Al Gore: The Cold Never Bothered Him Anyway

As record warm temps sweep the globe — 65 degrees in New York in January! — the former veep opens the festival with An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, while he continues his climate change crusade and describes private chats with Donald Trump: ‘He was receptive’

- Tatiana Siegel

Covering nearly an entire wall in Al Gore’s Nashville office is an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Of all the decorations on display — including scads of White House memorabilia from his old job as vice president of the United States — this is the one piece he’s most eager to show off. “It’s called the Deep Field Hubble Image,” he says, nodding toward the photo. “What they did is they said, ‘Let’s find the darkest possible spot in the universe and focus on it.’ It was completely black, nothing. But when exposed to the lens for two full weeks, that’s what you see — galaxies, as far as you can see.”

Actually, the splotchy picture looks more like an oversized Lite-Brite than a window into the bottomless depths of outer space. But no matter. It’s still a pretty good metaphor for 68-year-old Gore’s latest challenge. Never has the universe seemed more dark and despairing — at least from an ecological crusader’s point of view — than since the Nov. 8 election of Donald Trump (who once proclaimed global warming a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese). And yet, the man who 11 years ago warned against a coming environmental disaster in An Inconvenient Truth — and who is about to sound the alarm again in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, premiering at Sundance on Jan. 19 — still finds a way to spot glimmers of light and hope in the black void. Even after actually meeting Trump.