Al Gore was in the final stage of the U.S. presidential election 25 years ago, just weeks after the election, and will eventually slide on his finger despite winning a referendum. His platform includes ambitious climate action, where the United States is positioned as a natural leader in global environmental transitions.
The irony of what has happened since is that he has not been lost to him. “From a perspective 25 years ago, I have to say no, I won’t see it as the most likely outcome.” When asked about the emergence of China as the world’s leading force in the energy transition, this reality seemed almost fantastic for candidates who once hoped to guide U.S. climate policy from Oval Office.
But rather than regretting China’s climate leadership, Gore celebrates someone’s stepping up his efforts as he expresses his frustration with the sphere that the United States has ceded. As far as he is concerned, the planet doesn’t care which country leads the allegations of sustainability. What bothers him even more is the opportunity cost, that is, if the country is not busy demolishing its own climate policies, the innovation and influence of the United States may accelerate global progress.
Gore and Lila Preston of the Sustainability Investment Company’s investment company Generation Management Management Company spoke with the editor early Monday morning The 9th Annual Climate ReportThis not only records the significant growth of those who have setbacks in U.S. climate policy, but also China calls the world’s “first electronic country.”
We spent most of the conversation studying what headlines are currently making: the growing demand for rare earth minerals in the technology industry, what responsible mining might look like, how the demand for large-scale data centers in the AI boom affects global energy consumption, and whether rocket launches in the space industry really represent industry observers believe in their climate net worth. Here are excerpts from this chat for editing for length and clarity.
You have been tracking these sustainability trends for years. Should other countries stop leading the long-term challenges of the United States in light of policy whipping among the U.S. governments?
Al Gore: The big wheels are rotating in the right direction, and there are some smaller wheels inside the big wheels that are rotating in the opposite direction. The world is shifting very strongly – if you look back at the 10-year Paris Agreement period, 55% of all energy investment will still be used for fossil fuels, while the energy transition is only 45%. Now, these figures have reversed: 65% of financing will go to renewable energy, while fossils are only 35%, and this trend is accelerating.
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The United States plays a key role, but it goes back and forth as partisan control changes, which is unfortunate because the world will benefit greatly from the continued, consistent leadership of the United States, and we will survive in the form of all the negative steps Trump has taken. The rest of the world is moving forward, even if the United States will continue to move forward, albeit at a slower pace.
The report shows that China is becoming the world’s first “electricity country” while the United States has abandoned the competition for clean technology leadership. Can you imagine this situation 25 years ago?
Gore: From a perspective 25 years ago, I have to say no, I won’t see it as the most likely outcome. But I was deeply impressed by the extent to which Chinese leaders listened carefully to their scientific community.
The story is getting clearer now. When repeated recordings of drought reduced their capacity for hydraulic power, some regional leaders began to worry that layoffs might follow, so they have been building coal-fired power plants and using them at 50% utilizing or less. At the same time, the breakthrough structure of solar energy is surprising. They scored solar goals six years ahead of schedule. This year, for months, they have basically opened three new single nuclear plants every day with solar power capacity. It’s incredible.
At the beginning of this year, they informed the world that they no longer want to measure carbon intensity, but rather judge based on actual reduction. This is a clear signal because they will never comply with standards they think they cannot meet and exceed.
Speaking of coal, the recent EPA Proposed ending Thousands of coal-fired power plants and refineries are required to report greenhouse gas emission requirements. What does this mean when we stop measuring the problem we are trying to solve?
Gore: This is obviously part of eliminating the crisis by making all the information that describes the crisis disappear. But there is some news of improvement. A generation of investment management partners have been one of the major seed funders for climate traces, the foundation tracking real-time atmospheric carbon emissions.
Now, we estimate 99% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is the largest 660 million point source emissions locations. We have all the cliches in the United States, you can only manage your measurements, and we will continue to measure all important greenhouse gas pollution in the United States
Lila Preston: We are seeing climate tracking collaborating with supply chain visibility in the private sector. Companies like Altana, one of our portfolio companies, work with them to provide real-time assessment of supply chain risks and opportunities.
