Here's Why Al Gore Says We're In a 'Climate Crisis'
- 6 years ago
NowThis Exclusive: Why Al Gore says ‘Climate Crisis’ not ‘Change’
AG: The climate is just a very thin shell of atmosphere around the planet, and that makes it the most vulnerable part of the Earth’s ecological system. You know, I guess I, along with man others, may spend more time than is warranted on the vocabulary and the ways of using words to describe it, but I just thought that ‘climate crisis’ was a better way of expressing the problem. ‘Climate change’, sometimes, to my ears anyway sounds sort of benign and gradual, and ‘everything changes’, but that’s the reasoning behind it.
NT: Was there a moment when you personally thought, ‘This is a crisis’?
AG: Yeah, when the predictions of the scientists not only began coign true, but turned out to be even worse than they projected. Hurricane Katrina was such a moment, years ago in New Orleans. Superstorm Sandy in this city, in New York, and I have traveled around the world to see these events first-hand and, after a while, it really does sink in. We’re radically changing the conditions that have been good for us as human beings and have lead to the flourishing of human civilization, and we don’t want to lose those conditions. And we’re now in the midst of a process by which we’re really rattling the foundations of the climate conditions that are good for us. And we can’t do that, we shouldn’t do that. We have to fix it.
AG: The climate is just a very thin shell of atmosphere around the planet, and that makes it the most vulnerable part of the Earth’s ecological system. You know, I guess I, along with man others, may spend more time than is warranted on the vocabulary and the ways of using words to describe it, but I just thought that ‘climate crisis’ was a better way of expressing the problem. ‘Climate change’, sometimes, to my ears anyway sounds sort of benign and gradual, and ‘everything changes’, but that’s the reasoning behind it.
NT: Was there a moment when you personally thought, ‘This is a crisis’?
AG: Yeah, when the predictions of the scientists not only began coign true, but turned out to be even worse than they projected. Hurricane Katrina was such a moment, years ago in New Orleans. Superstorm Sandy in this city, in New York, and I have traveled around the world to see these events first-hand and, after a while, it really does sink in. We’re radically changing the conditions that have been good for us as human beings and have lead to the flourishing of human civilization, and we don’t want to lose those conditions. And we’re now in the midst of a process by which we’re really rattling the foundations of the climate conditions that are good for us. And we can’t do that, we shouldn’t do that. We have to fix it.