Q&A WITH AL GORE - Costly Wager

Houston Chronical
June 5, 2006

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns that if we continue to ignore the causes and effects of global warming, we do so at our peril, with catastrophic results.
By CLAUDIA FELDMAN
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

At the end of the presidential campaign six years ago, Al Gore was political dead meat. Even supporters winced at his stiff campaign style, and a New York Times columnist who asked if he was a dud or a dude pronounced him a dud.

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That Gore is nowhere to be seen in the movie coming to the Landmark River Oaks Friday, An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, the star of the show is warm, funny, comfortable in his middle-aged body. He's taken on a battle of almost mythical scope — to save the planet from global warming.

We caught up with Gore, who travels tirelessly with his global-warming slide show, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The former vice president — via cell phone — talked climate crisis, he talked personal evolution, he even talked presidential politics in 2008. He seemed to mean it when he said he was out of politics, period.

Q: What is global warming?

A: We're polluting the thin, ecologically fragile layer of atmosphere surrounding the planet. As the atmosphere thickens with huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, it traps more and more of the heat from the sun.

That's global warming, and it's melting almost every mountain glacier in the world, threatening the Arctic ice cap, beginning to destabilize Greenland and west Antarctica — and the destruction of either one raises sea level 20 feet worldwide. There are many, many other consequences, including the spread of disease. The way to stop these catastrophes is to sharply reduce the amount of global-warming pollutants, principally carbon dioxide.

Q: Is there any argument about this? Do people question your facts?

A: There is global scientific consensus — the debate is over as far as science is concerned. But there are a few large polluters — unfortunately ExxonMobil is among them — who are spending millions of dollars a year to finance pseudoscience that intentionally confuses the public discussion.

Q: Is there is a consensus that climate change is significantly influencing hurricane activity?

A: There are some meteorologists who argue that the natural cycles affecting hurricane activity are the only ones that matter, some in good faith, some affected by their funding from oil and coal companies. But leading scientists are producing overwhelming confirmation that the warming of the top layer of the ocean is making the average hurricane much stronger. Americans are seeing that with their own eyes — the unusual strength of very powerful hurricanes, one right after the other. ... The new voice in this debate belongs to Mother Nature.

Q: What have you done to reduce your carbon footprint on the planet?

A: Tipper and I have switched to hybrid cars, installed clock thermostats, switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs, and we became carbon-neutral two years ago. That means after you reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as much as you can, you purchase offsets by reducing carbon dioxide elsewhere in the world. You can read all about it on www.climatecrisis.net.

Q: Are Americans responding to your message?

A: I've been talking about this for 30 years, and I feel as if I have failed so far. But I'm not done yet, and I think we're nearing the tipping point.

Q: Are you considering a run for the presidency in 2008?

A: I don't have any plans to be a candidate again. I am involved in a different kind of a campaign.

Q: Your movie is about global warming, but you included personal details in the movie — about your son's car accident when he was 6, your sister's death and the loss of the 2000 election. Why?

A: That wasn't my idea at all, and if I had known at the beginning of the project that the director, Davis Guggenheim, had planned to include those biographical vignettes, I probably wouldn't have agreed to do the movie. But he gained my trust. And he explained to me that there is a difference between a slide show and a movie — that in a live presentation the audience has a connection with the living, breathing person in front of them but that (connection) has to be re-created on the screen.

Q: How?

A: My son's car accident when he was 6 caused me to completely re-examine all of my priorities, personal and professional, and that's when I created the slide show. It's also when I wrote my first book, Earth in the Balance. At that point I was pulling away from politics, though I did run for re-election to the Senate in 1990. I was surprised when (former President Bill) Clinton asked me to be his vice president.

Q: What did the death of your sister Nancy have to do with global warming?

A: The scientific evidence linking smoking with lung cancer was well-known by 1964. My sister died of lung cancer 20 years later, and during all those years my family continued to grow tobacco. And the connection between cigarettes and cancer was ignored and belittled by the industry that depended on people smoking.

If Nancy had stopped smoking, if we had stopped growing tobacco, if the warnings had been heeded, she would have lived, I'm convinced. And in the same way, companies that make all their money from activities that become global-warming pollution want us to ignore the warnings about the climate crisis.

I know from personal experience that it does take time to absorb a set of complicated facts and to recognize one's own personal connection to a destructive pattern. I also know a day of reckoning may come when you wish you had connected the dots a lot quicker.

Q: How did the loss of the presidential campaign in 2000 contribute to your global-warming work?

A: It was another opportunity to start over again and completely reassess how I would spend my time. (Gore recently finished a book, which has the same name as the movie, An Inconvenient Truth.)

Tipper and I are devoting 100 percent of the profits from the book and the movie to a new bipartisan educational campaign to further spread the message about global warming.

claudia.feldman@chron.com