Al Gore’s last book, in case you hadn’t heard, was about the climate problem. The new followup to An Inconvenient Truth lays out solutions. The Vice President, Nobel laureate, and veteran climate advocate describes the most promising responses to the climate conundrum in Our Choice, released November 3. We’re tracking reviews, analysis, screeds, and tirades on the book right here.

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The long-awaited sequel to An Inconvenient Truth comes out Tuesday, Nov. 3.  If you want a preview, Al Gore and the book are featured in an excellent Newsweek cover story, The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man.

In September, Nature Reports Climate Change asked me (and several others) to suggest three books to read ahead of the Copenhagen conference.  Of those, they then asked me to review Gore’s new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis:

When your last work led to an Oscar and Nobel Prize, anticipation is high on the sequel. And former US Vice President Al Gore’s new book delivers. Our Choice, due out in November, is a wonderfully readable treatise on climate solutions. Whereas An Inconvenient Truth framed the crisis that climate negotiations are tackling, this followup spells out what needs to be done.

Based on 30 of Gore’s ‘Solutions Summits’ as well as one-on-one discussions with leading experts across multiple disciplines, the book aims, in Gore’s words, “to gather in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now.” Gore naturally focuses on energy, the source of most anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and discusses many underappreciated strategies such as concentrated solar thermal power and cogeneration. He also devotes a full chapter to soil, a major carbon sink that is gradually degrading. Farming strategies for restoring soil carbon are described, including biochar, a porous charcoal that can potentially enhance the soil sink while providing a source of low-carbon power. And like its PowerPoint-based predecessor, Our Choice is replete with lush photos and simple but powerful charts. This [is] a must-read book for those who want a primer on all the key solutions countries will be considering at Copenhagen.

I was at one of the Solutions Summits, as long-time readers know (see “My Al Gore story").   I was interviewed by Newsweek about that Summit for their cover story:

Gore assigned each speaker at the summits a half dozen or so questions: Is nuclear power a viable solution? How can new photovoltaic technologies enter the market? He moderated every discussion, and no one remembers him ever glancing at his iPhone during even the most eye-glazing PowerPoint slides (”differentiation of value chain strategies”). Every panel at the New York meetings ran late, recalls Joseph Romm, who oversaw the Department of Energy’s renewables program from 1995 to 1998, as Gore asked question after question. “It was a fire hydrant of information,” says Romm, and it taught even experts things they didn’t know “about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy.” Gore also hosted a reception afterward, where he betrayed no doubt that everyone would find everything as fascinating as he did. “Have Tim tell you all about soil carbon!” he said to one scientist. “Gore bothers to come talk to us,” says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Most other politicians are too busy: ‘Just give us the talking points.’ He’s the only politician who’s interested in the nuts and bolts of the science—and the only one who knows what a hydroxyl radical is.”

Like Gore, I learned a lot from the summits.  Here is what I wrote in January 2008:

For the last three days I attended a small climate solutions summit hosted by the former Vice President and current Nobel Laureate. It was off-the-record, so I can’t report on presentations directly, but they have made me a lot smarter about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy, which will inform my blogging this year on climate solutions. I will say now as an aside that I have become much more bullish on the potential for large-scale solar photovoltaics as a result of attending these meetings. The VP asked me to speak for seven minutes on hydrogen at dinner Wednesday. Before dinner, I gave him a copy of the brand-new paperback edition of -- warning, shameless product placement -- Hell and High Water. He looked it over for a few minutes and said, deadpan,

I have only one problem with this book—this blurb on the back here that says, “If you buy only one book about global warming, make it Hell and High Water.” I just can’t agree with that.

When he introduced me that night, he repeated the line to great laughter.

BTW, in case it wasn’t obvious from his movie, the VP has a terrific sense of humor — and not just in his delivery timing of canned jokes, but in quick, impromptu one liners, like the one above, many of them self-deprecating (one of the speakers from a web-based company thanked him for his work accelerating the Internet, and he said something like, “You heard I had something to do with the internet?”).

And in case this wasn’t obvious from his movie, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to climate, energy, science, and technology.

