If you asked the average member of the European elite when world affairs began to take a turn for the worse, my guess is that many of them would plump not for 9/11, but instead for the moment when the US Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had won the 2000 presidential election. As President Bush’s reputation has sunk in Europe, so the reputation of Al Gore - the "lost leader" - has soared. The fact that Gore has become a standard bearer for action on climate change has only added to his saintly reputation.
I got a taste of Europe’s "adoration of Al" on Sunday night in Brussels, when Gore passed through town for a gala showing of his film, An Inconvenient Truth. No fewer than four worthies lined up to introduce Gore’s brief speech. One of them, a Swedish academic whose name escapes me, managed to liken Gore to both Albert Schweitzer and Gandhi.
Then we all trooped into Brussels’s grandest theatre for a showing of the film. Gore was introduced yet again, this time by the EU’s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas. Mr Dimas ended his peroration by lamenting the fact that Europeans aren’t allowed to vote in American elections. Ain’t life a bitch, as they say on the other side of the Atlantic. Maybe the EU should take the issue up in trade talks with the United States. Perhaps there could be some sort of reciprocal arrangement. Greeks like Mr Dimas get to vote in the American presidential election - and in return Texans get to vote in the French presidential election.
As for the Gore film itself - it pulled off the unusual feat of being simultaneously very compelling and strangely dull. The overall message is convincing, depressing and powerfully presented. But the film also drags a little, since it is essentially a glorified power-point presentation, with a few home movies from the Gore family album thrown in.

The addition of all this family footage also raised in my mind the (doubtless unworthy) suspicion that Gore’s motives for making "An Inconvenient Truth" may not be confined solely to raising public consciousness about climate change. Gore continues to deny that he will be a candidate for the presidency in 2008. But many a presidential candidate would kill for the chance to re-introduce himself to the American public, via a feature film showing on screens across the US. Many of the episodes highlighted in the film - the idyllic childhood on a farm, the life-changing accident to a beloved child, the death of a sister - are the kind of personal details that can be terribly useful to a presidential campaign.
Is that too cynical? I don’t doubt Gore’s sincerity on climate change. Nor do I doubt the urgency of the message that he is trying to get across. But having seen his film, I would not be amazed to see him running in 2008.
After watching "An Inconvenient Truth", I went down to the Grand Place in the centre of Brussels and had an ice cream. It is unusual to be eating ice cream outside at midnight in October in northern Europe. But then the weather is unseasonably warm at the moment. I wonder why?

October 10th, 2006 in Europe | Permalink