Al Gore: Fossil fuel polluters are ‘panicking’ about losing business

Al Gore missed out on becoming US president in 2000 by a whisker. But since that fraught election, in which votes had to be recounted and the Supreme Court stepped in to deliver victory to Republican George W Bush, he has forged a different path.

Instead of leading from the White House, the former US vice-president has led the charge for climate action through a variety of platforms.

In March, nearly 10 years after the Paris Agreement was signed, he was in the French capital to urge Europe to keep driving the energy transition, while back in the US, President Donald Trump pledged to “drill, baby, drill”.

For the past quarter of a century there has been plenty of speculation about how different US environmental policy might have been had he won that election.

Speaking to the FT in Paris, however, Gore is not interested in such thinking. “I would have made different mistakes,” he says laughing. “Any president will have tremendous challenges. I don’t dwell on what might have been; I focus on the future.”

A return to politics sounds unlikely for Gore, 77, who continues his environmental work through various non-political initiatives. “I am a recovering politician,” he says. “The longer I go without a relapse, the less likely one becomes.”

Gore’s first book on climate change, Earth in the Balance, was published in 1992, followed by the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. Since leaving politics, he has become an investor in green technology businesses through Generation Investment Management, the company he co-founded with the former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management David Blood. He has also founded two non-profit organisations: an advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project, and Climate Trace, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2025, Climate Reality will host climate leadership training in Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro and Ulan Bator. The project’s message is an urgent call for action, underlining that a decade after the landmark Paris accord, when almost 200 countries agreed to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2C and ideally to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, emissions are still increasing — and time to stop more dangerous levels of global warming is running out.

Gore, who addressed an audience of around 800 people in the French capital, says he does not want to “minimise the difficulties presented by the new US administration, which is extremely hostile to anything that would help solve the climate crisis”. However, he believes the energy transition will continue and that Trump’s ability to slow it is “limited”.

“I don’t want to engage in what my kids call ‘toxic positivity’, and I don’t want to peddle ‘hopium’, but I do think there is a realistic basis for genuine hope,” Gore says.

“I believe there is a big wheel turning inexorably in the right direction and a number of little wheels turning in the wrong direction. But I think the big wheel will prevail. The sustainability revolution is driven by technology that is not going to be changed by political actions.”

He cites data from the International Energy Agency showing solar power offers the cheapest electricity in history. Businesses faced with a choice between a new coal plant or solar will choose the latter based on cost considerations “regardless of what politicians tell them”, he says, noting that other cleaner technologies such as electric vehicles are also getting cheaper.

While he recognises that the fossil fuel industry is “by far the wealthiest and most powerful business lobby”, Gore insists change is afoot, as the financial advantages of working with lower-emissions suppliers become clearer.

Some may have stepped back from ambitious climate commitments since Trump came to power, but “many more are continuing to pursue those goals”, he says, even if they are being “quieter about it”.

Gore says that he, like “lots of others,” is “tripling down” on clean energy efforts, in an attempt to stop global warming reaching levels scientists agree will have significant negative implications for people and economies everywhere.

“Look at the climate crisis from the standpoint of the fossil fuel polluters . . . they are the ones who are panicking about losing their business models. That is why they are using [pro-fossil fuel] politicians to try to slow down the transition,” he says. “That strategy has a pretty short half-life.”

I don’t want to peddle ‘hopium’, but I do think there is a realistic basis for genuine hope

Companies that fail to transition away from fossil fuels will lose out on hiring “the best and the brightest”, he says, “if they don’t adopt strategies and businesses that young people think are valuable”.

He dismisses the idea that plastics are a viable alternative market for fossil fuel producers. The plastic industry’s aim to triple production in the coming years will not happen because “people are waking up” to the reality of plastic pollution, he says. Bioplastics, derived from organic, renewable sources such as corn or sugarcane, are still more expensive, he adds, but “the price is coming down and public sentiment is changing”.

During our conversation he suggests attitudes are shifting and that certain politicians and businesses are out of step. Customers increasingly take their business elsewhere if they believe an organisation is complicit in causing climate change, he argues.

“They will shop with companies that share their values,” says Gore.

“I don’t think this is going to change because of something Donald Trump, [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin says.”