I didn’t realize until I read the Newsweek piece that the VP had a similar reaction to the PV panel:

By all accounts, Gore was open to changing positions he brought to the summits. He originally thought that concentrated solar thermal power, in which the sun heats liquids that then power an electric generator, is superior to photovoltaics, in which sunlight produces electricity directly (PVs are the solar panels sprouting on rooftops these days). But “the PV industry surprised people over the last three years with the speed at which costs dropped,” says Cornelius, who is now at Hudson Clean Energy, a private-equity firm. Gore came around. “We are at or near a threshold beyond which photovoltaics will actually have a cost advantage” over concentrated solar as well as fossil fuels, Gore writes. He likes the fact that they can be deployed in small installations—those rooftops—whereas solar thermal projects are immense; he’s impressed that the price of photovoltaics is dropping while their efficiency is rising, thanks to new materials and manufacturing techniques. “Photovoltaics are a prime example of where the developmental pathway had a big impact on my conclusions,” Gore said at his home last month. “The rate of cost reductions and increases in efficiency for PVs is very impressive. PVs probably overtakes concentrated solar thermal within the next half year.”

I’m not certain one can directly compare PV and solar thermal.  And I still think solar thermal will deliver more kilowatt-hours this century than any other form of low carbon electricity (see Solar Baseload—a core climate solution) particularly because it is so much cheaper and efficient to store thermal energy than electricity, and there are no obvious production bottlenecks for CSP.  But this summit did convince me to include a full wedge of PV in “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution,” along with 3 wedges of CSP.

The Newsweek article is by Sharon Begley, a journalist who definitely gets global warming—see Newsweek’s Science Editor explains why climate change is “even worse than we feared” and how “a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear.”

And for those who want to learn about soils and biochar, the book has a good chapter:

Gore loves plants and soils as only a former farm boy can (well, a summertime farm boy: as a kid he spent the school year in Washington, where his father was a senator). He regales you with numbers: more CO2 is emitted from burning and destroying forests—20 to 23 percent of the annual total—than from all the world’s cars and trucks; only by the 1980s did CO2 from fossil fuels overtake that from deforestation, which accounts for 40 percent of the CO2 increase since the 1800s.

The potential for soils to absorb more of the CO2 that our utilities, factories, and vehicles spew poses a dilemma for Gore, one of two where his scientific and political instincts collide. With better management, soils could sequester much more carbon than they do now. The question is how much more. Soils scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University was surprised to get a call last summer (”Vice President Gore would like to talk to you”) that began, “I have 15 or 20 questions about soils and climate for you.” Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions. Other experts are even more sanguine. “If we feed the biology and manage grasslands appropriately, we could sequester as much carbon as we emit,” says Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, who presented at two summits. The political clash is this: if you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions—as one of Gore’s assistants told LaSalle in asking him to dial down his estimate. (He didn’t.)

To his credit, Gore sides with the science, letting the political chips fall where they may. He writes that soils could sequester an additional 15 percent of annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. That could cut 50 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years. (We are now at 387, up from 280 before the industrial era, with 450 ppm or even less a dangerous level.) To encourage changes in agriculture that would foster carbon sequestration, Gore advocates moving away from price supports and toward paying farmers for “how much carbon they can put into and keep in their soil,” he says. Paying farmers to sequester carbon might jump-start the use of biochar, which Gore calls “one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils, and sequestering significant amounts of CO2.” Biochar, which he learned about during a 1989 trip to the Amazon, is basically porous charcoal. Made by burning switch grass, corn husks, and other waste, it can absorb CO2 like a charcoal filter in a cigarette absorbs gases. Gore estimates that biochar could sequester 40 percent of annual CO2 emissions.

Begley notes one especially unexpected chapter in the book:

But because of one sentence, and one chapter, it does surprise. The chapter is an astute analysis of the psychological barriers that keep most Americans from taking the threat of climate change seriously, his acknowledgment that emotion, not just reason, drives the decisions people make. The sentence is this: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”

… Gore is a canny-enough politician to know that change of this magnitude takes time, and that politics tends to trump science. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found sharp declines in the numbers of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world is warming (57 percent, compared with 71 percent in April 2008), and in how many believe it is because of human activity (36 percent vs. 47 percent). Gore blames this on the boatloads of money the coal and oil industries have spent to muddy the science and confuse the public…. His favorite quote in Our Choice is from the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): “The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power … has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.”

The piece concludes with Gore’s native optimism:

“You know, the political system is [like climate] also nonlinear,” Gore says. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that tipping point,” when politicians and the public recognize the threat of climate change and act to avert it. “But I think we’re closer than ever. Reality does have a way of knocking on the door.”

Walking back through the house, I ask Gore again whether he believes the sanguine vision of Our Choice will come to be. He points to solar panels on his roof, and to his driveway, 300 feet beneath which seven geothermal wells gather the planet’s warmth to heat and cool his house. “I have to,” he says.

