Gore Addresses Climate Change Truths, Challenges at Summit
It’s been12 years since the release of former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In that time, some of what Gore foreshadowed is now approaching reality, especially in California where declining snowpack, frequent catastrophic fires and the threat of rising sea levels are becoming the new normal.
At Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s Global Climate Action Summit, held in San Francisco September 12 to 14, Gore lauded California’s signing of Senate Bill 100 as the kind of action that states and nations need to take to avoid severe climate change impacts. The new law mandates that 60 percent of electricity will be sourced from renewable energy by 2030 and sets a planning goal that 100 percent will be sourced from zero-carbon sources by 2045.
At the summit, Gore said he remains hopeful the world can meet climate change challenges.
“Anybody who deals with the climate crisis occasionally has a struggle with hope and despair,” he said. “But I always come down on the side of hope.”
Gore’s message was in keeping with the aims of the summit, which included calling on national governments to join forces to step up climate action ahead of 2020—the year when global greenhouse gases need to fall sharply to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
During the summit, Brown signed a comprehensive package of bills aimed at dramatically reducing carbon emissions, including boosting the number of zero-emission vehicles and charging stations in California. Brown did so aboard the maiden voyage of the first plug-in hybrid electric ferry to operate in San Francisco Bay.
Earlier at the summit, Gore joined Brown at a high-level U.S. China Subnational Climate Dialog to further the conversation with China on climate change challenges.
“China has a historic opportunity to contribute to global economic growth through low-carbon developments, and it’s demonstrating its commitment to do so at this summit,” Gore said. “It’s bold domestic action is an incredibly important signal to the world for our need to lower emissions.”
The high-level meeting is the latest in a string of talks between California and China. In 2017, a delegation led by California Energy Commission Chair Robert Weisenmiller traveled to China to help strengthen relationships and agreements initiated during Brown’s 2016 China visit.
The talks and agreements are part of California’s interest in forging subnational agreements.
