An open letter to Al

Dear Mr Gore,

I'm just writing to say congratulations on the two Oscar nominations for your film An Inconvenient Truth.

I caught it at the cinema and thought it was an excellent documentary - forceful, intelligent, urgent and vital in almost every respect. It takes some doing to make something akin to a PowerPoint presentation interesting, but you managed it.

What is more, it seems that the film has recorded that rarest of feats and actually had a political impact. In fact some might say you proved more successful convincing people of the need for action on climate change with this film than you did during your entire eight years as vice president of the United States. But let's leave that debate for another day, I'm sure it was a tricky job and you obviously had other things on your mind.

The film was of course only one of the many factors that made 2006 the year the environmental movement finally hit the mainstream, but it certainly made one of the biggest contributions in raising the profile of this most important issue.

So, like I say congrats, you deserve it.

However, if I may be so bold I'd like to offer a suggestion on how you can increase the impact of this film still further.

The other inconvenient truth is that no one will have shelled out for ticket to see this film if they did not already have an interest in global warming and a pretty strong conviction that it is a major problem.

You may have given those climate change deniers an intellectual kicking, but none of them were listening. You may have pointed out to business leaders how they could make money through green business models, but those who doubt this is the case simply weren't in the theatre.

You were preaching to the choir.

The only way to get round this is to reach out to those who missed the film first time around and stick it right under their noses. I know you have attempted to achieve this with some grass roots distribution, but much more is needed.

It may go against your central message that we can all make money and help save the planet at the same time, but what I'd suggest is that you distribute the DVD free of charge to every CEO, CFO, CIO and chairman at every listed firm in the world.

Once that is done I'd broker an agreement with the Financial Times, the Economist and other leading business titles and get them to distribute the DVD. A lot of copies will end up in the bin - you can't convince everyone - but if just a small percentage of this intended audience sit down one evening and watch the film its impact would be multiplied dramatically.

Of course this would cost you and your producers millions of dollars in lost revenue, but you can't have everything. Besides the film has already broken box office records for a documentary, grossed almost $36m worldwide, and served its secondary purpose as a 90 minute long advert for Apple - where I think I'm right in saying you are on the board of directors.

Now I know this is a pretty leftfield suggestion, and it could even be argued that it is a bit elitist just to target those making the decisions at the top of the corporate ladder. You could also argue that as a former vice president you already have the ears of many of these people. But if you are serious about reaching as wide and influential audience as possible then this is an idea that at least deserves consideration.

Let me know what you think.

Yours faithfully,

BusinessGreen

PS Next time you are at an Apple board meeting could you try and get to the bottom of why the company is getting a kicking from Greenpeace. Cheers.