Al Gore: climate change is the 'biggest crisis our civilization faces'...but there's still hope

Mr Gore sat down with Jon Donnison in Australia, where his organization, The Climate Reality Project, was holding training sessions to educate future leaders in the fight against climate change. Australia's conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott is viewed by many as a climate change sceptic and once described the science behind human-induced global warming as "absolute crap".

"We're way past time where it's responsible for any national leader to reject the science behind the climate crisis," Mr Gore said.

Eight years after he released the film An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Gore said we have come a long way in awareness of global warming, but there is still much more to be done to find solutions.

Mr Gore does have some optimistic thoughts to help us face the frightening existential threat of climate change.The former vice president penned a treatise for Rolling Stone on the current state of climate change and on the current trends, in politics, economics, tech and business, that together, give him “genuine and realistic hope that we are finally putting ourselves on a path to solve the climate crisis.”

Sure, Gore writes, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has entered a period of unstoppable collapse, and the effects of climate change are already being felt. “Yet the truly catastrophic damages that have the potential for ending civilization as we know it can still – almost certainly – be avoided,” he asserts. “Moreover, the pace of the changes already set in motion can still be moderated significantly.”

Below, five reasons why he’s convinced that’s the case:

Wind and solar are becoming competitive with coal, and are poised to challenge natural gas, too:

At the turn of the 21st century, some scoffed at projections that the world would be installing one gigawatt of new solar electricity per year by 2010. That goal was exceeded 17 times over; last year it was exceeded 39 times over; and this year the world is on pace to exceed that benchmark as much as 55 times over. In May, China announced that by 2017, it would have the capacity to generate 70 gigawatts of photovoltaic electricity. The state with by far the biggest amount of wind energy is Texas, not historically known for its progressive energy policies.

The cost of wind energy is also plummeting, having dropped 43 percent in the United States since 2009 – making it now cheaper than coal for new generating capacity. Though the downward cost curve is not quite as steep as that for solar, the projections in 2000 for annual worldwide wind deployments by the end of that decade were exceeded seven times over, and are now more than 10 times that figure. In the United States alone, nearly one-third of all new electricity-generating capacity in the past five years has come from wind, and installed wind capacity in the U.S. has increased more than fivefold since 2006.

Despite the best efforts of the Koch brothers, Americans are embracing green energy:

The Koch brothers are losing rather badly. In Kansas, their home state, a poll by North Star Opinion Research reported that 91 percent of registered voters support solar and wind. Three-quarters supported stronger policy encouragement of renewable energy, even if such policies raised their electricity bills. In Georgia, the Atlanta Tea Party joined forces with the Sierra Club to form a new organization called – wait for it – the Green Tea Coalition, which promptly defeated a Koch-funded scheme to tax rooftop solar panels.”

Our political system is broken, but we have the power to fix it:

Pressure for meaningful reform in democratic capitalism is beginning to build powerfully. The progressive introduction of Internet-based communication – social media, blogs, digital journalism – is laying the foundation for the renewal of individual participation in democracy, and the re-elevation of reason over wealth and power as the basis for collective decision­making. And the growing levels of inequality worldwide, combined with growing structural unemployment and more frequent market disruptions (like the Great Recession), are building support for reforms in capitalism.…In order to accomplish these policy shifts, we must not only put a price on carbon in markets, but also find a way to put a price on climate denial in our politics. We already know the reforms that are needed – and the political will to enact them is a renewable resource. Yet the necessary renewal can only come from an awakened citizenry empowered by a sense of urgency and emboldened with the courage to reject despair and become active. Most importantly, now is the time to support candidates who accept the reality of the climate crisis and are genuinely working hard to solve it – and to bluntly tell candidates who are not on board how much this issue matters to you. If you are willing to summon the resolve to communicate that blunt message forcefully – with dignity and absolute sincerity – you will be amazed at the political power an individual can still wield in America’s diminished democracy.

Despite continuing to support fracking, Obama’s been rising to the challenge:

He has empowered his Environmental Protection Agency to enforce limits on CO2 emissions for both new and, as of this June, existing sources of CO2. He has enforced bold new standards for the fuel economy of the U.S. transportation fleet. He has signaled that he is likely to reject the absurdly reckless Keystone XL-pipeline proposal for the transport of oil from carbon­intensive tar sands to be taken to market through the United States on its way to China, thus effectively limiting their exploitation.

 And he is even now preparing to impose new limits on the release of methane pollution.…the president is clearly changing his overall policy emphasis to make CO2 reductions a much higher priority now and has made a series of inspiring speeches about the challenges posed by climate change and the exciting opportunities available as we solve it. As a result, Obama will go to the United Nations this fall and to Paris at the end of 2015 with the credibility and moral authority that he lacked during the disastrous meeting in Copenhagen four and a half years ago.

We’re moving away from a fossil fuel-dependent economy:

Exxonmobil, Shell and many other holders of carbon-intensive assets have argued, in essence, that they simply do not believe that elected national leaders around the world will ever reach an agreement to put a price on carbon pollution.

But a prospective global treaty (however likely or unlikely you think that might be) is only one of several routes to overturning the fossil-fuel economy. Rapid technological advances in renewable energy are stranding carbon investments; grassroots movements are building opposition to the holding of such assets; and new legal restrictions on collateral flows of pollution – like particulate air pollution in China and mercury pollution in the U.S. – are further reducing the value of coal, tar sands, and oil and gas assets.

In a nutshell, one of the biggest things we can do to save our planet is replace fossil fuels with clean sustainable alternatives. Hope the guys involved in such research step up their program a little. Time's running out at more than double the speed anticipated 20 years ago.