The man who introduces himself as the guy who "used to be the next president of the United States" is not impressed with Canada.

Al Gore slammed the Conservative government while in Vancouver Friday for not supporting the Kyoto Accord, an agreement he helped draft.

"If somebody would have told me there was going to be a third nation to go into the dunce box with the U.S. and Australia, and say, 'Guess which nation is going to walkout on its international obligations,' Canada would be the last country I would guess," Gore told CTV Vancouver.

"Canada has always been a leader and I just refuse to believe that the Canadian people will go along with what the minority government here seems to want to do."

The former U.S. vice-president was in town promoting what many are predicting to be the next summer blockbuster, An Inconvenient Truth.

However, rather than using special effects, this disaster film intends to frighten audiences through real footage and facts.

His message is simple -- the world is getting warmer and unless the citizens of earth do something about it now, life as we know it will no longer exist.

For Gore, the message is not new. The medium, however, is. After lecturing about climate change for more than 20 years, Gore decided to take his message to the silver screen.

The film, which opened in Toronto on Friday, and the rest of Canada on June 9th, is a suped-up version of the slide-show lecture that Gore has taken around the world.

He presents frightening yet simple facts through persuasive visuals such as graphs, computer animation and film footage.

In particular, his before and after photographs of glaciers and mountains are especially jarring.

"This is Patagonia seventy-five years ago, and the same glacier today," he says over two images that show very few similarities.

"It you look at the 10 hottest years ever measured, they've all occurred in the last 14 years. And the hottest of all was 2005," Gore's voice narrates matter-of-factly over the images of deserts, smog-filled cityscapes and power plants.

Global warming and disaster

According to Gore, the world is not experiencing a slow climate crisis, but rather a "planetary emergency."

Throughout the film, Gore implicates the rise of temperatures to the creation of stronger and more devastating weather in recent years.

The former U.S. vice-president clearly makes the case that the rising temperatures around the world are "making Hurricanes stronger, destabilizing Greenland and Antarctica, either of which will raise sea levels 20 feet."

Accompanying these haunting words is a computer generation of the submerged coastline in Florida, Shanghai, India and New York City.

After watching a montage of photographs and news footage from catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami while he calmly dictates environmental statistics, the audience can't help but walk away with the idea that human behaviour is ruining the world.

Gore as a human being

However, the film is not only about climate change. It is also about Gore as a person.

In an ironic twist, years after leaving the campaign trail where his stiff demeanor earned him the nick name "Tin Man," Gore finally comes across as a charming and likeable individual.

His sense of humour about his past life as "the next president" allows him to exude the attractive quality of humility that some politicians lack.

The clips from his lecture series depict him as an easygoing Southern gentleman who truly believes in his message.

In the film, Gore repeatedly tries to drive home the point that global warming is much more of a moral issue than a political one.

"It is a spiritual issue because it speaks to who we are as human beings -- what's our destiny? To destroy the planet?" Gore told CTV Vancouver.

"I don't buy that. But we have to come to grips with the reality that we're now capable of ending human civilization with unsustainable levels of pollution."

The human story behind Gore also comes across as the film follows personal events in his life as well political.

From the death of his sister to nearly losing his son in an accident, director Davis Guggenheim gives the audience a behind-the-scenes peak into what drives the environmentalist-turned-politician-turned-film maker.

Al Gore will appear on Canada AM to discuss An Inconvenient Truth, on Monday June 5, 2006.