News

Two decades ago, David Suzuki begged Al Gore to move to Canada and run for prime minister.

The two had been talking about global warming, and Mr. Gore's grasp of the issue sent shivers up Mr. Suzuki's spine. He was half-joking in his attempt to lure him north, but the future vice-president of the United States gave him a sobering answer.

"Don't look to politicians like me," Mr. Gore, then a U.S. senator, told Mr. Suzuki, a broadcaster and activist. "You have to sell it to the Canadian public. You have to convince them and show them there are alternatives, and get them to care enough and to demand that something be done."

Today, Al Gore is a self-described "recovering politician" who has found a new purpose and passion in life -- not to mention celebrity status -- by doing exactly what he instructed Mr. Suzuki to do 20 years ago, although he is doing it on an international scale.

His documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, lays out the reasons why taking action on climate change is a moral imperative. A box-office hit, it could win an Academy Award this weekend for best documentary feature.

Mr. Gore and his slideshow are in demand.

When tickets for his presentation tonight at the University of Toronto went on sale over the Internet, there were 23,000 hits in three minutes. Tickets were $20, but David Griebeling, 25, who works at the Ontario Securities Commission in Toronto, ended up paying $400 for a pair of tickets he bought on the Internet for his mother.

"Al Gore has become a cultural icon for a topic that my mom strongly supports," he said. He gave her the tickets for her birthday. "All she could say was, 'Wow,' over and over again."

The rich and famous are also flocking to Mr. Gore's side. Sheryl Crow, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi and other big names are on board for the string of concerts he is helping to organize in July to mobilize the masses to push for action on global warming.

He drives a hybrid car instead of a Cadillac, and has made his house more energy-efficient, Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gore, said. He is also enjoying himself.

"He's having a great time," she said.

It wasn't much fun after he won the popular vote in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, but George W. Bush became President. Fellow Democrats blamed the loss on his stiff, overpackaged performance during the campaign.

Afterward, he put on weight, grew a beard and travelled through Europe with his wife, Tipper. Then she dug out the carousels and the projector from storage in Virginia, and suggested he take his old global-warming slideshow on the road.

In the 1960s, as an undergraduate at Harvard, Mr. Gore became convinced about the dangers posed by the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He held the first congressional hearings on the issue after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He started doing a slideshow in the 1990s, when he was a senator.

He revamped the show, which became the basis for the documentary directed by David Guggenheim, and for the talks he continues to give, including the one tonight in Toronto.

That slideshow turned Mr. Gore, a man once derided by his critics as Ozone Man or Mr. Dull on Wheels into a superstar, the most famous environmentalist in the world. How did such a stodgy guy help make global warming so hot?

Some say he is letting his passion show, and that if he had done so during the 2000 election he might have become president. Others say he is a more natural teacher and lecturer than politician.

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club in the United States, told Rolling Stone magazine that Mr. Gore has made himself an "indispensable character" in the drama of the climate crisis.

He is the hero of the documentary, a politician who has crusaded against global warming in the House and the Senate and who, after leaving politics, takes his slideshow from city to city.

Mr. Suzuki agreed. "The film made Al Gore bigger than Al Gore."

None of the material in it is new. He and other environmentalists have been making the same arguments, issuing the same warnings, for decades. But the documentary weaves the science of global warming and Mr. Gore's personal history into a compelling narrative about one man pushing for change.

His timing was bang-on. Concern over global warming was already growing when his documentary was released last year. People were ready to hear his arguments about the dangers posed by a hotter world, including higher sea levels, more devastating storms and more droughts.

"He hasn't done it on his own," said Ingrid Stefanovic, director of U of T's Centre for the Environment, which is playing host to Mr. Gore. "People are beginning to realize that something is changing."

Mr. Gore has his critics. They wonder why he didn't talk much about global warming during the 2000 election, why he was able to accomplish so little on climate change when he was in office.

He prefers to deliver his message directly to people, undiluted by the news media. He asked that reporters not attend the U of T event, and at one earlier in the day in Montreal. He declined an interview with The Globe and Mail. Ms. Kreider said he gets 70 requests a day.

From politician to crusader

The emotional Al Gore

In his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore talks of personal tragedies and tough times in interviews done off-camera with director David Guggenheim. The stories aren't new. But you can hear the emotion in his voice, and they have helped reshape his public persona from a stiff politician into a passionate crusader.

The car crash

Seventeen years ago, Gore's son Albert, then 6, was hit by a car when he dashed across the street to see a friend. He hovered for weeks between life and death before pulling through. The trauma prompted Mr. Gore to reassess his life -- and, he says, to make the climate crisis his top professional priority.

His sister Nancy

She was 10 years older than him -- a friend and a protector. She started smoking as a teen, and died of lung cancer in 1984. Despite the evidence that smoking was linked to cancer, his father, Al Gore Sr., didn't stopped growing tobacco on the family farm in Tennessee after her death. There comes a day of reckoning, Mr. Gore says, when you wished you had connected the dots sooner.

On losing the 2000 election

"Well, it was a hard blow," he says, "but what do you do? You make the best of it." He dusted off his old slides on climate change, and went on the road, giving lectures.