What impact do envi­ron­men­tal doc­u­men­taries real­ly have?

For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore is back at the lectern with An Incon­ve­nient Sequel, the fol­low up to 2006’s An Incon­ve­nient Truth. Both a val­i­da­tion of the first film’s warn­ings and an update of their efforts, it takes us up to the land­mark 2016 Paris Cli­mate Change Agreement.

Yet many of the issues the first film high­light­ed still haven’t been addressed. The gov­ern­ment of Gore’s own coun­try has with­drawn from the Paris Agree­ment, with offi­cial bod­ies even dis­cour­ag­ing the term cli­mate change from any pub­lic releas­es. The debate rages on, with some very pow­er­ful quar­ters even chal­leng­ing the exis­tence of cli­mate change. So, did the first film make a dif­fer­ence? Can any doc­u­men­tary real­is­ti­cal­ly hope to have a tan­gi­ble impact on the world?

Gore won an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize and numer­ous oth­er awards for the first film a decade ago. A mix­ture of a TED talk and a con­cert movie, it was the filmed ver­sion of a speech Gore had giv­en numer­ous times on the impact we are hav­ing on the world, find­ing itself at the cen­tre of a mid-2000s move­ment to a more con­cert­ed effort to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment. It prompt­ed numer­ous stud­ies, became part of the cur­ricu­lum in many coun­tries, and in gen­er­al put the sub­ject on the world­wide agen­da. Gore became a kind of activism pop star – quite lit­er­al­ly, as he found him­self on stage at Giants Sta­di­um dur­ing one of the Live Earth concerts.

The film has done a lot to raise aware­ness, but actu­al­ly get­ting those in the seat of pow­er to act takes more than box office fig­ures. Politi­cians have been slow to make progress, with events such as the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis steal­ing the head­lines over the years. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion must feel like anoth­er set­back, but there’s no deny­ing the reach and edu­ca­tion An Incon­ve­nient Truth has had in lit­tle over a decade. ​“The prob­lems are worse but the solu­tions are here,” as Gore recent­ly put it dur­ing an inter­view with Bernie Sanders, and per­haps the best both of his films can hope to achieve is to pop­u­larise those solutions.

While Gore’s film attempt­ed to change the world’s approach, oth­er films have enjoyed more dra­mat­ic suc­cess on small­er tar­gets. 2013’s Black­fish had a very direct impact on SeaWorld’s for­tunes, both in terms of rep­u­ta­tion and finan­cial bot­tom line. In March 2016, less than three years after the film’s release, Sea­World announced it would end all live shows fea­tur­ing Orcas, as well as its breed­ing pro­gramme. It’s dif­fi­cult to point to any­thing oth­er than the Sun­dance hit when won­der­ing why such dra­mat­ic action hap­pened so quickly.

But beyond envi­ron­men­tal issues there are numer­ous exam­ples of doc­u­men­taries mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. Pro­pa­gan­da series Why We Fight was Frank Capra’s wartime call to arms in response to Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will – arguably two of the most impact­ful doc­u­men­taries ever made. On a small­er scale, Michael Moore’s Bowl­ing for Columbine ends with a tri­umphant Moore being told that Kmart would cease sell­ing hand­gun ammu­ni­tion; while the option to swap your fries for car­rot sticks at McDonald’s has a lot to do with Mor­gan Spurlock’s Super­size Me.

Sav­ing the plan­et may be too much to ask, but pro­vid­ed the expec­ta­tions are real­is­tic doc­u­men­taries can have an enor­mous impact on the way we see the world that sur­rounds us. Great doc­u­men­taries cre­ate a clear, con­cise dis­course that allow peo­ple to engage with the sub­ject at hand. Whether peo­ple agreed with Gore or denounced him, he put envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns into the main­stream in a way that few had done before. An Incon­ve­nient Sequel may strug­gle to over­turn gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, but it will ensure the warn­ings of 2006 are not forgotten.