‘Absolutely. There’s no question about it,’ Al Gore says in The Guardian when asked whether he thinks the topic of climate change is at the centre of an information war. ‘The information system is in such a chaotic transition and people are deluged with so much noise that it gives an opening for Trump and his forces to wage war against facts and reason.’
Ten years after he released his film An Inconvenient Truth the former US presidential candidate is promoting a new film with the same message, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which premiered on 28 July. At the last minute, Gore had to change the end of the movie after president Donald Trump decided to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement on climate change.
‘Democracy has been hacked’
In the film and in the interview with The Guardian Gore is very explicit about the hidden forces that have to be combatted in the battle for climate action. ‘In order to fix the climate crisis, we need to first fix the government crisis,’ he says. ‘Big money has so much influence now. Our democracy has been hacked.’
Asked to explain this statement, Gore says: ‘I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial. And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat.’
Tobacco strategies
Gore also mentions the parallels between the oil industry and the big tobacco companies. ‘The large carbon polluters have spent between $1bn and $2bn spreading false doubt. Do you know the book, Merchants of Doubt? It documents how the tobacco industry discredited the consensus on cigarette smoking and cancer by creating doubt, and shows how it’s linked to the climate denial movement. They hired many of the same PR firms and some of the same think tanks. And, in fact, some of those who work on climate change denial actually still dispute the links between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.’
After An Inconvenient Truth’s huge impact on public opinion An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a new attempt to raise awareness for what is happening around us. With the grim effect that what Gore was warning for in the first film is depicted in reality in the second film, which contains images of the flooding of the 9/11 memorial in New York caused by hurricane Sandy.
Designer’s responsability
If the climate change issue is in the middle of an information war, a big responsibility lies upon communication designers around the globe to make people see what is at stake, how they are manipulated and what is really happening.
Ideas anyone? The open call for the WDCD Climate Action Challenge lasts until 24 September.
Want to learn more about the key issues we’re tackling with this challenge? Visit our platform and check out the in-depth resource kits compiled by our research partners STBY.
And do read the Guardian-interview with Al Gore.
‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power’ reaches the cinemas in the UK on 18 August and in the Netherlands on 11 November.