Our Choice is really the anti-SuperFreakonomics.  I’m sure it will be widely attacked by the deniers and delayers, so no doubt I’ll be blogging about it more this month.  The bottom line is that besides being informative, Our Choice is a truly beautiful book page after page, and I highly recommend it, particularly for those who want a broad overview of the key strategies for preserving a livable climate.

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A judge has ruled on a British citizen's accusation that the United Kingdom's distribution of An Inconvenient Truth to secondary schools amounts to political indoctrination. And the strange, strange verdict is: Yes, the documentary can be shown in schools -- as long as teachers follow guidelines to not promote Al Gore's "partisan political views" to impressionable schoolchildren. Because remember in the movie when Al Gore said "Kids, climate change is bad so you should always vote Democrat?" Yeah. Us neither.

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In July, a judge ruled that the British government's decision to send Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth documentary to 3,500 English secondary schools did not constitute political indoctrination of children. British citizen and fun-name owner Stewart Dimmock disagrees, and is suing his government to quash the dastardly distribution. Dimmock claims the "irredeemable" film contains "serious inaccuracies" and "misrepresentations"; that "the majority of the arguments are false, or falsely exaggerated"; that the movie is aimed at "scaring children into a particular point of view"; and that, by his calculations, An Inconvenient Truth is "just over half scientific material, 30 percent pure politics and about 20 percent sentimental mush." All of which we heartily pooh-pooh -- except maybe the mush part.

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Al Gore is writing another book -- and you can bet that climate change is shakin' in its boots. The Path to Survival, a solutions-focused sequel to the groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth, is slated to hit shelves on Earth Day 2008. (Where was that impeccable timing when you were campaigning, Al?) Billed as "part scientific manual, part exposé, part visionary call for a new planet-wide political movement," the book will spell out climate-helpful steps for both individuals and governments to take. It will also explain how "bold choices now to protect our environment will also create new jobs, propel sustainable economic improvements, and inspire a new generation to tackle our most challenging issues with moral leadership," according to a not-so-subtle statement from publisher Rodale. There are not yet plans to turn the sequel into a movie, but, nonetheless, we've already bought our tickets.

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And ... action! We've reeled in a cast of green-themed flicks; pop some popcorn, see what made the cut, then play critic in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

An Inconvenient Truth
Mr. Gore went to Washington, and we all know how that turned out. But when Al hit Hollywood, it was a different story altogether. An Inconvenient Truth let the former veep shout his climate message from the proverbial rooftops. Who would have thought a documentary about a politician with a whiz-bang computer presentation would make such an impact, let alone win a couple of Academy Awards? But Gore's star turn changed climate conversations forever. (2006)

Erin Brockovich
Julia Roberts lends star power -- and plenty of cleavage -- to this based-on-a-true-story epic of wronged Californians rallying against a shady corporate polluter. The title character, a stereotype-bucking, working-class mom, transforms her professional inexperience into an asset, helping to coordinate one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history. (2000)

Winged Migration
Before penguin peregrinations became all the rage, this documentary captured the grandeur of nature by following the migrations of more than a dozen bird species, spanning four years, 40 countries, and all seven continents. French filmmaker Jacques Perrin, working with a 450-person crew, used planes, gliders, helicopters, and hot-air balloons to capture the impressive journeys, which make waddling across ice look like child's play. (2001)

The China Syndrome
Released just two weeks before the infamous Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania, The China Syndrome tells the fictional story of a reporter who stumbles on a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant. The film stars Jane Fonda as the determined TV journalist and Jack Lemmon as an earnest whistleblower, roles that earned them Oscar nominations for best actress and actor. (1979)

Silkwood
More nukes and news outlets: Based on a true story, Silkwood delves into the circumstances surrounding the suspicious death of Karen Silkwood, a metal worker at a plutonium processing plant who was on her way to meet with a New York Times investigative reporter about negligence at the plant when she died in a one-car accident. Meryl Streep and Cher reaped Oscar nominations for their acting, and Kurt Russell got critical acclaim too. (1983)

A Civil Action
Call it Erin Brockovich, East Coast style: A gripping true-life legal drama about polluted water, corporate malfeasance, and one Boston lawyer's personal and professional gambles to take down the bad guys, A Civil Action won over audiences and critics alike, and was nominated for two Academy Awards. Plus: John Travolta as a suave legal eagle. What's not to love? (1998)

Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey
Shedding the shoulder pads of the same year's Working Girl, Sigourney Weaver plays naturalist Dian Fossey in this based-on-actual-events film. Fossey studied and passionately defended Rwanda's mountain gorillas for more than 20 years before she was mysteriously murdered. Weaver won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. (1988)

