Chapter 1: What historical context does Al Gore provide about U.S.-Iran relations?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not be more excited about today's guest.
He is marking the 20th anniversary of his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which raised awareness about climate change and led to the founding of the Climate Reality Project, which will be holding leadership trainings to mark the anniversary coming up soon, including in Nashville, where he will be. It's, of course, the former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore.
Strange world that led us here, sir, but I really appreciate it. Can I call you Al? What are you going on?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that works. Yeah, and Tim, thank you for having me on with you. I've followed your work with great interest and growing enthusiasm. Thank you for what you're doing, and it's an honor for me to be with you today. I appreciate that.
I don't know. My former boss, Jeb, has got to be looking at this going, I don't know what happened.
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Chapter 2: How does Al Gore assess Trump's handling of climate change?
I don't know. I don't know who it is. But I love that we come to this place. I appreciate your monitoring the work. I want to start with get to climate, then we're obviously going to get to the news. Before we do that, just in case I lost you, I feel absolutely compelled, though, to start with one. item of personal privilege.
There were some rumors that you were the heroic tank man recently when Howard Nutlick was speaking at a recent conference and you were booing him. You were a solo booer. And I want to play for you his rendition of what happened on Fox News.
basically a very left set of talks where someone said, we need a new form of capitalism, which I think is another way to say communism. And then they let me speak at the end. Then I gave a three minute talk and I just talked about my op-ed. And at the end of my talk, one person out of the 200 yelled out, boo. So I look over and I'm like, who booed?
Chapter 3: What significant changes in the global economy does Gore highlight?
And it's Al Gore. And I go to, I look at him, I go, really? And he goes, boo. And I I'm like, boo.
Is that true? Well, part of it. But no, it's not true. But it was an interesting experience, Tim. You know, President Trump brought Ludnick and several others with him to the Davos. meeting at a time when the U.S. is Trump is trying to split the U.S. off from our historic partners in Western Europe and elsewhere.
And anyway, Lutnik was surprisingly outright insulting to our hosts there in the dinner. That's really kind of what
Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's foreign policy decisions?
offended me. I didn't interrupt his speech in any way, but, you know, I looked around and... A respectful boo at the end, though? Well, I just felt like, you know, I had made no secret of the fact that I think that the Trump group's whole approach to climate is just utterly insane. And for him to stand and repeat those falsehoods. Anyway, I just expressed what I felt.
And it was interesting after that, because I got up and left and Essentially, everybody did, even though the dessert course remained and there was another speaker. But everybody left. And anyway, a small thing. I kind of think boo is the nicest thing you could have done. One of my close friends wrote me and said it was not elegant, but it was eloquent.
Okay.
Yeah, there you go. Like I said, I think it's about the nicest thing you could do for Howard Lutnick.
Chapter 5: How does Gore view the current state of climate activism?
You could have held up a sign, what happened on Epstein Island, a lot of potential protests for our Commerce Secretary. But we'll move on to the climate stuff. As I mentioned, so it's a 20-year anniversary, which is kind of crazy. Time flies.
And, you know, there's so much going on in the news with Trump from time to time, and I feel sometimes bad that on the show, like, we don't check in enough about, like, what is happening on the climate issue. And I guess it was a couple months ago now, I had David Wallace-Wells on and was just, you know, who'd written a great book on climate.
And I just said, for those of us who aren't, you know, following the science journals, like, get us up to speed. And so I guess I kind of want to start there with you. Like, thinking back to 20 years ago... when the Inconvenient Truth came out. Like, where are we now as compared to what your worries were, what the possibilities were? You know, what's the status of the climate?
Yeah. Well, first of all, Tim, thank you very much for mentioning this training in Nashville, May 1st and May 2nd. The climate reality project dot org is where you can sign up.
Chapter 6: What role does fear play in political discourse according to Gore?
No charge. Totally free. You'll learn the latest and best facts and all the latest evidence on what's causing the climate crisis, what the solutions are. And they're increasingly available. available and affordable and superior. And you'll be able to network with people who agree with you and find out how to get some good work done.
And by the way, Tim, I wanted to mention the No Kings rally that's coming Saturday, just a few days later. days from now.
Are you going to go to one of the No Kings, really?
I'm hoping to. I'm going to see how it works out. But I just think it's really important for people to come out. I agree.
I talked to Ezra Levin. People can go check that out on our YouTube feed.
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Chapter 7: How does AI impact the future of climate change solutions?
Yeah, he and his wife are both brilliant. I enjoy working with them. But anyway, back to your important question. In the last 20 years, We've seen increased global warming pollution emitted into the sky and the heat trapped by the accumulated amount. You know, it goes up there and stays there for quite a long time, unfortunately. And the accumulated amount now traps as much extra heat each day.
as would be released by 750,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day on the Earth. It's hard to express this in numbers that are accessible and comprehensible, but the amount of harm being done is amazing. By the way, behind me, what you see there is the thin blue line. That's a picture taken from the space station. And that thin blue line is where...
all the oxygen is, and that's where all of the global warming pollution hangs out. It just is stuffed into that thin blue line. And here's the thing, that line is so thin
Chapter 8: What vision does Gore have for a sustainable future?
that if you could drive a car straight up in the air at interstate highway speeds, you'd get to the top of that blue line in about five minutes. It's really shockingly thin. You could walk it in an hour. And that's where we're putting another 175 million tons every single day. And it
You know, at the same time, Tim, during these last 20 years, we have seen a truly dramatic, nearly miraculous change in patterns of the global economy, whereby now every year we're investing twice as much in renewable energy sources that don't create pollution as we are continuing to invest in fossil fuels.
Now, the bad news is that we're still seeing all this investment in fossil fuels, but the good news is that we're seeing the dramatic change unfold in the real world. The climate policy discussion and those proposals that we're in a climate policy recession now led by Trump, But in the real world, these changes are moving very quickly. I'll give you one quick example.
If you look at all of the new electricity generation installed worldwide last year, we have all these discussions about nuclear and gas and coal still going and so forth. What percentage of all the new electricity was renewable last year? The answer is 92.5%. I mean, it's just, you know, where the future is concerned, it's game over. We're going to win this. But in the U.S., it was 90%.
And if you include rooftop solar, it was 92% in the U.S. last year. That was me.
I chimed in. I did a rooftop last year. It was part of the 92%. Good for you. Part of the two, I guess.
Good for you. As the Australians say, good on you. In the state of Texas, the home of the oil and gas industry in the United States, 80% of all the new electricity capacity was solar and wind. And the majority of that is solar. So, you know, on the next biggest source of the emissions... is transportation, cars, trucks, planes, et cetera.
And yet from a standing start up until December of this past year, in that month, 29% of all new vehicles sold worldwide are now EVs. In China, 60%. The trend line is amazing. And in countries you might not expect, like Ethiopia and Nepal, they're going to 100% EVs. It just makes sense, you know? And so this sustainability revolution is still gaining momentum. But put these two halves together.
More pollution, unfortunately. A failure on policy. But the solutions are growing rapidly. When you put them together... The crisis is still getting worse quicker than we are assembling the solutions and implementing the solutions, but we're gaining. And as I said before, we're gonna win this. The only question is whether we will win it in time
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