TED Talks Daily
Why climate action is unstoppable — and "climate realism" is a myth | Al Gore
30 Jun 2025
In this urgent and hard-hitting talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore thoroughly dismantles the fossil fuel industry’s narrative of "climate realism," contrasting their misleading claims with the remarkable advancements in renewable energy. Drawing on data showing clear signs of progress across the world, Gore makes a powerful case that we already have everything needed to solve the climate crisis — and reminds us of what the most valuable renewable resource actually is.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. There are some really dangerous myths facing the climate movement that we have to work quickly to combat, according to Nobel laureate and climate leader Al Gore.
In this urgent talk, he dismantles the fossil fuel industry's narrative of, quote, climate realism, contrasting their misleading claims with the remarkable advancements in renewable energy. He makes the powerful case that we already have everything we need to solve the climate crisis today.
Thank you very much for the warm welcome. And it's been 10 years since the Paris Agreement, and every single nation in the world, 195 nations, agreed to try to get to net zero by mid-century. And let me deal with the elephant in the room. One nation, only one, has ...
begun the process of withdrawing, and the Trump administration has also canceled executive orders, withdrawn from international climate organizations. They have declared a so-called energy emergency in order to promote fossil fuels. They've phased out government support for clean energy. But bear this in mind. During the first Trump, four-year term. Investments in the energy transition doubled.
We have seen solar capacity more than double. Electric vehicle sales have doubled. Wind energy went up by almost 50 percent during his first term. And we are seeing that 60 percent during his first four years of new energy came from renewable energy, and coal investments went down almost 20 percent. So there's good news and there's bad news. A lot's happened in the last 10 years.
But I want to ask this question. The fossil fuel industry wants to ignore the amazing good news, and they are labeling the commitments that the world made at the Paris negotiations as a fantasy, and they're calling for an abandonment of the efforts to reduce emissions. the fossil fuel burning, and they're now advocating a new approach that they call climate realism.
Well, climate realism, according to them, we should abandon the efforts to deal with the principal cause of the climate crisis, 80 percent of it comes from burning fossil fuels, and we should focus on adaptation as well, almost exclusively. Well, we need adaptation.
A lot of people are suffering, but do we want to vastly increase the number of people that have to go through that hardship and suffering instead of dealing with the cause of the crisis and solving the climate crisis? They, according to climate realism, historically the energy transitions have have taken place very slowly.
So we have no right as human beings to even imagine that we could go faster in the future than what history has told us was the reality in the past, even though human civilization is at stake.
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