in negotiation simply because the US and its allies refused to solve the barriers posed by IPRs that made technology shift costly to the developing world.

Truth is dispensable in the interests of national, economics, geopolitics and global dominance.

That, to me, is Al Gore’s inconvenient truth.