YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED

Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED — Transcript

by TED · 3,406 words · 431 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:08Thank you very much for the warm welcome.
0:11It’s been 10 years since the Paris Agreement.
0:15And every single nation in the world,
0:18195 nations, agreed to try to get to net zero by mid-century.
0:24And let me deal with the elephant in the room.
0:27One nation, only one, has begun the process of withdrawing,
0:32and the Trump administration has also canceled executive orders,
0:37withdrawn from international climate organizations.
0:41They have declared a so-called energy emergency
0:44in order to promote fossil fuels.
0:47They’ve phased out government support for clean energy.
0:51But bear this in mind.
0:52During the first Trump four-year term,
0:57investments in the energy transition doubled.
1:00We have seen solar capacity more than double.
1:04Electric vehicle sales have doubled.
1:06Wind energy went up by almost 50 percent
1:09during his first term.
1:12And we are seeing that 60 percent, during his first four years,
1:16of new energy came from renewable energy,
1:19and coal investments went down almost 20 percent.
1:23So there's good news and there's bad news.
1:28A lot’s happened in the last 10 years.
1:31But I want to ask this question.
1:34The fossil fuel industry wants to ignore the amazing good news.
1:40And they are labeling the commitments that the world made
1:44at the Paris negotiations as a fantasy.
1:48And they're calling for an abandonment of the efforts
1:52to reduce the fossil fuel burning.
1:56And they’re now advocating a new approach that they call “climate realism.”
2:02Well, climate realism, according to them,
2:05we should abandon the efforts to deal with the principal cause
2:09of the climate crisis,
2:10eighty percent of it comes from burning fossil fuels,
2:13and we should focus on adaptation as well, almost exclusively.
2:18Well, we need adaptation.
2:20A lot of people are suffering,
2:21but do we want to vastly increase the number of people
2:25that have to go through that hardship and suffering,
2:28instead of dealing with the cause of the crisis
2:31and solving the climate crisis?
2:33According to climate realism, historically,
2:36the energy transitions have taken place very slowly,
2:40so we have no right as human beings to even imagine
2:44that we could go faster in the future
2:46than what history has told us was the reality in the past.
2:50Even though human civilization is at stake.
2:53For the so-called climate realists,
2:56the goal of solving the climate crisis
2:59is way less important than other goals,
3:02such as, especially, increasing energy access to developing countries,
3:07which is obviously important, we'll deal with that.
3:10But they want to do it obviously by burning more fossil fuels.
3:14According to climate realism,
3:17it's just not practical to stop using the sky as an open sewer
3:22for the emissions from burning fossil fuels and the other emissions.
3:27Instead, we should just continue using the sky as an open sewer.
3:33So where climate realism is concerned,
3:37I have some questions.
3:40Is it realistic to ignore the one to two billion climate refugees
3:47that the climate scientists are warning us
3:50will cross international borders
3:51and have to move inside their own nations by 2050
3:57because of the climate crisis?
3:59You know, the temperatures keep going up.
4:0110 hottest years were the last 10.
4:04Last year, 2024, was the hottest year in all of history.
4:08Yesterday in parts of the Persian Gulf,
4:1152.6 degrees.
4:13And for those of us who use Fahrenheit, 126.7 degrees.
4:18A few days ago in Pakistan, 50.5 degrees.
4:21That's 122.9 in Fahrenheit.
4:25And they're telling us that as the temperatures go up
4:29and the humidity goes up,
4:31the few areas in the world today
4:34that are labeled physiologically unlivable for human beings
4:38are due to expand quite dramatically by 2070,
4:42unless we act to cover all of these vast, heavily populated areas.
4:50Is it realistic to ignore this crisis?
4:53Look at what a few million climate refugees have done
4:57to promote authoritarianism and ultranationalism.
5:00How can we handle one to two billion in the next 25 years?
5:05Already here in Kenya, there are 800,000 refugees,
5:10300,000 of them in this place where, of course,
5:14the USAID cuts are now cutting the food aid 70 percent.
5:19Is that what they mean by adaptation?
5:22We have to also ask if it's realistic
5:26to ignore the devastating damage predicted to the global economy.
5:31Whole regions of the world are becoming uninsurable.
5:36We see this in my country where people are having their insurance canceled.
5:40They can't get it renewed.
5:42We have seen predictions
5:44that we could lose 25 trillion dollars in the next 25 years,
5:50just from the loss of the value of global housing properties.
5:55And over the next half century, according to Deloitte,
5:57it would cost the economy 178 trillion dollars if we don't act.
6:03But if we do act,
6:05we can add to the global economy by 43 trillion dollars.
6:10You know, I had a teacher who said we face the same choice in life
6:13over and over again.
6:14The choice between the hard right and the easy wrong.
6:17It seems hard to choose correctly,
6:20but it would turn out to be even harder to take what looks like the easy wrong.
