Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore spoke about climate change and politics at Tufts University on Wednesday. The 69-year-old Democrat has made climate change his life work since losing the 2000 Presidential election.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore spoke Wednesday about climate change and politics at Tufts University.
The 69-year-old Democrat has made climate change his life work since losing the 2000 Presidential election.
Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his climate change activism and won an Oscar for his global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth.''
"I see it as a source of joy to have work that justifies pouring every ounce of energy that I have into it."
With that kind of passion, you might imagine Gore is devastated about action being taken by President Trump, pulling the US from the Paris climate agreement and putting a climate change denier in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. But in fact, Gore seems as upbeat about the movement as ever.
"We are seeing now a sustainability revolution that has the magnitude of the industrial revolution but the speed of the digital revolution."
When asked how he finds optimism from a man who has called climate change a hoax, Gore responded saying, "the reaction to Trump has been at least equal to what he has tried to do."
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Gore says the scientific community is 99-percent unanimous on climate change and that in recent years the most persuasive power has been Mother Nature.
"Even people who don’t feel comfortable using the phrase global warming or climate crisis, are connecting the dots on their own. They know it’s true."
Gore says he is encouraged that polls show the majority of Republicans and even Trump supporters disagree with the President on climate change.
Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor of energy and environmental policy at Tufts, moderated the discussion with Gore.
Gore served as vice president under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001 and lost his bid for president to Republican George W. Bush in 2000.
He also served as a U.S. representative and then a U.S. senator from Tennessee.