The Day After Tomorrow
Audiences around the world clung to the edges of their seats throughout this big-budget summer disaster flick, wondering if Dennis Quaid would be able to trek through a climate-changed, storm-ravaged landscape to find son Jake Gyllenhaal. OK, that's not true -- they mostly chuckled at the overblown drama and bad script. Nevertheless, the film was a rollicking good ride that acted as a catalyst for climate discussions in the mainstream media two years before An Inconvenient Truth. (2004)

Chinatown
A Roman Polanski film-noir detective flick starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, Chinatown was adored by critics, won an Academy Award in 1975 for best original screenplay, and was nominated for 10 other Oscars. In addition to the expected murder, adultery, and deceit, its plot revolves around dams, drought, agriculture, land grabs, and L.A.'s precarious water supply. (1974)

Hoot
Based on a young adult novel by Carl Hiaasen that earned the prestigious Newberry Honor in 2003, Hoot centers on the lives of three kids who are willing to do whatever it takes to save a local population of endangered burrowing owls, facing down crooked politicians, land developers, and bumbling cops. Jimmy Buffett produced the film, and Luke Wilson stars as a bumbling cop. (2006)

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream
In a year dominated by the ultimate fantasy film, Lord of the Rings, this clear-eyed, frighteningly prescient documentary took a real-life look at the impending end of cheap oil. The End of Suburbia explores how dry oil wells will impact the U.S. economy and the much-cherished, resource-intensive American Dream. It's enough to make you want to move to Middle Earth. (2004)

Blue Vinyl
This acclaimed documentary begins with filmmaker Judith Helfand discovering a severed ear in a field -- no, wait. Wrong movie. This one starts with Helfand trying to convince her parents to get rid of the blue vinyl siding on their house, sending Helfand and fellow documentarian Daniel B. Gold on a journey to the U.S. vinyl capital in Louisiana, then to Italy and beyond to talk with experts, doctors, and activists about the ubiquitous and harmful plastic. (2002)

Happy Feet
A hit with the kids, this Oscar-winning animated film capitalized on the penguin-mania inspired by the staggeringly successful March of the Penguins. Its heavy-handed message (human activity is messing with the food chain) was made digestible with the help of a whole lotta foot-tappin' fun. (2006)

Who Killed the Electric Car?
Narrated by Martin Sheen, Who Killed the Electric Car? is part murder mystery, part documentary, tracing the rise and premature fall of the electric car in the United States. The must-see for alternative-transport enthusiasts features interviews with Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, ex-CIA chief James Woolsey, and others. (2006)

Fire Down Below
A fast-paced action flick starring Steven Seagal and Kris Kristofferson, Fire Down Below features big-time polluters frightening rural townsfolk into shutting up. That is, until undercover federal agent Jack Taggart (Seagal) comes to town to expose the truth and kick some -- um, sense into the dirty corporate scofflaws. (1997)

Syriana
This disjointed political thriller darts between loosely connected stories with a common theme: the disturbing effects of global oil addiction. Syriana stars George Clooney and Matt Damon; Clooney won an Oscar for his performance. (2005)

Over the Hedge
An animated film that touches lightly on the issue of sprawl and its effects on wildlife, Over the Hedge pokes fun at humans and suburbia via animals voiced by Bruce Willis, Steve Carell, and others. (2006)

Soylent Green
A classic film about an environmental dystopia in the now-not-so-far-off year 2022 -- complete with rampant overpopulation and massive food shortages -- Soylent Green stars Charlton Heston as a detective investigating the murder of a food company exec. In the end, Heston's character uncovers profoundly disturbing secrets about the industrial food system. Thank goodness it's just a movie! (1973)

Safe
Starring Julianne Moore, Safe is the slowest, quietest horror film you'll ever see. It follows the story of a woman who develops chemical sensitivities that drive her away from her cushioned suburban life. (1995)

Think this green ode to the silver screen is tarnished? Help polish it up by submitting your own suggestions below in comments.

Todd Hymas Samkara contributed to this list.

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Can Al Gore's message be tailored for kids? Lisa Shimizu thinks so.

Over the past few months, Shimizu has been developing a version of the Inconvenient Truth slideshow that would be easily understood by and engaging for children. After testing it out on captive audiences ranging from her 8-year-old daughter Aya to a classroom full of fifth graders, Shimizu recently gave the presentation to a kid-heavy audience of more than 250 at Seattle's Town Hall, a community culture center.

A member of the programming team at Seattle rock station KEXP, Shimizu was first exposed to Gore's work after being tasked with organizing a PSA campaign focused on global warming -- a subject, she confesses, she didn't know much about. Shimizu says she grabbed two interns and went to see An Inconvenient Truth.

