WASHINGTON, May 20: Former US vice president Al Gore’s crusade to save the planet from global warming has moved to the big screen in the form of a documentary in which he plays the central role.

Mr Gore hopes the 96-minute film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, which will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival and released in cinemas on May 26, will inspire action among those who have so far failed to grasp what he calls ‘the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilisation’.

The documentary, directed by Davis Guggenheim, appears designed to educate and to create political momentum for the United States to lead international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the warming of the atmosphere. The US produces 25 percent of those emissions.

Gore served as the US negotiator for the Kyoto protocol on global warming when he was vice president, a treaty that seeks to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions linked to global warming.

But after Gore lost his bid for the presidency in 2000 to George W. Bush in one of the most bitterly disputed presidential elections in US history, the new administration rejected the treaty.—AFP