Former US Vice President Al Gore kicked off his latest climate initiative at 7 p.m. local time in Mexico City Wednesday evening, marking the first of 24 straight hours of presentations and panel discussions about global warming as the campaign follows the setting sun around the globe before wrapping up in New York City Thursday evening.

Advanced by The Climate Reality Project, an activist group founded by Gore, the online campaign is intended to counter climate sceptics and build grassroots support for action to counter global warming. In large part, it does so by linking recent extreme weather — from fires in Texas to flooding in Australia and landslides in Brazil — to global warming. As discussed in our pages last week, this kind of statistical attribution remains problematic and controversial, although scientists are increasingly willing to broach the subject. For Gore, it’s a way of trying to connect an inconveniently faceless and timeless threat with people here and now.

“The climate isn’t a political problem,” Gore said during the opening session. "It’s a human problem.

As with “”https://www.climatecrisis.net/an_inconvenient_truth/about_the_film.php">An Inconvenient Truth", the 2006 documentary based on a climate lecture Gore was delivering at the time, these 24 hours of reality are based on a lecture. The difference is that the lecture is being delivered 23 times in 13 languages by volunteers around the globe before Gore, presumably, delivers the final installment. In between presentations, there are various panel discussions featuring scientists, policy experts, activists and entrepreneurs talking about local themes. In addition to live viewing, archived videos are available from earlier presentations and discussions.

Gore says he hopes the event will mark “the beginning of a new era of activism”, but he faces a tough battle ahead. Stay tuned for further analysis of the event — and what might happen when our brief brush with reality comes to an end…