Being Inconvenient

I viewed this week Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”, a sequel to his celebrated 2006 documentary. Putting to one side a sequence on securing India’s coming on board at the 2015 Paris climate summit that seemed to overstate Gore’s personal impact, I felt that the rest of the documentary was timely and relevant and yet, frustratingly incomplete.

• Timely: because the impact of climate change become starker over the past decade, while the nature of political discourse has devolved further into an “age of the soundbyte” that lacks the patience for reason-led argumentation. On the other hand, it is also very timely because, in contrast to 2006, we’re now in an era where the solutions to the crisis are now commercially competitive to fossil fuels, and are well on the way to replication and scale-up;
• Frustratingly incomplete: because it harped excessively on the moral argument (thus adopting a sermonising tone), with limited attention on the above-mentioned positive commercial narrative of an increasingly decarbonised and decentralised energy sector. There was a mention of the Chilean solar case. But Gore could easily have channelled his wonkish persona to describe a couple of examples of technological and commercial innovations that are making a difference, or explain why coal is in decline as a primary energy source (See my earlier article).

I had a very nice opportunity to discuss these points with him a couple of years back at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, where I inaugurated the ENGIE Lab in the Middle East that is responsible for building and testing the technological bricks for the energy world of tomorrow. I spied him wandering around, endearingly by himself, sans entourage or airs. And was genuinely keen to share and learn. Our exchange was substantive and satisfying, and left me feeling inspired. Do see the documentary yourself and let me know if you agree with my points expressed above.

#BeInconvenient