Al Gore: ‘The message still has to be about the reality we’re facing’
By Brad Plumer,
WashPost
Published: September 12
The years since Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006 have not been kind to climate hawks. Cap-and-trade died in the Senate, skeptics have renewed their attacks on climate science, and the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, Rick Perry, denies that there’s even a problem. So what has the former vice-president decided to do about it? Double down his efforts and unveil yet another high-profile presentation on the threat posed by rising temperatures, in the hopes of converting climate skeptics. This week, Gore’s Climate Reality Project will launch a 24-hour global multimedia broadcast on the link between global warming and severe weather events. We spoke by phone in late August about his new project, on the link between climate change and natural disasters, and the challenges of swaying public opinion.
REUTERS
Brad Plumer: “An Inconvenient Truth” was basically a primer on global warming—the causes, the problems it creates, the ways we can avert it. So what more is there to add? How will this new presentation be different?
AG: It’s very different—a few of the images are the same, but 95 percent of the slides are completely new. The science linking the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather to the climate crisis has matured tremendously in the last couple of years. Think about the last year, we’ve had floods in Pakistan displacing 20 million people and further destabilizing a nuclear-armed country. We’ve had drought and wildfires in Russia. In Australia you’ve got floods the size of France and Germany combined. Then there’s drought in Texas—out of 254 counties in Texas, 252 are on fire. I’m talking to you from Nashville, where the city lost the equivalent of an entire year’s budget from recent floods—the area has never been flooded like this before, so no one had flood insurance.
That’s the reality we’ve got to focus on. This presentation is a defense of the science and the scientists, against the timeworn claims by deniers.
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: September 12
The years since Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006 have not been kind to climate hawks. Cap-and-trade died in the Senate, skeptics have renewed their attacks on climate science, and the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, Rick Perry, denies that there’s even a problem. So what has the former vice-president decided to do about it? Double down his efforts and unveil yet another high-profile presentation on the threat posed by rising temperatures, in the hopes of converting climate skeptics. This week, Gore’s Climate Reality Project will launch a 24-hour global multimedia broadcast on the link between global warming and severe weather events. We spoke by phone in late August about his new project, on the link between climate change and natural disasters, and the challenges of swaying public opinion.
REUTERS
Brad Plumer: “An Inconvenient Truth” was basically a primer on global warming—the causes, the problems it creates, the ways we can avert it. So what more is there to add? How will this new presentation be different?
AG: It’s very different—a few of the images are the same, but 95 percent of the slides are completely new. The science linking the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather to the climate crisis has matured tremendously in the last couple of years. Think about the last year, we’ve had floods in Pakistan displacing 20 million people and further destabilizing a nuclear-armed country. We’ve had drought and wildfires in Russia. In Australia you’ve got floods the size of France and Germany combined. Then there’s drought in Texas—out of 254 counties in Texas, 252 are on fire. I’m talking to you from Nashville, where the city lost the equivalent of an entire year’s budget from recent floods—the area has never been flooded like this before, so no one had flood insurance.
That’s the reality we’ve got to focus on. This presentation is a defense of the science and the scientists, against the timeworn claims by deniers.
(More here.)
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