Hi, I'm Elizabeth Brier, deputy editor at Forbes, and we just sat down with former Vice President Al Gore to talk about the 20th anniversary of An Inconvenient Truth, the global energy transition, and reasons for hope. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here.
So, the first thing I want to talk about is it's been 20 years since An Inconvenient Truth. In that time, the climate crisis has become more visible, but also the solutions have accelerated probably a lot faster than many of us thought. What looks most different today from the future you imagined then?
Well, it's hard to take all of the changes over 20 years and compress them into a sound bite, but overall the rise of the availability of renewable pollution-free energy at a time when its cost has plummeted, making it the cheapest electricity in the history of the world is really a wonderful and positive surprise. On the other side of the ledger, the failure of the world's political systems to follow up on the achievements in the Paris agreement 11 years ago is a continuing disappointment, but this is a long struggle. I'm totally positive we're going to win this struggle. The remaining question is whether we'll win it in time to avoid the truly catastrophic changes the scientists have warned us about. And by the way, the fact that these climate scientists were dead right in their predictions of 20 years ago and longer should cause us to pay more attention to what they're warning us about now.
I think that it is at least possible that this year of 2026 may be looked back on as a positive turning point. And I say that by trying to collect all of these changes over the past two decades and look at them together. For the first time this year, the total amount of new energy produced by renewables exceeds the increase in the overall energy use in the growing global economy. That's an important tipping point. For the first time, both the US and China are getting more electricity from solar than from coal. Now we see whereas 20 years ago the vast majority of global investment in energy was in fossil and the minority in renewables. Now it's 65% in renewables and 35% in fossil. The world is spending twice as much on renewables as on fossil. So I think this could be a positive tipping point. Some tipping points are kind of rounded at the top. We may be on a plateau.
I'd add one other positive thought. China has signaled now that it wants to be measured not on the reduction in the intensity of their carbon emissions, but actual emissions. They've signaled they want to begin providing diplomatic leadership in the world and they've signaled they want to host the COP 33, the conference of all the nations on climate that will take place two years and two months from now. And China has installed so much renewable energy it's mindblowing. In July of last year, every single day of that month, they installed three gigawatts of solar. That's three giant-sized nuclear reactors opening every single day for an entire month, but in the form of solar panels.
We're seeing now the president of Korea commenting immediately after the war in Iran began saying this is it. We've got to accelerate this transition. The prime minister of Nepal for understandable reasons after that horrible tragedy there. So, the world has to move faster. Thailand just announced a big shift from liquefied natural gas to solar. In Africa, they're installing 100,000 solar panels per day. Most of them outside of the statistics being collected by governments. In parts of Pakistan, a common bride's dowry is three panels and an inverter now. So, we're gaining momentum. Unfortunately, the crisis is still getting worse faster than we're deploying the solutions, but we're now getting to the point where we can start the positive side of this journey. I'm very hopeful.
Yeah. And speaking of maybe that edge we're at right now, we recently were told by the UN that 1.5 degrees Celsius is effectively unavoidable, which as we know is the line that we were for years fighting to not cross. What does success on climate look like in the reality we do cross that threshold?
Well, it's a threshold that needs to be properly understood. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this respected global group of climate scientists, has reminded us that each tenth of a degree matters a lot. They've studied this very carefully and 1.5 is a lot better than 1.6, but 1.6 is a lot better than 1.7. So, we've still got our work cut out for us. And when they say it's possible to overshoot and then reclaim what's been lost, I think in terms of emissions reductions, that should be a hopeful message because if we get to true net zero, a lot of people don't realize that temperatures will stop going up immediately. And if we stay at true net zero, within as little as 25 to 30 years, half of the human-generated CO2 will have fallen out of the atmosphere in just a little over a quarter century. So, we have urgency, but we also have agency, the ability to do something about it. I remain optimistic.
Is there a new target that we should genuinely be thinking about these days? Is it going back to 1.5? Is it focusing on the net zero? What's your interpretation of that?
Well, I think that we should still strive to come back down to, we haven't technically reached it yet, but it's obvious we will. And I think we should still choose to come back down to that threshold.
And speaking of ways to do that, you've been investing through Generation for over 20 years. I'm curious where you're putting the most conviction and capital these days.
Yeah. Well, first of all, it's important to note that last year, if you look at all of the new energy installed, electricity capacity installed worldwide, 86% of it was renewable. In the US, 91%, you add in the rooftop solar, 93%. So I think that we are seeing significant progress in that regard. And as to how we should do it, I mentioned that there's a thermostat that controls this system. The thermostat is not a round knob on the wall. It's the set of policies that determine how much fossil fuel we dig up and drill up and frack up from the ground and burn in ways that use the sky as an open sewer for all the gaseous pollution that traps all this heat. We're trapping as much extra heat every day as would be released by 800,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day. It's insane what is happening.
But if you look at those policies, the thermostat, we need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Taxpayers are forced to spend $4.5 trillion a year. That's in direct and indirect subsidies for burning fossil fuels. We need to finally find ways to put a price on carbon. The European Union has done so with its carbon border adjustment mechanism, an approach that is now becoming attractive to other countries and regions as well. So we should accelerate the spread of renewable energy and sustainability technologies generally. We should recognize the inequity of how the capital being spent is distributed because the rich countries get most of it whereas most of the emissions increases projected are going to come from the developing countries but because they have extra risks that investors evaluate such as currency valuation changes without warning, access to courts and the rule of law and others, the interest rates are so high for investments in these developing countries that institutions like the World Bank and the other multilateral development banks need to be more aggressive and forward-leaning in taking the first loss and coming up with public-private blended finance options. And under Ajay Banga the World Bank is beginning to provide that leadership in a very bold way. So those are the things that I think we need to emphasize.
Yeah. And one of the technologies I read that you were bullish on is actually AI saying it could be net positive for climate. What would need to happen for that bet to pay off, do you think?
Well, first of all, let me slightly ask for a modification in the adjective bullish. What I mean to say is that on the list of concerns that we all have about these pioneer models of AI, I think the emissions is down that list, not at the top of the list. I think it's a cause for concern, particularly deep concern when they use methane turbines as the source of power, but many of them are using renewable energy. And if you look at all of the emissions from the AI data centers taken together, double it and quadruple it, that's still only a fraction of the emissions from uncovered landfills, for example. The rise in emissions from new installations of air conditioning as the heat becomes so oppressive in more and more parts of the world. That's a larger source as well. There are other concerns about the pioneer AI models that need to be addressed and we've all been startled by some of the dire warnings in the last couple of weeks even. But where emissions are concerned, I don't think that particular part of it is a cause for panic. I think it needs to be addressed and there needs to be public pressure on the companies building data centers to not use fossil fuels as the power source.
Right. That's a good point. I want to turn our attention back to China, which we were touching on a little bit earlier. So, as you said, they've made solar, battery storage, and other clean technologies significantly cheaper, but also dominate, you know, much of the supply chain. How can the US rebuild its clean energy infrastructure without slowing the transition or making it more expensive?
Well, we need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels first and foremost. Secondly, we need to take some pride in the fact that most of these technologies were invented and developed here in the United States and we let them get away from us. But engineers and investors are pretty convinced that we can build our own capacity here in the US to make many of these technologies at the heart of the sustainability revolution and we need to get on with it.
Yeah. Right. And you know, continuing to look globally, crises recently like the invasion of Ukraine, the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz have shown the risks involved with being so fossil fuel dependent. I'm curious what your thoughts are on whether crisis like that cause us to lock in more fossil fuel infrastructure or can actually help us accelerate away from it and what makes the difference.
