The man who used to be "the next President of the United States", his joke, not mine, is speaking in Cambridge (UK) today and tomorrow. Inevitably his subject is "An Inconvenient Truth" the video on global warming which, a few weeks ago, won the man in question - Al Gore -an Oscar for the best factual film of the year.
As I suggested a couple of weeks ago it may not yet be certain that carbon emissions from human activity is the main culprit. Certainly there is an influential group of scientists around the world who dispute that analysis.
But even they concede that something is happening to the climate. It's just whether or not we can do anything about it.
Either way Gore's message is hard hitting and stark in it's warning of the consequences. I bought a copy of the DVD the other day (from our local Virgin record store) and have just viewed it. Gore concludes the film with the actions he believes should be taken to avoid catastrophe, although reports suggest he does not follow his own advice all that closely.
Be that as it may, he is being taken seriously by a wide range of organisations and companies. His audience today and tomorrow, apparently, will include people from WWF, Greenpeace, CPRE, and Friends of the Earth - all fairly predictable. Less so are representatives of Barclays Bank, Johnson Matthey, Marks & Spencer and BP. Add to that lot academics from the UEA and Cambridge, Oxford and London Universities together with several head teachers and you have a powerful group of movers and shakers who may persuade others to whatever conclusions they come to.
You might conclude that by weight of numbers alone the Gore version of inconvenient truth is likely to be the one that for the time being continues to be the accepted one. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I am not expert enough to judge. But my political judgement suggests we should prepare ourselves for more punative environmental taxes - whether they turn out to be justified or not.