6:25Is it realistic to ignore the fact that right now,
6:27Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice every single hour?
6:33In Antarctica, decade by decade, the ice melting has accelerated.
6:38We've seen the doubling of the pace of sea level rise in the last 20 years,
6:44and the predictions are that it's going to continue dramatically.
6:47Is it realistic to ignore the rapidly increasing climate crisis,
6:52extreme events that are occurring,
6:55practically every night on the television news
6:58is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.
7:00We lost 3.5 trillion dollars just in the last decade.
7:05And you know, the fact
7:06that these scientists were absolutely correct decades ago,
7:09when they predicted these exact consequences
7:12should cause us to pay a little more attention
7:15to what they're predicting is in store for us
7:18in the years ahead, if we do not act.
7:21The drought last year and continuing,
7:25at some level, in the Amazon it’s the worst drought in the history,
7:29of the Brazilian Amazon.
7:3190 percent of the Amazon River in Colombia went dry.
7:36This is the third year in a row
7:38that we've had these massive fires in Canada.
7:41When I left Tennessee to fly over here,
7:44we were breathing in Nashville, Tennessee,
7:47smoke from the Canadian wildfires.
7:49And they're still getting worse today.
7:52The wildfires have doubled over the last 20 years in frequency,
7:57and they're due to increase even more.
8:00Is it realistic to ignore the massive health impacts of the climate crisis?
8:06You know, the World Health Organization
8:09has long told us it is the most serious health threat facing humanity.
8:15Just last week, the University of Manchester
8:18released a new study warning that three species of fungi,
8:23in the next 15 years,
8:25because of increasing temperatures and increasing precipitation,
8:29will pose a significant risk of infection to millions of people.
8:35The fact that the fungi are being pushed
8:37into the range where they can threaten humans,
8:40that is not a fiction.
8:42The particulate air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels
8:47kills almost nine million people a year,
8:50costs almost three trillion dollars per year
8:53from the burning of fossil fuels for both energy and petrochemicals.
8:57Let me show you an example from my country.
9:00“Cancer Alley” is the stretch that runs from New Orleans
9:03to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
9:05All these red plumes are particulate pollution
9:09that people are breathing in.
9:11The green areas, by the way,
9:12are majority minority,
9:15mostly African-American areas.
9:18In the middle of Cancer Alley,
9:21Reserve, Louisiana has the highest cancer rate in the United States,
9:2550 times the national average,
9:27and they want to put even more petrochemical facilities there.
9:31Is it realistic to totally ignore the acidification of the world's oceans?
9:3630 percent more acid than before the Industrial Revolution,
9:39and 93 percent of all the heat is being absorbed in the oceans.
9:44That's why the coral reefs are in such danger.
9:4784 percent are in danger right now.
9:50We've seen massive die offs.
9:53That's why a lot of the fish are at risk.
9:5540 to 60 percent of all the fish species face an extremely high risk,
10:00as the rivers and estuaries,
10:03where they have spawning
10:04and in their embryonic stages, continue to heat up.
10:08And 50 percent of all living species that we share this planet with
10:13are at risk of extinction.
10:15Is it realistic to ignore that?
10:17My faith tradition tells me
10:19that Noah was commanded to save the species of this Earth.
10:22I think we have a moral obligation as well.
10:25Is it realistic to ignore the predictions of a fresh water scarcity crisis?
10:31Already, 40 percent are facing water scarcities.
10:36In the mountain glaciers here in the Himalayas,
10:39one quarter of the world's population depends on that meltwater.
10:44But depending on whether or not we act,
10:4680 percent of all those glaciers will disappear in this century.
10:51We can act.
10:53Now this just happened in Switzerland:
10:56a 600-year-old city was completely destroyed by glacial avalanche.
11:01Now they're adapting.
11:02Is this realistic?
11:04To put white sheets over the remaining parts of the glacier?
11:06Well, God bless them, I hope it works,
11:09but these are the kinds of extreme measures
11:11that people are being pushed to
11:13in order to avoid reducing the burning of fossil fuels,
11:17because the fossil fuel industry and their petrostate
11:20and financial allies have control over policy.
11:24In lots of cities, particularly in places like India,
11:27the water wells are going dry.
11:29In Bangalore,
11:30four million people now have to buy expensive water trucked in
11:35because their wells have gone dry.
11:37What about the food crisis that scientists are predicting?
11:41Is it realistic to ignore that as well,
11:43in order to avoid doing anything to reduce fossil fuel emissions?
11:49Now why also do these so-called climate realists
11:53ignore all the good news
11:55about the miraculous decline in the cost of the alternatives to fossil fuel?
12:00Is it possibly because their business models are threatened?
12:04If there is a cheaper, cleaner alternative
12:07that creates many more jobs,
12:10might not be good for them the way they calculate it.
