Al Gore, who served as vice president for eight years before becoming a full-time climate activist, knows something about presidential power.
And in recent weeks, Gore has watched with alarm as President Trump stretches the limits of executive authority to dismantle federal climate policy, roll back environmental protections and eliminate incentives for clean energy.
He’s watched the canceled federal grants, the mass layoffs, the paused renewable energy permitting and the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development, and he’s watched as the Environmental Protection Agency revised its mission.
Each of these actions is disrupting efforts to reduce emissions and protect the environment.
“Are they different in blowing through stop signs and warning signs and red lines and constitutional barriers?” he said. “Of course they are. I mean, this is something new for sure.”
But a more overarching concern, Gore said, is Trump’s attempts to override Congress.
Trump has tried to freeze money for clean energy projects that was already authorized in laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, and other funds that were supposed to be distributed by the E.P.A.
“He is claiming the right to authorize and appropriate or rescind the spending power and the taxing power that is clearly given to the Congress in Article I,” he said, referring to the Constitution.
Gore said he believed the courts would prevent Trump from implementing some of his most extreme moves. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to get away with that,” he said. “I think we’re more resilient as a constitutional, representative democracy than a lot of people of fear.”
But as the U.S. walks away from its climate leadership, Gore has shifted the focus of his activism abroad.
Overseas action
Last weekend in Paris, Gore kicked off a global tour of the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit he founded in 2006.
The group works on a number of fronts. It conducts trainings worldwide, including upcoming events in Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Kenya, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It helps citizens mobilize political pressure and campaign for clean energy solutions and environmental regulations. And it has youth programs and a grant-making initiative.
Gore believes that by imbuing concern for the climate into a broad cross section of society, governments and big businesses will be more likely to take urgent action to reduce emissions, particularly outside the U.S.
“Grassroots pressure in countries around the world is a key element in mobilizing sufficient public support for the urgent climate action that’s needed,” he said. “And with the newly elected leadership in the U.S., other countries will play an even more significant role.”
Climate activists in the U.S. have recently experienced a series of setbacks, including the potentially fatal verdict against Greenpeace and Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act.
But in much of the rest of the world, Gore said, climate activists were more motivated than ever as global temperatures rise and extreme weather intensifies.
The tour started in Paris to mark the 10th anniversary of the Paris climate accord. That agreement, in which most countries around the world pledged to try to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, already looks irrelevant.
Global average temperatures have been reaching highs for more than a year, and are forecast to go higher in the years ahead. Morgan Stanley recently warned clients to prepare for 3 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels.
Measured optimism
Despite the moves by the Trump administration and the continued planetary warming, Gore expressed some hope that the transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy was continuing apace. That’s a theme we’ve heard recently from many policymakers, executives and experts.
And Gore noted that in Trump’s first term, overall emissions in the U.S. fell while solar capacity more than doubled and coal use declined, even as the administration slashed pollution regulations and cut federal support for climate issues.
The hope, Gore said, is that something similar will happen over the next four years.
“Has he slowed some things down? For sure,” Gore said. “But will this continue? Of course. It’s inevitable.”
$250 million for defamation: inside Greenpeace’s huge loss
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner.
The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as among some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement.
The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.” — Karen Zraick
Trump administration has begun a war on science, researchers say
In an open letter, some 1,900 leading researchers on Monday accused the Trump administration of conducting a “wholesale assault on U.S. science” that could set back research by decades and threatened the health and safety of Americans.
The letter’s signatories warned of the damage being done by layoffs at health and science agencies and cuts and delays to funding that had historically supported research inside the government and across American universities.
The letter was drafted by a group of 13 scientists representing fields like medicine, climate science, sociology and economics.
More climate news:
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The White House is considering an executive order that “would fast-track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process,” Reuters reports. (Read our previous coverage on the deep-sea mining companies pushing for this policy.)
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The San Andreas fault in California is nearly identical to the one that caused the powerful earthquake in Myanmar last week, according to The Washington Post.
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Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies will invest $714 million in their flagship carbon capture facility in Norway, according to Reuters.
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David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series. More about David Gelles
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