Al Gore speaks at London Climate Innovation Forum

Former US Vice President and Nobel Prize Laureate Al Gore closed out the Climate Innovation Forum and the first official day of London Climate Action Week. 

The day had already seen an array of panels covering digitalisation, nature financing and the global momentum at the mid-point between COPs. 

Addressing delegates at London’s Medieval Guildhall, Al Gore criticised US President Donald Trump, fossil fuel companies and polluters for decades of climate change denialism.

The US’ current direction of travel

Al Gore launched into his passionate speech by thanking previous speakers and the organisers of “one of the premier, if not the premier, climate weeks all around the world”.

But it wasn’t long before the Vice President under Bill Clinton turned his attention to the current occupant of the White House.

“For a lot of reasons, we have recently experienced what some around the world are referring to as a climate policy recession. 

“The undisputed catalyst of this so-called policy recession is, unfortunately, the President of my own country, whose attempts to slow down the clean energy transition in the US are growing increasingly desperate and out of step with the direction of travel in the global economy. 

“Just one quick example to illustrate my point. If you look at all of the new electricity generation installed in the US last year, in spite of President Trump's frenzied efforts to stop it, 94% was renewable energy when you include rooftop solar in it.

“He is headed in the wrong direction."

Climate scientists

Al Gore, Founder and Chair of The Climate Reality Project, then shifted to climate science and the fact that predictions from scientists 20-30 years ago have actually been proven right despite campaigns by lawmakers and fossil fuel lobbyists to undermine the work.

“And the fact that they've been proven dead right should cause us to pay more attention to what they're warning us about in the years ahead.

“Because every day we are still putting 175 million tons of man-made heat-trapping gas into the thin blue shell of atmosphere, of troposphere, surrounding our planet.

“The accumulated amount today will trap as much extra heat as would be released by 800,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding on the earth every day. Is it realistic to ignore that?

“I look at these facts and I find it absolutely amazing that the polluters primarily responsible for more than 80% of this potentially civilisation-destroying pollution could be so easily adept at capturing people who will just repeat whatever they say in return for whatever they get. 

“And one of the biggest lessons we should learn from the past many decades about how accurate these climate scientists have been is that the reports coming out now are really quite troubling because we know they're almost certainly correct. 

“The fourth independent assessment of the UK climate risk, to pick one salient example, contains warnings about the risks here over the next 25 years if we fail, that 92% of homes in the UK will overheat due to hotter heat waves. 

“The 2022 heat wave killed over 3,000 people in the UK and future heat waves are of course predicted to be even much hotter and longer still. 

“The report concluded, and I quote, ‘The UK was built for a climate that no longer exists today and will be increasingly distant in years to come.’”

Shifting moods in current geopolitical climate

Al Gore, whose work in climate change activism earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, explained how the energy crises of 2021 and 2026 - spurned by conflict, are helping to strengthen the argument for cheap, local power generation, instead of overreliance on petrostates. 

“All over the world, leaders and their citizens are looking at the interruption of fossil fuel supplies yet again, the massive price volatility yet again. And it has become abundantly clear to leaders in government and business alike that, to quote the former energy Minister of Germany, ‘solar energy is freedom energy’.

“The only thing that's come down faster in cost than solar electricity is utility scale batteries that are now being dotted throughout the grid and making it feasible to use renewable energy for many more hours each day and into the night. 

“Leaders in Europe have thankfully doubled down on renewables in the wake of these interruptions in the supply and the volatility in the price of fossil energy.”

An unstoppable revolution

To end, Al Gore outlined the momentum behind the global sustainability effort highlighting the work in a number of countries, including the rapid solar expansion in Pakistan, the fall in electricity bills in Turkey, and the growth of EV sales in China. 

“These technologies are cheaper, cleaner, better in every way, and they provide three times as many jobs per pound spent compared to money wasted on the obsolete, dirty fossil fuels. So make no mistake, this sustainability revolution is unstoppable. 

“Opponents of the energy transition can try to slow it down, but they cannot stop it. Global investment in clean energy last year reached US$2.2tn, double the amount flowing into fossil fuels. We are turning the corner. We are going to win this. 

“The remaining question is whether or not we will win it in time to avoid the truly catastrophic damage that could take place.

“The decisions you make here this week will have a profound impact on the world in which we find ourselves ten years from now. And if you ever doubt that we as human beings have the capacity to muster the political will necessary to solve this crisis, please always remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.”