Al Gore reaches out to work with Donald Trump on climate change

Former Vice President Al Gore picked himself up after his controversial presidential election loss to George W. Bush in 2000 and became an internationally respected champion for the climate. But convincing President-elect Donald Trump of the urgent need to act on the climate crisis could be Gore’s greatest challenge yet. Gore is extending an olive branch to Trump and pledging to do everything he can to “work with him and his administration to ensure that our nation remains a leader in the global effort to meet this challenge.”

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Many in the environmental community are in despair about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Trump has promised to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, scrap President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and Climate Action Plan, roll back environmental regulations and increase dirty energy.

Despite all the doom and gloom, Gore is staying upbeat. “President-elect Trump said he wanted to be a president for all Americans,” Gore wrote. “In that spirit, I hope that he will work with the overwhelming majority of us who believe that the climate crisis is the greatest threat we face as a nation.”

Gore isn’t the only climate activist who plans to work on persuading Trump to take climate action. The Independent reports that the Sierra Club and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are preparing campaigns to change Trump’s views, which are currently dismissive of the imminent threat global warming poses to human civilization and the natural world. Dr. Rush Holt, chief executive of the AAAS, told The Independent that the financial costs of doing nothing on climate could perhaps convince Trump to reconsider pulling out of the Paris climate deal, saying that “maybe he [Trump] would respond to arguments of dollars and cents.”

But every indication so far is that Trump is going to be a disaster for global efforts to mitigate climate change. Not only does Trump want to exit from the Paris climate agreement signed by nearly 200 nations that went into force earlier this month, but fossil fuel executives and climate skeptics are set to take key roles in his administration. Trump has tapped climate denier Myron Ebell to oversee the Environmental Protection Agency transition (Trump has stated that he wants to abolish the EPA) and is considering Sarah Palin, a vocal proponent of oil and gas drilling, and Forrest Lucas, co-founder of oil products firm Lucas Oil, for interior secretary.

If Gore isn’t successful at convincing Trump of the catastrophic consequences of climate inaction, perhaps the Pentagon can get through to our next commander in chief. The US military calls climate change a “threat multiplier” and is integrating climate change into its national defense strategies. The Pentagon is prioritizing climate change partly because of concerns that it could create conditions that foster extremism and terrorism – an issue that Trump said he wants to address. Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote in the forward to the Pentagon’s 2014 climate report that “while scientists are converging toward consensus on future climate projections, uncertainty remains. But this cannot be an excuse for delaying action.”

Via The Washington Post

Images via Wikimedia

4 thoughts on “Al Gore reaches out to work with Donald Trump on climate change”

ts January 10, 2017 at 3:32 am

Progressives have no choice but to work with Trump and co. since he's the elected President. Unfortunately, it will be an uphill battle all the way for Gore, Musk, and every other progressive out there trying to work with this group.

Anonymous November 16, 2016 at 2:17 am

What will Gore help Trump? Gore is an activist and promoter, burnig for his cause. But he is no scientist for helping to sort out what part of climate change is manmade or not. His Movie had a number of factual mistakes as british judges have shown. Speaking about costs: Here in Germany the cost of electricity went up from about 0.24DM(=12€ct) to 30€ct within 20 years. Just because of the Energy Transition (Energgiewende).

