Al Gore's Fight Against The Climate Crisis

So despite the accelerating pace of changes that climate scientists are seeing, you're still optimistic?
Look, I will 'fess up to the element of "hope being father to the thought" here. But I don't think it's an unrealistic hope at all. I believe that it's much more likely than not that we will see within the next few years a very dramatic political change in most of the world, including in the United States, that will sharply reduce CO2. We're on the threshold of the kind of sweeping policy changes that we really need. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.

What do you think will drive that change? Will it take another planetary-scale disaster like Hurricane Katrina? Or do you envision a more organic sort of awakening?
I think it's a combination of the two. More and more people are taking the time to learn about the science, and they are connecting the dots for themselves. When those dots are connected - when families and churches and synagogues and mosques and civic organizations and entire communities all start to focus on the evidence - then even evidence from Mother Nature that falls short of a Katrina-scale catastrophe reinforces the message. The heat wave last summer didn't reach the level of Katrina, but it led Pat Robertson to say, "I've changed my mind, global warming is real, we've got to sharply reduce fossil-fuel use." There will be no shortage of statements from Mother Nature. April was the hottest April in the history of Europe. The hottest winter in the world's history was December, January and February. The hottest year in America's history was 2006.

There is also a very deep emotional and spiritual component to this tipping point we're going to cross. The civil rights movement took off in the United States only when it was lifted out of the political framework and placed in a spiritual framework. Young people asked their parents, "You tell me to choose right over wrong, so explain to me why this guy Bull Connor is acceptable." When the adults couldn't answer, that's when the laws changed. Young people are now asking their parents and grandparents, "Please explain to me why what's going on with global warming isn't insane." A lot of adults can't answer. The revolution is beginning.

But let's be real about the political obstacles. Public awareness and a growing desire for change are important, but against that you have the oil and coal and automobile industries - entrenched interests that have been able to stave off any sort of meaningful action on global warming for years, including the eight years when you were vice president. Is it realistic to expect that Washington will ever enact the kind of wholesale changes needed to address this crisis?
I concluded a long time ago that the only pathway is through a mass political movement that engenders a sea change in public opinion across the planet. Special interests have way too much power to block progressive change. But their power, as impressive as it is, is still no match for a genuine mass movement. Reason, logic, knowledge, evidence - these all may play a diminished role in our conversation of democracy today. But when enough people lock into the same narrative and connect the same dots and feel the danger facing their children, then these objections will be set aside. They will be. And we're close. We're not there yet. But we're close.

You have compared the mobilization that would be required to deal with global warming to the way America came together to win the Second World War. But that effort required great personal sacrifice on the part of the American people. People did without. They melted their scrap metal, they planted victory gardens. Yet very few politicians are talking about the kinds of sacrifice that will be required to deal with climate change. What will Americans have to give up to stop global warming?
There's a philosophical question embedded in what you're asking: Is this important enough for us to make sacrifices? The answer is yes, of course - we're talking about the survival of human civilization. But in answering that way, I don't want to convey the faulty impression that most of what needs to be done involves hair-shirt economics or going back to some miserable standard of living. That's simply not true. Most of the changes we need to make don't involve sacrifice in the way you are using the word - instead, they require us to overcome inertia and eliminate absurdly wasteful practices.