Al Gore: These are the skills climate leaders must build now

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

And when my first movie came out, I started training grassroots advocates. The first class was 50 people at my farm in Tennessee. And by now, I've personally trained almost 50,000 people who go through a lengthy almost week-long course, that goes into great detail on the causes and the solutions for the climate crisis, but also focuses on giving all of these people the skills and the tools and the network connections with one another and with the scientific community to be effective advocates.

And our focus is increasingly on convincing policymakers to make changes because some of the largest polluters tried to get across the idea that really this burden is on each individual to turn off the light switch when you leave the room to change the light bulbs to more efficient ones and, and so forth. And that's all fine and good, but as important as it is to change the light bulbs, it's a lot more important to change the policies. And our current policies around the world still subsidize the burning of fossil fuels, forcing taxpayers to subsidize the destruction of our future, with sums that are more than 30 times greater than the meagre amounts that are being used to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

We have ridiculous policies that ignore the scientific truth of what we're doing. And by the way, going back to the subprime carbon bubble, continuing to spend all this money on fossil fuels is creating the number one financial risk for the global economy. I mentioned the subprime mortgage catastrophe. You know, that caused the great recession. When people suddenly realized that these mortgages given to millions of people who couldn't make the monthly payments couldn't make a down payment, it was ridiculous and absurd. But there was a kind of a mass delusion. There were big fees to be earned. And there was an illusion that if we just lump them all together and fob them off into the global marketplace, somehow the risk would magically disappear. Well, it didn't. When some guy on the spectrum in Silicon Valley took the time to really dig in and realized, ‘Oh my God, these things are worthless’ then in short order they collapsed and that's what caused the credit crisis and the Great Recession.

Now, the subprime carbon bubble is much larger. $22 trillion worth of assets that cannot be burned. Not only because of whatever legislation and treaty obligations are involved, but because they're losing the license, the public's license, to operate, and the competition from these new, sustainable technologies like solar and wind and batteries and EVs and the other things I've mentioned, are making them non-competitive. So, we really have to speed up the pace, and start making these changes much quicker.

(snip)


https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/al-gore-climate-policy-leadership-skills-climate-change/

This is a good in-depth interview.

[appalachiablue]

1. Thanks for posting, good to hear from Al Gore.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. I often think about where would be now on climate change if we had counted all the votes

And Al Gore had taken his rightful place as POTUS.