WASHINGTON — (CNN) Former Vice President Al Gore has spent years in pursuit of action on climate change, and on Tuesday, he’ll take part in a CNN town hall.
Gore is making the rounds about a decade after starring in the blockbuster global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” this time trotting out a sequel.
The first film pushed the idea of climate change as a pressing threat into the faces of many the nation over and helped make Gore one of the most prominent environmental activists in the country.
Gore’s follow-up movie has come at time when those against robust action on climate change are ascendant. President Donald Trump, who once called climate change a hoax perpetrated by China, said earlier this year he will pull the US out of an international accord on carbon emissions, and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has set out to roll back Obama-era regulations aimed at lowering the nation’s impact on the planet.
The former vice president has stayed on the issue over the years, pushing for clean energy and international action. Gore hailed the Paris agreement, which saw almost every nation in the world join together with pledges to reduce carbon emissions.
After the 2016 election, Gore headed to Trump Tower at the invitation of Ivanka Trump to meet with her and her father.
He spoke again with the President by phone in early May.
But Gore’s — and Ivanka’s — influence clearly was not enough. After some delay, Trump announced in the Rose Garden in June that he intended to pull the US out of the climate agreement.
Gore blasted the decision, saying, “I think it was reckless. I think it was indefensible. It undermines America’s standing in the world. It threatens the ability of humanity to solve the climate crisis in time.”
And Gore’s CNN appearance at the town hall — which will be hosted by Anderson Cooper and is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. ET — will come a day after a pair of studies showing dire projections for the planet were published.
One said there was a 95% chance the Earth would warm by more than 2 degrees Celsius — past a target considered by international observers to be the point where the most destructive effects of climate change would occur — by the end of the century. The second study said even if humans ceased to burn fossil fuels immediately, the Earth would still likely reach the 2-degree increase by 2100 and that if humans continue to emit CO2 for just 15 more years, global temperature could go up by 3 degrees.
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