Sitting in the theater, Shimizu was compelled by the film's call to action. "I think it just came from being a member of the human race and part of the planet," she says. "And also just being a mother and really feeling the shock and concern over the state of the planet and what condition it was going to be in when my grandchildren were born."

On a whim, Shimizu filled out an application to be part of the Gore Climate Project, which trained volunteers across the world to replicate the talk. She never imagined she'd be selected, she says. "I told them on my application, 'I'm not an environmentalist. I'm not a scientist. I'm a mom ... and if I can help, I want to be part of this.'"

Her plea was heard, and in early January, Shimizu headed to Nashville, Tenn., where she spent two intense days training with some 200 other people who'd also answered the call. During her flight home, she reflected on the experience and began to wonder how to make the information palatable for her daughter. Knowing the film was too long and a bit too scary to be effective, Shimizu decided to cut the 300-slide presentation down to focus on three elements: "hurricanes, oceans, and ice -- oh my!"

After Shimizu's audience got settled in the folding-chair furnished open space, she opened her presentation with a quick geography lesson, asking the kids in the audience to help her name the continents as she pointed to them on a map. In fact, much of the presentation was interactive in this way, with Shimizu asking the children to tell her about dinosaurs and fossil fuels, then the ocean's "conveyor belt" that brings warm waters (and temperatures) to Europe and other areas. And the kids already knew a surprising amount of the science -- more than some parents, actually, as a few "raise your hand if you think ..." questions demonstrated.

Shimizu meets Gore.

For the most part, Shimizu's presentation seemed to mirror Gore's, albeit with many fewer slides -- and syllables. The familiar glacial-retreat images were there, as was the cartoon sequence by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and (surprisingly) the CO2/temperature-change graphs made famous by Gore's dramatic use of the lift.

One major addition, though, was an activity toward the end: this Gore disciple asked each family to decide together what changes at home (from buying a hybrid car to planting a tree to weatherizing the whole house) would add up to the most CO2 savings. Framed on a Biggest Loser concept, the exercise helped introduce the concepts laid forth in the activity book Low Carbon Diet -- A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds, which was later handed out to the families.

Following Shimizu's presentation, a fifth-grade teacher brought a volunteer on stage to power a light bulb by riding a stationary bike while explaining the simple science of energy generation. She then opened a curtain revealing three tables of activities for the kids to investigate, including a simulated wind farm (a hair dryer and fan) and basic motors.

"If science is presented in a cool way, kids love it -- they dig it," Shimizu said, confessing that she was never interested in science as a kid. "They learn that science isn't boring, science isn't geeky, and they want to learn more." She added that her hope for the presentation and the hands-on activities was that kids would begin to develop environmental awareness, then get their parents on board to work together as a family.

Six-year-old Gordon Sebring of Seattle was one of the many children tinkering with the mechanical displays when I knelt on the floor to ask him what he thought about Shimizu's slideshow. "It was really cool," he answered. And could he tell me what was happening with the wires and the light bulb he was holding? "[I'm] making these things move, and then that's lighting up this," he said excitedly, pointing to the various parts of the set-up. "This is connected to that, and then it goes to this." Oh, OK, that explains it.

I also spoke with Sarah Guinee of Bellevue, who was twice Gordon's age and a bit more articulate. What did she think of the presentation? "I thought it was a great learning experience," she said. "I learned a lot more about global warming and what's happening."

The positive response from kids and parents alike was a bit overwhelming for Shimizu, who found herself in tears just before the show (for which, full disclosure, Grist was a media sponsor) as she watched more and more families take their seats. Afterward, she was asked to make her presentation at area schools, and to develop a teen-focused slideshow for the Seattle Town Hall's Teen Science Series in the fall.

She was even approached by two local legislators -- both of whom brought their own children to the show -- who asked her to collaborate with them on future presentations. The invitations were exciting, she said, because "we live in an area where we've got forward-thinking, environmentally aware council members."

"Families can do all they want," she said, "but if we don't have change at the policy-making level, their changes don't mean anything. Conversely, if we have new policies, and we don't have families on board that are understanding it and participating, the policies don't make a difference either. Everybody needs to get on board."

The last kid-chat I had suggests that that's beginning to happen. Said 8-year-old Emily Justice Devereaux-Yao of Seattle, "My favorite part is when I was learning about the North Pole." And what's happening to the North Pole, I asked. "The ice is melting because of carbon dioxide." And what do we do that causes that carbon dioxide, I prodded. "We burn fuel," she answered confidently. Talk about a take-home message.

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