At a congressional hearing on the greenhouse effect in 1981, Al Gore, then a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, noticed that it was difficult to come to terms with the fact that rising carbon dioxide emissions could radically change our world. “Honestly, my first reaction to it several years ago was one of disbelief,” he said. “Since then I’ve been patiently waiting for it to go away, but it hasn’t gone away.”
Gore’s hearings did not produce the revelation he had hoped for among his fellow members of Congress. More than four decades later, the problem still hasn’t resonated with many of them, even as the devastating climate changes scientists have warned about have become reality. Wildfires turned towns into ash, and the rain unleashed by storms like Hurricane Helene left even so-called climate havens like Asheville, North Carolina, in a post-apocalyptic state, with power lines slung around like spaghetti.
“I’ll have to admit to you that I’ve been surprised at how difficult it has been to implement the kind of policies that will solve the climate crisis,” Gore said in an interview with Grist.
So he is not exactly surprised that the issue is on the back of your mind this election season. When asked about their plans to fight climate change the presidential debate last monthVice President Kamala Harris assured voters that she is not opposed to fracking for natural gas, while former President Donald Trump went on about domestic vehicle manufacturing. The subject has adopted a more prominent role in the vice presidential debate last Tuesday, when the Republican, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, entrenched by calls global warming “weird science” while not actually ruling it out, Democrat Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota envisioned America “becoming an energy superpower for the future.” And that was about it.
“Since the battle for votes is almost always focused on undecided voters, most of them in the middle of the political spectrum, it is not at all unusual to see immediate, visceral issues like jobs and the economy take the forefront,” Gore said.
As told in the documentary An Inconvenient TruthGore’s interest in climate change first arose at Harvard University, where Gore took a population studies class taught by Roger Revelle, a climate scientist who played a crucial role in setting up experiments to measure rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It was the 1960s, a decade in which the American public was only beginning to learn about the dangers of burning fossil fuels. Gore was amazed by the evidence Revelle presented, but “never thought for a second that it would take over my life.”
He has spent the decades since advocating for climate action. As vice president under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, he unsuccessfully pushed to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, the first international effort to force countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Six years after losing the presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000, An Inconvenient Truththe documentary that turned his traveling climate change slideshow into a hit launched the issue into the national conversation. Today, he leads the educational nonprofit organization The Climate Reality Project, which train people how to mobilize their neighbors to elect climate champions, counter greenwashing and promote green solutions.
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As a prominent Democrat, Gore’s advocacy was passionate blame that climate change seems like a liberal thing to care about. For Gore, this is an example of attacking the messenger without looking at the deeper reasons why climate change is politically controversial in the first place. “Even when Pope Francis, for the sake of the good name, speaks out about it, they attack him and say that he is interfering with partisanship.” If there’s anyone to blame for polarization, he said, it’s the fossil fuel industry that has it trying to take control of the climate change conversation.
“This is the most powerful and richest business lobby in the history of the world, and they spare no effort and no expense to try to block any progress,” Gore said. “Whoever pokes his or her head above the parapet draws fire from fossil fuel polluters, and they use their legacy networks of economic and political power to try to block any solutions of any kind that might reduce fossil fuel consumption.”
In his decades of speaking to the public about climate change, he says he’s learned a few things. You need to keep in mind a “time budget” that people will give you to talk to them, as well as a “complexity budget” so that you avoid dumping facts and figures on people. Finally, he says, you need to allocate a “hope budget” so they don’t get too overwhelmed and depressed.
Even if progress has been slower than he had hoped, Gore sees signs that things are moving in the right direction. last year, 86 percent of new electricity generation installed worldwide comes from renewable energy, for example. Not to mention that Congress, where climate legislation has long been dead, finally managed to pass a landmark climate law in 2022the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to drastically reduce US emissions through green incentives and rebates.
“That’s the kind of challenge that’s so compelling — once you pick it up, you can’t put it down — because it really requires any person of conscience, I think, to work on it until we make the kind of progress that’s needed .”
