Exclusive: Al Gore On Trump’s Historic Mistake | Bulwark Podcast

Well, you've asked the right person, Tim. I'm a real scholar of the history of the vice president.

I barely remember them.

Yeah, that works. 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.

Well, part of it, but no, it's not true, but it was an interesting experience. Tim, you know, President Trump brought Lutnick and several others with him to the Davos meeting at a time when the US is, Trump is trying to split the US 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 offended me. I didn't interrupt his speech in any way. But, you know, I looked around.

Well, I just felt like, you know, I had made no secret of the fact that I think that their whole, 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...

Well, I kind of think boo is the nicest thing. One of my close friends wrote me and said, it was not elegant, but it was eloquent.

Yeah. Well, first of all, Tim, thank you very much for mentioning this training in Nashville May 1st and May 2nd. The climaterealityproject.org is where you can sign up, no charge, totally free. You'll learn the latest and best facts, all the latest evidence on what's causing the climate crisis, what the solutions are, and they're increasingly 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 this coming...

Are you going to go to one of the No Kings rallies?

I talked to Ezra Klein and people can go check that out on our YouTube feed about...

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 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 keeps adding up. And the harms have been adding up as well. And 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, you know, 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 and a half percent. I mean, it's just, you know, where the future's concerned, it's game over. We're going to win this. But in the US, it was 90% and if you include rooftop solar, it was 92% in the US last year. In the state of Texas, you know...

Good, good, good, as the Australians say, good on you. In your home 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 solar. So, you know, on the next biggest source of the emissions is transportation, cars, trucks, planes, etc. 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 going to win this. The only question is whether we will win it in time to avoid going over some of these so-called negative trip wires, negative tipping points. And some of them sound like science fiction movies like the Gulf Stream shutting down for God's sake, but it's real because the scale of this is just so unprecedented. And I could go through the rest of it.

Yeah, thank you so much. Such a well-framed question. You know, back in my first movie 20 years ago, I noted that there were some people who went from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the crisis that we're facing. And that tendency is still around. I wouldn't say that most people are doing that at all because people are participating. You just got your solar. So I mean there are millions of people...

Better late than never.

But I do think that the element of despair is a real challenge for sure. And you know, surprisingly, it was the first person back in the 1960s to have this saying that I'm about to share with you. You've heard it before was Joan Baez. The antidote to despair is action. And we've heard that in the permutation the antidote to climate despair is climate action. And it really is true and enough people are acting that we are beginning to see a turnaround. And if I could kind of frame it in the scale of the question you asked, Tim, just imagine for a moment what it could be like for this young generation, these young generations, to come to believe in the importance of a shared mission to save humanity's future. It sounds like such a vast challenge that in itself triggers some people to despair. And it also makes some people disbelieve that it's possible. But you know I had an experience. I'm much older than you of course and back when I was quite young I was thrilled when President John F. Kennedy announced the challenge of putting a person on the moon in 10 years and bringing them back safely. My whole generation was, the whole country was. Not everybody agreed with it even back then. But I do, in fact, I remember hearing people say, 'That's a lot of money. We shouldn't do that. What's the point?' All of that. And it's probably not going to work anyway. But eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. And in the moment when he did so in Houston in mission control there was a great cheer that went up and the average age of the systems engineers in that room who cheered was 26 years old. Which means that when they first heard that challenge they were 18 years old, they changed their careers many of them, they changed the plot of their life. I hear that now among so many young people who are trying to gear up to help solve this big challenge. And I think that the interference in clear and honest communication about this on the part of the fossil fuel companies has really been an obstacle to get around. But we are managing to do it. And this training May 1st and May 2nd in Nashville free of charge the climaterealityproject.org. I'm sorry to repeat myself. I've been told it works. And is designed to get around all of the obfuscation and the phony messaging from the fossil fuel polluters and give people the tools they need and the networks they can use to really bring about this change in a faster, healthier way.

Yeah, the world's shallow coral reef systems are very much in danger. And you know, the honest answer to your question is that there has been some damage and tragically, regrettably, some of the damage that's been done is not reversible. But the most dangerous impacts are still avoidable and preventable in the view of the vast majority of the climate scientists who I trust and whose judgment has been correct. By the way, you go back 20 years and listen to what they were warning us about then. The fact that they were proven dead right should cause us to pay more attention to what these same scientists are saying now, which is good Lord almighty, stop using the sky as an open sewer for this civilization-destroying pollution. But back to your point, these scientists believe that most if not all of the really catastrophic changes still can be avoided, but we're seeing the ice melt and it's probably inevitable that we're going to see Greenland go and the West Antarctic ice sheet go. Now the pace with which that happens is still partly under our control. How long will it take to have an orderly retreat from coastal areas that are going to be at very high risk of being flooded. It's already begun of course but we still can control the pace. Now could the coral reefs almost disappear and then recover? I would hope so, but it's in the area where the information does not really support a definitive timeline for what's going to happen. We just have to do our best.

