Al Gore on the Climate Crisis: 'We Have a Switch We Can Flip'
Despite months of discouraging news about extreme weather conditions, the former Vice-President Al Gore still believes that there is a solution to the climate crisis clearly in sight. “We have a switch we can flip,” he tells David Remnick. The problem, as Gore sees it, is that a powerful legacy network of political and financial spheres of influence are stubbornly standing in the way. “When ExxonMobil or Chevron put their ads on the air, the purpose is not for a husband and wife to say, ‘Oh, let’s go down to the store and buy some motor oil.’ The purpose is to condition the political space so that they have a continued license to keep producing and selling more and more fossil fuels,” Gore says. He notes that the upcoming United Nations climate conference is presided over by an oil executive. And yet Gore remains cautiously optimistic. Plus, the singer and actor Rubén Blades tells The New Yorker’s Graciela Mochkofsky about his unlikely journey from law school to Latin-music icon. Al Gore on the Climate Crisis: “We Have a Switch We Can Flip” The self-described “recovering politician” explains the stakes and the clear and present solution to our ongoing climate crisis. Rubén Blades Wasn’t Supposed to Be a Salsa Star Rubén Blades recounts his unpredictable journey from a record-company mailroom to the top of the salsa charts. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.