10 YEARS AFTER AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH,
AL GORE MAY ACTUALLY BE WINNING
ISSIE LAPOWSKY SCIENCE 05.24.16 6:50 AM
AL GORE SNEEZES a hefty achoo. “Excuse me,” the former vice president says, dabbing a tissue at his nose before offering up an explanation. “Spring.”
Outside Gore’s New York City office, spring has certainly sprung—early too. This March was the hottest one ever, beating the prior record set ∈March 2015. The same goes for February and January of this year, and, oh, the eight consecutive months before. Gore knows these statistics by heart. The fact that you might know them too is likely because of him. These kinds of numbers— and the scary story they tell about the future of Earth—have been Gore’s chief motivation since he failed to win the presidency ∈2000. Gore emerged from that weird, disputed election armed with what is now possibly the most famous slide¬show ∈ human history. He has traveled the world delivering that deck to hundreds of people at a time, showing ∈ irrefutable detail just how mind-bogglingly badly we have treated our planet and what we might be able to do about it.
Ten years ago, the slide¬show became An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary that spread those ideas to millions. Gore says he still tinkers with the slide¬show every day, because, well, the numbers keep changing. Not always for the better. Yet this year Gore and his fellow activists have a rare reason to celebrate. In April, 175 world leaders gathered at the United Nations to sign the Paris Agreement, a global pact that aims to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Now, a decade after his movie sounded the alarm about climate change and 16 years after he ran for president, it looks like Al Gore might finally be … winning?
WIRED: Why did you want to make An Inconvenient Truth?
GORE: I have to admit to you that initially I did not want to do a documentary.
What? Why not?
It’s a dumb reason. I didn’t think a slide¬show could translate into a movie. (…) Participant Media and Davis Guggenheim had to convince me it was a good idea, and I’m so glad they found ways to reveal to me the depths of my ignorance about moviemaking. It’s a message that has to be heard. Sorry to risk sounding grandiose, but the future of human civilization is at stake.
The Paris Agreement must feel like a big point of progress.
It really does. Sometimes ∈ sports you can sense a palpable shift ∈ the momentum of the contest. A team will be behind on the scoreboard, but the shift ∈ momentum is so obvious and dramatic that you just have the feeling they’re going to win. That’s where we are ∈ solving the climate crisis. We’re still behind on the scoreboard, but the momentum has shifted. We are winning
When renewable electricity becomes cheaper than electricity that comes from burning coal or gas, then that changes everything. The marketplace makes it the default option, and you get what you saw ∈ the world ∈2015—90 percent of the new electricity generated ∈ the world last year was from renewables. That is an astonishing change. The Paris Agreement exceeded the upper range of my expectations. Does it go far enough? No, of course not. Can it be improved? Yes, it’s designed to be constantly improved, and that’s what I’m focused on now.
You’ve been at this a long time. Was it lonely fighting for this stuff ∈ government ∈ the 1980s and 1990s?
It was certainly a different time and a different environment. But I don’t ever remember feeling lonely, because I was always focused on reaching more and more people. Building a global grassroots movement is really the only way to solve this, because so many political systems have been captured by legacy industries. And that influence over policymaking has to be counterbalanced by a grassroots awareness.
It’s sometimes tough for people to get climate change because they’re not seeing its effects every day—or at least they don’t realize they are. What have you seen that has stuck with you?
In March, I went to Tacloban ∈ the Philippines and talked with survivors there who endured the ravages of Super Typhoon Haiyan. When you see how their lives were utterly transformed and feel the painful losses they suffered, it certainly will stick with you. I conducted a training ∈Miami last fall during one of the highest high tides and saw fish from the ocean swimming ∈ the streets ∈Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale on a sunny day.
You talk a lot about “winning” the fight against climate change. How do you define a win?
Winning means avoiding catastrophic consequences that could utterly disrupt the future of human civilization. It means bending the curves downward so that the global warming pollution stops accumulating ∈ the atmosphere and begins to reduce ∈ volume. It means creating tens of millions of new jobs to retrofit buildings, to transform energy systems and install advanced batteries, to transform agriculture and forestry, and to make the solutions to the climate crisis the central organizing principle of our civilization.
Source: https://www.wired.com/2016/05/wired-al-gore-climate-change/ Access October 16, 2016. Adapted.
What is ‘Al Gore may actually be winning’ ∈ the title?
