Al Gore on the Climate Crisis: “We Have a Switch We Can Flip”
The New Yorker Radio Hour
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2023
⏱️ 22 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. |
| 0:10.2 | Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:14.1 | It would honestly be hard to overstate the role that Al Gore has played in making us aware of the climate crisis, and in making it |
| 0:22.6 | seem vivid, making it seem real. When he was elected vice president in 1992, Gore was one of the only |
| 0:30.4 | national politicians who really put climate change at the top of the agenda. Though the right |
| 0:35.8 | wing tried to stereotype him as a tree-hugging hippie, |
| 0:40.3 | Gore was firmly in the establishment, a former senator from a political family in Tennessee. |
| 0:46.3 | Gore had about him a wooden earnestness that occasionally made him the butt of jokes on Saturday Night Live and the like. |
| 0:53.3 | But by the time the film |
| 0:54.9 | in Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, a film that documented his long effort to gain |
| 1:00.3 | support for climate action. The jokes had really faded. Gore shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 |
| 1:07.8 | for his efforts, and he founded an investment firm dedicated to sustainability. |
| 1:13.5 | And now after the hottest summer in recorded history, his quest seems more urgent than ever. |
| 1:19.6 | The UN's annual conference on climate change begins next month. |
| 1:24.4 | So I wanted to talk to Al Gore about how far we've come in the fight against climate change |
| 1:29.3 | and how far we still have to go. |
| 1:34.0 | Great. |
| 1:35.0 | Hey, hey. |
| 1:35.8 | Nice so good to see you. |
| 1:37.1 | Well, here we are the last time I saw you. |
| 1:40.6 | You came to the New Yorker in Condi and asked to talk about climate. This was probably |
| 1:45.6 | 10 years ago. And you were in the mode of warning, pushing, just as you had even years before |
... |
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