Back in January, President Trump announced the $500 billion Stargate project to build a large AI data center starting in Texas. Your report talks about the advances in the power demand threatening clean energy. Is there a way to pursue ambitious AI development without moving our climate goals?
Preston: This is the best system-level problem we have to solve. A massive surge in demand (about 65% from the United States) shocked the system. Energy use in data centers is 2% today and is expected to at least double by 2030. But we believe renewable energy, storage and long-term geothermal heat can meet this demand.
On the other hand, how AI applications between energy, transportation and agriculture can reduce global emissions – some say that by 2035, there will be 6% to 10% of applications every year. There are also plenty of water footprints – one trillion gallons per year by 2027. We need to think about this huge platform transfer overall.
Gore: Important efforts have begun to supply clean base load capacity to support the decoupling of emission intensity and calculated intensity. Many of the largest new AI capacity builders recognize that the cost advantage of solar plus batteries is now so great that it is used as the additional irritation of building solar plus batteries. Many are also consumer-facing companies who are still committed to telling their user base that they are still committed to sustainability goals, even if this temporary surge will inspire power use in data centers.
On the same topic, Elon Musk’s Xai is It is said that Its Memphis Data Center operates an unmanaged gas turbine in a Memphis data center with already air quality problems.
Gore: This is definitely a big problem. My friends and members of Southwest Memphis have experienced many environmental injustices, and 97% of black communities with 97% of them are already at a 5-fold risk of cancer compared to the national average, and it is indeed unfair to attack these additional emissions from large methane turbines.
They stand out from a successful struggle to prevent high-pressure oil pipelines from reaching their communities and water sources. But once blocked, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law saying that no community, no city or county can intervene in any form of fossil fuel infrastructure. As I often say, this is an example of the fossil fuel industry, better than capturing emissions.
They have used their political and economic capabilities to control too many jurisdictions – local, regional, national, and control the policy-making process in the context of national politics of the Trump administration. They also blew up plastic negotiations because that was their third largest market, Petrochemical, and used its power to prevent the world from limiting the amount of plastic particles we absorb.
But the world is catching up with them, and people in communities like Memphis and elsewhere are saying, “Wait a minute, we are not going to take all these unfair burdens here.”
This kind of plastic is not exhausted at all. It is a big story. Precious metals are another big story this year, partly because the tariff threat highlights the demand for these products to be made in the technology industry. What position do you have on the hunting of these materials mean for our environment?
Gore: These materials must be responsibly, sustainably mined, and can be. Active efforts must be taken to eliminate the abuse and harmful practices we see in some places. But if you look at the volume, it’s a small percentage compared to the damage from digging and extracting fossil fuels every day.
Preston: We are innovating using advanced modeling and AI to visit these materials and sit down while reducing the burden on the landscape and local communities. This is not perfect, but this advance has made a lot of progress once the alarm bell is raised in the past three to four years and this has to be done more sustainably.
The space industry is thriving when we talk about technology. Sending more rockets is also producing a lot of carbon emissions. Do you think we should regulate emissions related to space launches, or is the climate benefits of space technology justifying the carbon footprint?
Gore: I have always believed that the usefulness of observation from space to earth is more than the dangers of launching through fair measures.
Looking at this year’s report, what is the biggest reason why you are optimistic and concerned about?
Gore: What continues to drive my optimism is the stability and even acceleration of all the solutions we need. They continue to get cheaper, and the fossil fuel industry’s ability to resist this transition is decreasing regularly. This transition is unstoppable.
But the remaining question is whether we will make this transition in time to avoid pouring points. Just over the past few days we have gotten an amazing report that the cold rise on the western coast of South America – the Humboldt tide is crucial to the ocean food chain – hasn’t happened for the first time this year.
I like Dornbusch’s law: things take longer than you think, and then they happen faster than you think. I think we’ve gotten over that now, but we need to accelerate the change. We have the technology, deployment models, economics is good for us, and public opinion is good for us – we just need to accelerate the decline in the pollution industry’s ability to resist it.
