We are absolutely thrilled to bring you answers to YOUR questions from former American vice-president Al Gore. Mr Gore is now the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, an organisation devoted to solving the climate crisis.
He is the author of several best-selling books on the climate crisis – including “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Earth in the Balance”. He is the subject of the documentary movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won two Oscars in 2006 and a second documentary in 2017, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” In 2007, Mr Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.” Mr Gore’s Ted Talks on climate change have been viewed over 5 million times!
You held the position of US vice-president and then opened your organization to solve the climate crisis. My question is, how did your tenure as vice-president alert you to the issue of climate change?
versatile_satsuma from Beit Hanoun Prep Girls A School, Occupied Palestinian Territory
Thank you for your question, versatile_satsuma! I have been working on the issue of climate change for a long time. It was my college professor, the great climate scientist Roger Revelle, who opened my eyes back in the 1960s to the potential and irreversible harm posed by the climate crisis. Ever since I was elected to Congress in the 1970s, I have been working to find ways to help bring attention to the climate crisis and the ways to solve it. During my time in the U.S. Congress, I held the first hearings on climate change. Back then, when I asked my fellow Members of Congress about the climate crisis, the most frequent response I received was “what crisis?”
As Vice President, I was fortunate to work with and learn from even more scientists who studied everything from forest fires, to sea-level rise, to changes in the weather. But one of the most important things I learned during my time in government was the importance of people power—and especially the power of young people to be strong voices for change. Whenever I heard from the people who were facing some of the first impacts of the climate crisis, their stories filled me with purpose and energy to work to help solve the challenges they were facing.
Read the full interview at The Economist Educational Foundation.