Anonymous November 15, 2016 at 1:40 pm

To effectively create a fully clean energy infrastructure will require taxpayer-supported government subsidies, because private for-profit business corporations will only proceed in which there is a return on investment. What is important is to structure ALL subsidies for the purpose of financing common benefit infrastructure is to ensure that EVERY corporation contracted for the work, both the parts and products as well as the actual work to build the infrastructure improvements, be fully employed-owned, and as well the resulting infrastructure projects by citizens (as in individuals) owned using Citizen Land Bank (CLB) structure. A CLB is a for-profit, professionally-managed, citizen-owned-and-governed community land planning and development enterprise, designed to enable every citizen of a community of any size to acquire a direct ownership stake in local land, natural resources and basic infrastructure. A CLB is a social vehicle for every man, woman and child to gain, as a fundamental right of citizenship, a single lifetime, non-transferable ownership interest in all the Bank’s assets, share equally in property incomes from rentals and user fees from leases or use of the Bank’s assets, accumulate appreciated equity values from enhanced land values, and gain an owner’s voice in the governance of future land development. jA CLB is an innovative legal and financing tool empowered to borrow on behalf of all citizen-shareholders and service the debt with pre-tax dollars to meet the land acquisition, capitalization and operational needs of the Bank. The CLB shelters from taxation the equity accumulations of citizen-shareholders and protects the outside assets of the citizens in the event of loan default or if the enterprise fails. A CLB is a social tool designed to encourage a just, free and non-monopolistic market economy. It applies the democratic principles of equal opportunity and equal access to the means to participate as an owner as well as a worker. It demonstrates that anything that can be owned by government can and should be owned, individually and jointly, by the citizens. A CLB is a major feature in a proposed national economic agenda known as “Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen,” which is designed to reform existing monetary, credit and tax barriers to provide every American an equal opportunity to share in the governing powers and profits from new entrepreneurial ventures, new technologies, new structures, and new rentable space built upon the land. Capital Homesteading offers a “Just Third Way” of reversing unsustainable federal deficits and debt, and revitalizing and growing the American free enterprise system in a sustainable and environmentally sound way.

Anonymous November 14, 2016 at 5:04 pm

The politics of research funding. Conflict of Interest "If your research doesn't compliment my biased agenda, you will NOT receive grant money."

ts January 10, 2017 at 3:32 am

Progressives have no choice but to work with Trump and co. since he's the elected President. Unfortunately, it will be an uphill battle all the way for Gore, Musk, and every other progressive out there trying to work with this group.
Anonymous November 16, 2016 at 2:17 am

What will Gore help Trump? Gore is an activist and promoter, burnig for his cause. But he is no scientist for helping to sort out what part of climate change is manmade or not. His Movie had a number of factual mistakes as british judges have shown. Speaking about costs: Here in Germany the cost of electricity went up from about 0.24DM(=12€ct) to 30€ct within 20 years. Just because of the Energy Transition (Energgiewende).
Anonymous November 15, 2016 at 1:40 pm

To effectively create a fully clean energy infrastructure will require taxpayer-supported government subsidies, because private for-profit business corporations will only proceed in which there is a return on investment. What is important is to structure ALL subsidies for the purpose of financing common benefit infrastructure is to ensure that EVERY corporation contracted for the work, both the parts and products as well as the actual work to build the infrastructure improvements, be fully employed-owned, and as well the resulting infrastructure projects by citizens (as in individuals) owned using Citizen Land Bank (CLB) structure. A CLB is a for-profit, professionally-managed, citizen-owned-and-governed community land planning and development enterprise, designed to enable every citizen of a community of any size to acquire a direct ownership stake in local land, natural resources and basic infrastructure. A CLB is a social vehicle for every man, woman and child to gain, as a fundamental right of citizenship, a single lifetime, non-transferable ownership interest in all the Bank’s assets, share equally in property incomes from rentals and user fees from leases or use of the Bank’s assets, accumulate appreciated equity values from enhanced land values, and gain an owner’s voice in the governance of future land development. jA CLB is an innovative legal and financing tool empowered to borrow on behalf of all citizen-shareholders and service the debt with pre-tax dollars to meet the land acquisition, capitalization and operational needs of the Bank. The CLB shelters from taxation the equity accumulations of citizen-shareholders and protects the outside assets of the citizens in the event of loan default or if the enterprise fails. A CLB is a social tool designed to encourage a just, free and non-monopolistic market economy. It applies the democratic principles of equal opportunity and equal access to the means to participate as an owner as well as a worker. It demonstrates that anything that can be owned by government can and should be owned, individually and jointly, by the citizens. A CLB is a major feature in a proposed national economic agenda known as “Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen,” which is designed to reform existing monetary, credit and tax barriers to provide every American an equal opportunity to share in the governing powers and profits from new entrepreneurial ventures, new technologies, new structures, and new rentable space built upon the land. Capital Homesteading offers a “Just Third Way” of reversing unsustainable federal deficits and debt, and revitalizing and growing the American free enterprise system in a sustainable and environmentally sound way.
Anonymous November 14, 2016 at 5:04 pm

The politics of research funding. Conflict of Interest "If your research doesn't compliment my biased agenda, you will NOT receive grant money."

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