GLASGOW, Scotland — Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has compared the world’s complacency on climate change to the way it failed to take seriously the threat of fascism during the 1930s.
Invoking Winston Churchill’s famous warning that “the era of procrastination (…) is coming to its close,” Gore told the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow that the impacts of global warming would soon spur momentum for action.
“We are now experiencing the consequences of the climate crisis in every part of our world,” he said Friday, echoing Churchill. “The scientists warned us that these consequences were coming.”
Gore starred in “An Inconvenient Truth,” an Oscar-winning 2006 documentary about the threat of climate change.
In Glasgow, he praised countries and companies that recently made new pledges to curb emissions but added that the fulfillment of those commitments must be closely watched.
Gore advocated for “radical transparency” that includes monitoring emissions from the ground, the sea, by air and by satellite to identify those responsible for releasing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
He also warned that the rising number of climate refugees expected over the coming decades risked triggering “xenophobia and anger” which in turn could fuel authoritarian populism around the world.