62 pages • 2 hours read
Al GoreAn Inconvenient Truth
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Al Gore
As a nonfiction book about a global environmental issue, An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t offer characters in the traditional sense, but Gore does offer personal information about his own life. This type of narration brings what can feel like an impersonal, science-heavy subject down to a human scale. He talks about members of his family and how incidences in their lives have affected his activism. His son’s accident, his sister’s death, and his father’s political career all shaped the person he became.
This narrative device also helps highlight both his interest in and his authority on the subject. By focusing on the places he’s been to view the effects of global warming for himself, he injects a more emotional note that readers can better relate to. He positions himself as a driven man, passionate about the environment not just because he enjoys nature and has a connection to it, but because he feels it is a moral imperative for him as a public servant to focus on an issue that may have such wide-reaching and catastrophic consequences.
Roger Revelle
The first scientist to propose measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Revelle appears so prominently at least in part because he was one of Gore’s professors. Gore uses his work to provide evidence of global climate change, and includes a narrative relating his personal experiences with the Harvard professor that led Gore to champion the cause.
Albert Gore
Gore’s young son figures prominently in Gore’s decision to prioritize the issue of global warming. Albert bolted into the street one day to chase a friend, and was subsequently hit by a car. Gore and his wife virtually lived in the hospital while the boy recovered. This event is what Gore calls a “turning point that changed [him] in ways [he] couldn’t have imagined” (70).
Albert Gore Sr.
Gore’s father, a politician, was instrumental in influencing his son to enter a life of public service while also instilling in him a love of nature. Gore writes, “My dad taught me the moral necessity of caring for the land” (124).
Nancy Gore
Gore describes his sister as “Luminous. Charismatic. Gutsy. Astute. Funny. Incredibly smart. And Kind” (256).Gore’s sister started smoking at 13 and died of lung cancer in 1984. In the book, Gore uses her death as an example of the way corporations put profits ahead of public health.
Philip Cooney
Cooney can be seen as the antagonist of the piece. Gore introduces him as the lawyer/lobbyist in charge of environmental policy at the White House, once in charge of “the oil and coal companies’ campaign to confuse the American people about [climate change]” (264) and then tasked with obfuscating facts about climate change under the Bush-Cheney administration.
