Gore: Trump inadvertently pushes people to fight climate change

"In what some might call a perverse way, I think the fact that Donald J. Trump has become the global face of climate denial is actually encouraging a lot more people to join the cause of helping bring about the solutions more rapidly," Gore told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on "CNN Newsroom."

Gore previously targeted Trump in his 2017 documentary "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," framing the President as the villain in the follow-up to his 2006 film on climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore also had called Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement that June "indefensible."

Trump "cannot withdraw from the Paris agreement, by the way, legally," he added Friday. "The first date we could is the day after the next presidential election. So the fate of this issue is not in his hands -- it's in our hands."

Gore, who was in Atlanta on Friday meeting with young climate change activists, also expressed support for the Green New Deal as an ambitious program that would get people talking about overhauling environmental policy.

"It's an inspirational goal that makes it possible for large majorities to come together in a common demand that the US change its approach," Gore said, comparing it to the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980's to halt the use of nuclear weapons.

"The Green New Deal is a bit like that. We can argue about the particulars and specifics as it comes into form," he added. "But the general notion -- solve the climate crisis and create millions of new jobs while were doing it -- that's got a huge majority support and it is now emerging as a mandate from the American people."

Let's block ads! (Why?)