12:13But the rest of us have a stake in this.
12:16This could be why they've been consistently wrong in their predictions
12:21in the past.
12:23For example, ExxonMobil, in the year of the Paris Agreement,
12:27had a prediction about solar capacity in 2040: 840 gigawatts.
12:31Well, this year we've already tripled the number that they predicted
12:36for 15 years from now.
12:38(Applause)
12:39OPEC the same year predicted
12:41electric vehicle sales would barely increase.
12:44Well, they were wrong.
12:46Here's what it is.
12:48Actual sales to date right now.
12:51Same year, OPEC predicted that it was just unrealistic
12:54to think that solar power would ever be able to compete in cost
12:57with the burning of fossil fuels,
12:59but now it is by far the cheapest source of electricity in all of history.
13:05Now, you know, a lot of other people have been surprised
13:08by how quickly these costs have come down.
13:11University of Oxford studied 3,000 past projections,
13:15and the average predicted decline was 2.6 percent a year.
13:19The reality was 15 percent per year.
13:22And when you compound a number like that,
13:25it makes quite a difference.
13:26Here are all the past projections from the International Energy Agency
13:31of what solar energy was likely to do, their projections year by year.
13:35And here is the reality of what has actually happened.
13:39It really is quite extraordinary.
13:42(Applause)
13:43My goodness, nobody could have imagined that it would be this incredible.
13:49But it is and it’s right before us, and they still want to ignore it.
13:54Since 2015, the world's installed twice as much solar
13:58as all fossil fuels combined.
14:01Solar is the breakout winner in fuel sources.
14:05Electric vehicles have increased 34 times over
14:09since the time of the Paris Agreement.
14:12Vehicle sales in China,
14:1452 percent are already EVs
14:16and within five years,
14:17the prediction is 82 percent of all car sales
14:21will be electric vehicles.
14:23Also, by the way, China in April installed 45 gigawatts of new solar capacity
14:28in one month.
14:30That's the equivalent of 45 brand new giant nuclear reactors
14:34in one month.
14:36It's actually incredible what is happening,
14:38and the cost of all of these clean-energy technologies
14:42has come down quite dramatically, particularly solar.
14:46And even more dramatic is utility-scale batteries, 87 percent down.
14:52That's making a huge difference as well.
14:55But I have to say this.
14:56There's one thing that the so-called climate realists are right about.
15:02In spite of this progress,
15:03we are still moving too slowly to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
15:09We have got to accelerate it.
15:11We have the ability to do so.
15:13But the single biggest reason we have not been able to move faster
15:18is the ferocious opposition to virtually every policy proposal
15:24to try to speed up this transition
15:26and reduce the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
15:31And the fossil fuel industry has used a lot of bright,
15:34shiny objects to divert the public's attention
15:37and deceive them into thinking there are solutions
15:40other than reducing fossil fuel use.
15:43For example, carbon capture and storage
15:46and direct air capture and the recycling of plastics.
15:50And, you know, they're much better at capturing politicians
15:54than they are at capturing emissions.
15:56And they are employing --
15:58(Applause)
16:00They're employing their captive politicians and policymakers
16:04to help confuse the public.
16:06Here's an example.
16:07Tony Blair, speaking for his foundation,
16:11his foundation gets massive funding from Saudi Arabia,
16:14the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, etc.
16:19He said, “Oh, well,
16:20the center of the battle has to be carbon capture
16:24and direct air capture."
16:26Well, he really should know better.
16:29You know, Upton Sinclair wrote in my country,
16:32years ago,
16:33"It's difficult to get a man to understand something
16:35if his income depends on him not understanding it."
16:39The income goes to the foundation, as I understand it.
16:43But here is carbon capture.
16:45These are the ones operational.
16:47These are the ones that have applied for permits.
16:49These are the ones that have had the big public announcements.
16:53Oh, boy, look, we're going for carbon capture.
16:56We don't have to reduce the burning of fossil fuel.
16:58We'll capture it all as it goes out the smokestack.
17:01It is a fraud.
17:03It is a deception imposed on the people
17:07in order to try to change policy
17:09and to make the policy what they want.
17:13And because they've captured the politicians,
17:16they have been able to force the taxpayers in countries around the world
17:20to subsidize fossil fuels.
17:24To actually subsidize the destruction of humanity's future.
17:29What would happen if we got rid of those subsidies?
17:32Well, the International Monetary Fund said
17:35that we would get 4.4 trillion dollars in savings,
17:39which happens to be just about the exact amount we need
17:42to finance the transition to renewable energy.
17:45That's where a lot of the money can come from.
17:48We'd also save a lot of lives,
17:50and we'd also reduce emissions by a third in five years,
17:55and we'd reduce income inequality.
17:59So is it realistic to ignore this urgent need
18:02to reform the world's financial infrastructure
18:05so that we can properly invest in the climate crisis?
