It’s been 11 years since Al Gore was in Vancouver to promote his then-new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which sent several loud warning shots across the bow of S.S. Planet Earth.

He spent some time with the Georgia Straight, and most of what we talked about then still pertains, unfortunately. The jury-rigged Iraq War, then at its peak, was horrible but a mere blip compared to the melting polar icecaps, he was sure. In fact, the projected changes in the environment as a result of climate change are moving many times faster than most models then predicted.

In 2006, well-funded climate-change deniers were filling the airwaves with their own toxic pollution, and now they’re in charge of NASA, the EPA, and most other instruments of power. Currently, we have to explain to our children and grandkids why they can’t necessarily trust world leaders anymore. It’s in this brown-tinged environment that Gore presents An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

The former U.S. vice president—who won the popular vote for president in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush in a still-controversial Supreme Court decision—was in Toronto recently to talk about the new movie (which opens Friday [August 4] ) and what he’s seen since the first one.

“There are really two changes that have taken place,” Gore says by phone, in his light Tennessee accent. “The climate-related extreme events are way more common now. I know that B.C. has some really big fires right now. We had a hundred new fires break out in California just last night, and many more throughout the American West. There are big downpours and floods, as well as drought, and sea levels rising everywhere. The other big development is that some real solutions are here! The price of renewables for electricity has come down so far and so fast that it’s really changing, well, everything.”

Also in Hogtown is one of the new doc’s lead producers: Jeff Skoll, a Montreal-born filmmaker who helped make advocacy docs like Citizenfour and The Merchants of Doubt as well as politically minded features like Fair Game, Spotlight, and Bridge of Spies. He continues the theme.

“The economics for clean tech offer incredible opportunities,” Skoll asserts. “Many of the leading next-generation companies are embracing this. I think back to a recent chat with your mayor in Vancouver, and with Catherine McKenna, your [federal] minister of environment and climate, and they have mandates, and budgets, to do good work on innovation, technology, and climate mitigation. For American entrepreneurs who are seeing a frosty atmosphere in the U.S., the opportunity to partner in Canada has been very compelling, and I believe there will be a number of interesting announcements to come out of this before the end of the year.”

For Gore, climate deniers aren’t just wrong; they are also small-minded in the business sense.

“There’s a lot of free-floating anger about things that are unconnected to climate, and that colours the discussion. But in the U.S., solar employment is growing 17 times faster than other jobs, and the single fastest-growing job is wind-turbine technician. These new economic realities are starting to take hold.

“There’s a law in physics that has become a cliché in politics: for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Back in the Reagan years, when he scared the hell out of people by accelerating the nuclear-arms race, it led to the Freeze Movement and, eventually, to meaningful arms control. Now, with Trump on climate, there’s a huge upsurge of progressive activism in the U.S. like I’ve never seen before.”

Indeed, recent catastrophes can be read as supplementary slides for Gore’s travelling presentation.

“Every night,” he says with a sardonic chuckle, “the evening news is like a nature walk through the Book of Revelations.”

Skoll picks up the thread: “These days, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been affected by floods, fires, monsoons, or freak storms. This is not a coincidence. And we have to take action now to protect ourselves from what’s going on. The website inconvenienttruth.com has a beautiful 10-minute version of Al’s slide show that you are free to take, and there are a number of ways there to get involved.”

With cable and free media swamped by corporate demands and fake news about, well, fake news, this Canadian expat figures it’s up to filmmakers to keep things moving.

“You can’t underestimate the power of storytelling to affect the human condition,” Skoll declares. “It’s something we’ve done since we lived in caves. But the modern version of storytelling has been corrupted by money, and this is pretty important to our future as a democracy and a civilization. We certainly have a battle on our hands.”

Sadly, many of Gore’s allies, including the Clintons, don’t seem to find the climate threat worth talking about—and that certainly had an effect on last year’s election.

“I think it’s finally beginning to change,” the former veep says after a long pause. “There are many members of Congress that have recently taken up this issue. There have even been a number of Republicans who have changed their positions. There’s something called the Noah’s Ark Caucus, which is not only a reference to the Great Flood but also because they have to join in twos: one Democrat and one Republican. We are close to a working majority on climate now. But you’re just not hearing about it yet.”

That might have something to do with the alleged man at the top, who—beleaguered by accusations of treason, corruption, and other problems of his own making—has taken time out to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Suddenly, people are getting used to working around America’s leadership instead of counting on it.

“If you look at what [Gov.] Jerry Brown is doing in California, and [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo in New York, you see that,” Gore insists. “Lots of cities are making the commitment to go 100 percent renewable. Hey, if Atlanta, Georgia, can do it, any city can do it.”

Skoll, a founding figure of eBay who put most of his money back into media, adds that he “happened to be with” a group of tech moguls, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the day of Trump’s infamous announcement.

“The response in the room was absolutely unanimous,” he recalls. “They said, ‘We are going to double down on clean technology. We’re going to find ways to win this, with or without the U.S. administration.’ ”

A constant theme here, and in the movie, is that adversity is actually speeding up the resistance. In fact, Gore is sure the Paris terror attacks, coming just before the climate-change conference, probably deepened the resolve of those gathered to fight back where it matters.

“I really think it had a galvanizing effect,” this Inconvenient Truther concludes. “It’s really hard to put it into words. Every one of the 150 world leaders who spoke there began with condolences and then moved on to solidarity with the others. They said, ‘This is a real opportunity to make something good out of the evil that occurred here.’ I believe it had a very profound effect on the success of the conference. And I believe it still will. We’re all in this for the long run.”