FRESH AIR: As a climate change activist, former Vice President Al Gore is used to speaking in front of both hostile and friendly audiences. But there is one individual he has all but given up on. “I have no illusions about the possibility of changing Donald Trump’s mind,” Gore says. “I think he has made it abundantly clear that he’s throwing his lot in with the climate deniers.”
In withdrawing from the Paris climate accord in June, Trump said he “cares deeply about the environment” but argued that the deal imposed burdens on the U.S. that would hurt American workers “while imposing no meaningful obligations” on other leading polluters like China. Administration officials at the time sidestepped questions about whether Trump believed that climate change was a “hoax,” as he had said prior to becoming president. When pushed in an interview on CNN, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said, “President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of the equation.”
Gore spoke with the president multiple times prior to Trump’s announcement about the Paris accord. Gore is now focused on building a bipartisan consensus to address the climate crisis.Part of creating that consensus is spreading awareness of an issue that Gore has been following for decades. His 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which was basically an adaption of his PowerPoint presentation about the effects of global warming, was a surprise box office success. Now he has a new documentary, called An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
Gore warns that climate change is not just an issue that affects future generations: “It’s happening to us now. This movie is designed to drive those points home, but also to make people aware that in the last decade, the solutions to the climate crisis have become available to us.” MORE