Al Gore on The Future
Al Gore is worried about David Cameron. Watch the interview here. When I put it to him, without naming names, that some political leaders in Britain were starting to row back on the climate change agenda he jumped straight at the Prime Minister. He said there had been such “hopeful signs” at the start of the Cameron years, but now he has “worries” that the PM has been listening to certain “influences” in his party.
I talked to him days after a study from respected climate scientists in Norway suggested the extent of climate change was not turning out as bad as some claim. But Gore has no doubt of his position, and confidently explains why those in the Conservative party who want to balance the climate change agenda against how much it costs are deeply mistaken.
I put to him the words of the Chancellor George Osborne at Conservative party conference : “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business”. Al Gore describes the position as “seriously misinformed”, arguing “It is short-sighted to believe that the future of business and the future of the environment are in conflict”.
His new book, The Future, might reasonably be accused of biting off a bit more than any man could chew. The six key drivers of global change is what he will tell you it is about. In very abbreviated form, these are globalisation, the internet, shifts in global power, the unsustainable use of global resources, biotechnology and the threat from climate change.
It is a surprisingly easy read. Gore writes like a journalist rather than academic or politician – with accessible and crisp language, lots of facts and quotations. Much of it feels quite familiar but it is nonetheless enjoyable and useful to find it drawn together, packed with examples and figures – whether or not you agree with where Gore is coming from.
Gore has suddenly become even more phenomenally rich than he was before. He has sold Current TV to Al-Jazeera, taking the oil and gas money with thanks. Is this odd from a man who lambasts the US media for being bought by oil and gas special interests who oppose the climate change agenda? There is no hypocrisy, he claims. And no problem in lecturing the world about sustainability and reforming capitalism when he is so personally rich. He believes in rich people paying more tax than they do now.
I asked him about his now repeated claim to be a “recovering politician”. “It’s a joke,” claims Al Gore. But the former Veep is not known for his wit. Why did he use the language of addiction and drug abuse, I wondered. Was it because politics is a bad thing to be avoided? At the age of 65 he’s running out of time to return to politics, but he clearly can’t quite close the door.
His biggest problem, were he ever to return to frontline politics, might be confronting what people will actually vote for. Years of lecture tours, adulation and the Nobel prize leave him warning us about things in the future as if we have no idea the dangers are there.
But is it really that people don’t know the threat from climate change? Or believe human behaviour can make a difference? Or is it that they can’t face the consequences of confronting it, like smokers who know they should quit but can’t quite pluck up the will power? Perhaps they just don’t think reducing human pain in the future is worth the sacrifice in their own lifetimes.
Al Gore did not say which camp he thinks David Cameron and George Osborne fall into. Ultimately, a US Democrat criticising British Conservatives is not surprising. But if you think back to that Cameron photo shoot with the huskies in 2006, we do seem to have sledged a way since then.
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There are 5 comments on this post
I agree with Al Gore on Global warming! anyone can see this is happening! The weather around the world as been getting worse each year! I believe this to be down to the worlds population creating green house gasses which is causing polar ice caps to melt, the population is also the cause of no jobs due to technology & robots doing people out of jobs! we used to have industries making cars by hand! most of it is done now by robots doing men out of jobs! while ever the population keeps growing the planet will keep getting worse! in the last ten-twenty years how many Tsunamis & earthquakes have we had & most have been in last ten! this is all down to the earth over heating & causing it to erupt! it might not kill everyone but it will certainly happen if the population keeps growing! in the past it as been cut down due to 2 world wars! we are now at 7 Billion & growing! The world can’t keep growing without conciquences!
Krish,
If it was possible to like a politician (which it isn’t) I would like Gore. Surely SOME of his distant dead cousin Gore Vidal must have rubbed off on him?
Every now and then – usually after departing the scene – some politician tells the truth. In the case of global warming (I always eschew “climate change”) dear Al has managed to, er, tell it like it is. The issue is ignored at the peril of our children.
I loved the way Gore said Cameron “might be influenced” by the energy companies and their paid clerks in the tory party. See, even though he is no longer a politician he STILL knows how to use weasel words. Of course the correct word choice would be “corrupted.”
Cameron, like Clegg and Milliband, will do virtually nothing about it. When it comes to serious global issues they are virtually a willing irrelevance. Energy profits matter more than people, always have, always will.
Krishnan, you stated something like “there is a vigorous debate over here in Europe and the UK”. That may be so but the interested individual has to dig deep to find it. It never comes up on “Question Time” type programmes rather like Al Gore described (in the US). This despite the ever growing evidence of Anthropological Climate Change the world over. Gore appeared to be expressing many of the views expressed in Jonathon Porritt’s Capitalism as if the Word Matters – by far the best blue print for a sustainable future I’ve seen together with his “Forum for the Future”. I just hope high profile individuals get behind these ideas pretty damned quickly. Western politcians just don’t seem to get the sustainable concept and the public appears on the whole to be just not interested. The fact that there are no comments here suggests nobody is interested in their future! and if you don’t think about your future you ain’t got one!!
care to comment about the weather changes happening on other planets in the solar system? by all means campaign to get people to bring recycling into their lives, after all that is a respectful way to treat mother earth and each other and push for energy sources that do not pollute the air we and all other forms of life have to breathe in order to stay alive but it is a bit rich to be asking emerging economies like china and india to stop spewing out fumes when the usa, uk etc have been doing it for many decades.
the sun oscillates our orbit around itself and there is nothing we can do to change that. but hey! i guess it makes for a good excuse to cream even more money from all those who toil in subservience to the banks.
Interesting that you drew an analogy with cigarette smoking!
You may have raised an insight into how long it may take for the weather disasters we’re suffering to have an effect on our carbon based habits?
But there’s also hope in your smoking analogy.
People have acquiesed to Government actions on smoking as those actions have progressed. But it’s taken a long time for tobacco consumption to fall in N America & Europe. Becaue political & human cultures have to change in parallel. Moreover, cigarette advertising was a major source of revenue for media & lobbyists. Which provided an incentive for their opposition.
Your analogy does give hope that our carbon culture CAN be changed. And that it will take several decades and lots of clear demonstrations – such a Storm Sandy – before enough people consent to the changes we all need.
[it's worth adding that the Chinese still smoke vast amounts of tobacco...]