It's heartbreaking, Tim. I mean, as you know, when NATO's self-defense obligations were triggered and troops were sent by allies to Afghanistan and Iraq, Denmark on a per capita basis lost more lives defending the United States when we were attacked than any other nation in the world. And we put them in a position where they have to militarily defend the airport in Greenland. It's just, you know, there's outrage, exhaustion, and that in itself is an obstacle, but you know, we'll get through this. I'm convinced that we will and I'm hopeful that in the process we'll see the emergence of a stronger, more involved and passionate and better informed political coalition of which you and your team is a critical part to transcend this bitter partisanship and start solving the damn problems.

Two years and 300 and something days.

And seven months until the midterm elections and you know the term bow wave. I think there's already a bow wave from the elections coming in seven months. And we've seen all these special elections and they've really affirmed the growing consensus in both parties that if something dramatic doesn't change, we're going to see a dramatic change in November.

Yeah. Well, we're, I'm too old to remember Laurel and Hardy and you surely are, but there was a famous sequence where one of them would say to the other, 'Well, this is a fine pickle you've got us in.' And I think that the country is saying to Donald Trump, 'Well, this is a mess you've got us in.' I mean, we've got to find a way out of this as a country. And I don't want to see it just as an opportunity to point out the devastating mistakes that Trump is making. He is, it's really tragic. We've got to find a way out. But you know, with him as president it is very difficult.

Well, it's an interesting view. First of all, on David's piece, I really like David a lot, and I guess I'm glad I didn't read that particular article. If it says you...

Well, anyway, I like him very much. But you know, for 47 years, including the years when I was on the National Security Council as vice president in the West Wing, including the years that I served on the intelligence committee when I was in the Congress, I became familiar as everyone who deals with geopolitical strategy for the US does with the problem of the Strait of Hormuz. Since the Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran and took hostages from the American embassy, we've had all kind of war games and strategy plans and they all come down to one salient fact because the Strait of Hormuz has 300 miles of coastline along rugged territory owned by Iran. They can shut down the Strait of Hormuz by themselves. They can hit missiles, they can hit ships with missiles launched from the back of pickup trucks and they can hide those pickup trucks. And they can launch mines from dhows and they can do other things. So, it's a prominent reality that should dominate or at least be highly prioritized in any discussion of whether or not the US ought to launch an attack on Iran. And according to the news reports, it was presented as you could expect it would be, including by the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Caine, who seems to be a very capable, competent military officer. And according to the news reports, the president said no, it's not a problem because they'll surrender before they use that option. And I mean I think the level of fear among his advisers may be such that they don't want to disagree with him. I'm just speculating here on that now. I don't know. But for whatever reason, that key exchange between the commander-in-chief and the chairman of the joint chiefs on the key strategic point that Republican and Democratic administrations have understood for almost a half century went wrong. And that translated into an astonishingly harmful mistake that is going to create a very difficult, already has created a very difficult situation and you know he's faced with the option of snatching defeat from the jaws of Armageddon. And what I mean by that is, letting go of the conflict and declaring victory and trying to make it into something other than a defeat. If he chooses that option, you know, I hope he gets away with it in the sense that I hope he finds a pathway that's kind of an exit ramp, but he won't get away with it. And he knows that. So, he's stuck and unfortunately the country is stuck. Now, things happen in war once they're launched. It's difficult, but the Iranians appear to have established as a reality the continuing control of the theocracy with succession plans that have been uninterrupted by all these assassinations and attacks. They've proven that they're still in control of the streets and in control of the country. They've proven a level of competence in their military planning that strikes fear in the hearts of the surrounding Gulf nations. And they've established that they can indeed exercise unilateral control over 20% of the fossil fuel supply of the entire world and an even higher percent of the fertilizer supply of the world and they've established that they can launch devastating, it's very serious and damaging attacks on their neighbors. So now Trump is responding by escalating his threats and having one ultimatum after another. And you know it's not working. Again, I hope he finds an exit ramp for God's sake. But you know launching attacks on their civilian power plants is a war crime according to most international lawyers but would also trigger the response against Israel, against the Gulf nations etc. And that could really spiral this thing out of control. So we're in an exceptionally dangerous situation. But one thing I want people to focus on is this mistake he's made is historic. And I want to focus on how bad the judgment was in launching this attack in spite of clear warnings that it was a mistake. And I want you to take that event and apply it to the climate crisis.

It's an even worse mistake at a time when we're nearing truly catastrophic environmental damage on a planetary scale to launch and pursue this fiction that the climate crisis is a hoax for God's sake. Last year, 61% of the land mass of the Earth had at least one month of extreme drought. We saw the downpour just this week in Hawaii, which was far beyond what had ever been predicted was possible in the past. We're seeing 30 million tons of ice melt each hour in Greenland, every hour right now. And the list goes on. The idea that that's a hoax is an even worse mistake in judgment than the mistake Donald Trump has made in cavalierly ignoring the military advice of the last 50 years to keep our country safe.

Let's explore this. Let's explore this just a bit more, Tim.

Um, I mean, I just think it's an utter catastrophe. Everything that you laid out, I totally agree with. And it's possibly worse than you laid out because I think the unintended consequences of the spiraling out of control are hard to even fathom right now.