18:09Most of the financing comes from private sources,
18:12but developing countries are not getting their share of it.
18:15We need to reform the policies that are leading to this,
18:18because 100 percent of the increased emissions expected
18:22are going to come from the developing countries.
18:24We're about to see massive reductions in emissions.
18:28It may have already started,
18:31especially in China with all their renewables,
18:34but the developing countries,
18:36that's where the emissions increases are due to take place.
18:39And yet they only receive less than 19 percent of the world's financing
18:45for clean energy,
18:46but almost 50 percent of the money flooding in
18:49for more fossil fuels.
18:51The single US state of Florida has more solar panels
18:55than the entire continent of Africa.
18:58That is a disgrace,
19:00because Africa has 60 percent of the world's prime solar resources,
19:05yet only 1.6 percent of the financing for renewable energy.
19:09But look at what's happening
19:11with the investments for fossil fuels in Africa.
19:15There's a dash for gas.
19:17All of these new facilities,
19:19there are three times as many fossil fuel pipelines
19:22under construction and proposed for construction to begin in Africa
19:26as in all of North America.
19:29And you take those LNG terminals,
19:32the cost of one of them,
19:33there's 71 in the works, 31 already existing,
19:3725 billion dollars.
19:39That's the exact amount that would provide universal energy access
19:43to all of Africa.
19:45So maybe we could spend that money a little bit better.
19:48But instead of financing actual energy access to renewable energy,
19:53they want access to the resources to export it from Africa
19:58instead of giving access for Africans.
20:02You know, the potential for solar and wind in Africa
20:06is 400 times larger than the potential energy from fossil fuels.
20:11Every single country in Africa
20:13could have 100 percent energy access
20:16using less than one percent of its land.
20:18Most, including the country we're in,
20:21less than 0.1 percent of their land.
20:25What else are they ignoring?
20:27Well, they're ignoring that with solar and wind
20:30you don't face the fuel supply-chain risk,
20:34you don't face price volatility for fuel.
20:37Look at what's happening to energy,
20:38oil and gas soaring because of the war in the Middle East.
20:42In fact, they don't have an annual fuel cost at all.
20:45So we should be moving in this direction,
20:48not least because it creates three times as many jobs
20:52for each dollar spent
20:54as compared to a dollar spent on fossil fuels.
20:57Why do they also ignore the fact that methane is as bad as coal
21:03when the leaks are factored in, and the leaks are ubiquitous?
21:06And right now in the European Union,
21:09the fossil fuel lobbyists are arguing as hard as they can to stop legislation
21:14to try to deal with methane leaks
21:17because they think it’ll cost them some money.
21:20So what's really behind this preposterous theory
21:24they call climate realism?
21:26Could it be that they're kind of panicking a little bit
21:29about the loss of their markets?
21:31According to the IEA,
21:33all of the fossil fuels are projected to peak within the next few years.
21:37We've seen, since the Paris Agreement, a complete turnaround
21:41in where the majority of investment is going,
21:44and emissions may have already peaked in several of these sectors.
21:49And this is according to the Climate TRACE,
21:52precise measurements of peaking.
21:54And a lot of these sectors are ones that need even more attention:
21:59agriculture, steel, etc.
22:02But last year,
22:03if you look at all the new electricity installed worldwide,
22:0693 percent of it was renewable, mostly solar.
22:11So,
22:12the IEA’s told us long since,
22:15we have all the technologies we need
22:17and proven deployment models
22:19to reduce emissions 50 percent in this decade
22:22and clear line of sight to the other 50 percent.
22:27A friend of mine in Tennessee said,
22:29"If God wanted us to have unlimited free energy,
22:32he'd have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky."
22:36Well, if you look at how long it took to install a gigawatt of solar
22:4120 years ago, a full year.
22:42Now it’s down to 15 hours, and it’s on the way down still.
22:48So here's what I believe that the so-called climate realists
22:53are most wrong about.
22:55They don't believe that we, the people who live on this planet,
23:00have the capacity to make the changes necessary to save our future.
23:06The greatest president in my country's history,
23:09Abraham Lincoln, said, “At a time of dire crisis,
23:12the occasion is piled high with difficulty.
23:16We must rise with the occasion.
23:19As our case is new, we must think anew."
23:23I believe that we as human beings
23:27have the capacity to recognize that our survival is at stake,
23:32and that we need to move faster,
23:35even though the big polluters have the political and economic power
23:40to try to block us.
23:42We've got everything we need.
23:44The people are demanding change.
23:47The one thing that they tell us might be in short supply
23:51is political will.
23:53But always remember,
23:55political will is itself a renewable resource.
23:59Let's get out there and renew it.
24:01Thank you, thank you very much.
24:04(Cheers and applause)

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED by TED, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,406 words across 431 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.