Twenty years ago today, An Inconvenient Truth made its debut in movie theaters across the U.S.
I’ll be honest: I was skeptical that my slideshow about the climate crisis could become a successful movie. But thanks to our immensely talented director, Davis Guggenheim, Jeff Skoll, who made the ultimate decision to make the movie, and the incredible team behind the film — Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns, Lesley Chilcott, Ricky Strauss, Diane Weyermann, and so many others, the film was a huge success, and opened the eyes of millions around the world to the threat posed by the climate crisis.
While I wasn’t sure that there’d be widespread public interest in a science-based slideshow, I have never doubted humanity’s ability to solve this crisis.
We know we must act, and Mother Nature is making that clearer and clearer every day. We’re already feeling the rapidly worsening impacts of a warming planet. Those impacts are evidence that our cause is even more urgent than it was 20 years ago. And as a result, the global movement for climate action has grown into the largest morally-based movement in the history of the world.
We also know now that we can act. Indeed, in the past 20 years, we’ve made tremendous progress: The world came together in 2015 to forge the historic Paris Agreement, which despite the recent U.S. withdrawal, continues to drive global action and ambition. Incredibly, last year, renewables made up 86% of all the new electric power installed around the world. In the U.S., renewables were 92% of all new power capacity!
Electric vehicles are now 25% of all new car sales worldwide and the sales of gasoline-powered vehicles have been declining since they peaked in 2017.
Unfortunately, however, the crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying the solutions — solutions that are now way cheaper than the dirty and dangerous fossil fuels still spewing heat-trapping pollution into the sky as if it is an open sewer.
So, while this is a natural occasion to reflect on the 20 years since the movie came out, I’m focused much more intensely on what we need to do now in order to shape what our world will look like in the next 20 years.
I’m still presenting my updated slideshow all over the world, training grassroots climate leaders and working with partners in 194 countries and territories who are creating change in their communities, in their workplaces and schools, and in their nation’s policies.
From what I’m seeing and hearing, I have no doubt that we will win this struggle. But it is still not clear that we will win it in time to avoid catastrophic damage and the dangerous negative tipping points that the climate scientists have long been warning us we must prevent.
Will we muster the moral courage and political will to solve this crisis?
Well, if you ever doubt our ability to do so, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource. It’s up to all of us to renew it.
Photos: Still from An Inconvenient Truth, 2006.
Climate Reality Project training in Nashville, TN, 2026.
There is no pathway to climate stability or sustainable development without keeping nature intact. By 2030, we must halt the loss of remaining intact biomes while reversing extinction risks and scaling up restoration. New paper with @FrontScience.
https://t.co/8JG6RQQXNa
Humans and their livestock now account for more than 96 percent of all mammal biomass on the planet. Actual wild animals are only a tiny, tiny sliver by comparison.
This is an important 26 minute video of leading scientists explaining the facts about climate change in London, UK, last week. Share widely.
#ClimateCrisis
https://t.co/hNUuWibifY
@TheRealTRizzo@ESPNCleveland I’ve not forgotten - talk about messing with the integrity of the game. Please. @mlb if you have the evidence, suspend already.
Battery fire at the Cleveland Public Power substation that includes the "whale building" leads to outages around downtown and the East Side.
Outage knocked out air conditioning in the Cuyahoga County Jail and Justice Center courts tower.
📉 Spring 2025 saw the lowest seasonal river flow across Europe since #EFAS records began in 1992.
This new map, featured in the May #C3S Climate Bulletin, highlights widespread below-average flows in central, eastern & northern Europe.
More details: https://t.co/8JuYRwaPSk
@DreKnott You’ve got to ask Vogt about why he left Castillo out there. Big crowd, tight game, and the kid clearly didn’t have his stuff. Bad look in front of the home fans. @CleGuardians
HAPPENING NOW: @CSISDefense discusses Russia’s war in Ukraine and the prospects for peace, given the current state of the conflict.
Tune in: https://t.co/HIsnCczdu6
🧵🇺🇦Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago today. To mark the anniversary, CSIS experts look to the war’s past and future, examining its impacts on Ukraine, Russia, and the world at large.
Explore here: https://t.co/D0MbKVhrae
@ESPNCleveland@HammerNation19@TheOGPAW@HammerNation19 disagree with your take on Myles. @Browns “smart, tough, accountable “ went out the window when Watson was brought in. @Browns culture became “I get paid, regardless…” Why wouldn’t you want to leave a toxic culture that is anathema to winning?
@NickWilsonSays Your 50-50 distribution of blame for the @Browns offensive woes is wrong. In the @NFL you can’t design an offense for a QB who can’t get rid of the ball in less than 3 seconds, and who doesn’t or can’t make the right pre-snap reads: D-Linemen are just too fast.
Honored to have our research supported by the DOE Early Career Research Program. With this support we will extend our single-molecule separation science research to rare earth elements (REEs). Can’t wait to see where this research takes us!
Yet it’s close to what we saw in the playoffs against the @HoustonTexans. I hope those press conferences get a little more uncomfortable for the @Browns this week.