Watch Video of Al Gore’s Message About Climate Change–It Couldn’t Be More Timely!

Unheard-of floods have been devastating Houston and coastal areas of Texas for the past few days.  On the other side of the world in Bangledesh more than a hundred people have died–and there are reports of a third to a half of the country being underwater, reported Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on August 29th, 2017.  Rainfall in Texas is expected to reach 50 inches and the Brazos River is expected to peak at 59 feet according to Goodman who also reported that the flooding in Bangladesh is the highest ever in ten years.  Al Gore spoke just spoke a few weeks ago about the urgency of addressing climate change, stating that the gates of hell would be unleashed on the next generation if we fail to act.  He talked about the movie sequel to An Inconvenient Truth titled:  An Inconvenient Sequel:  Truth to Power, which was just released at theaters nationwide.  Gore spoke for an hour on August 12th at the Netroots Nation Conference in Atlanta–the same day as the Charlottesville attack, which he also talked about.  You can watch the full discussion below.  Gore was interviewed by Mustafa Ali, a former high-ranking official who spent 20 years in the EPA and who helped found the Office of

Environmental Justice in the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).  The Office of Environmental Justice was created under President George H. W. Bush to make sure that poor and ethnically diverse under-represented communities received equal assistance from the EPA in terms of environmental protection and cleanup, according to Jay Willis, writing in GQ, in March 2017:  “Mustafa Ali, Former Environmental Justice Leader, on Why He Quit the EPA,”  Ali resigned from the EPA in protest of proposed budget cuts under Trump to eliminate numerous programs that protect the environment and public health as well as the Office of Environmental Justice.  To learn more about environmental racism in Georgia on http://www.earthfamily.tv click here: Newtown Documentary (it will take just a few seconds for the title to appear) to view one African American community’s struggle for health in the midst of 13 factories and a junkyard surrounding their homes.

At the end of the video, Gore described the white supremacist attack on Charlottesville protestors earlier that day as terrorism–when a man drove his vehicle directly into the Charlottesville protestors, killing one woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring 19 others.  Gore stated in a respectful tone, that he hoped that Trump would rethink Trump’s initial statement and issue a decisive statement against white supremacist hate groups.  Trump’s initial statement called out hatred, bigotry, and violence “on many sides” and appeared to equate mostly nonviolent protestors with the white supremacist and Nazi hate groups they were protesting–even in the face of the violent terrorist vehicle attack by a white supremacist against anti-hate protestors at the demonstration.  As a result of his failure to denounce white supremacist hate groups, Trump received a lot of criticism, and a two days later, he made a statement against hate groups such as the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and others, which was reported by various news sources such as Molly Rubin in Quartz.  You can also view this Al Gore interview on the Netroots Nation 2017 Facebook page.

Gore’s interview with Ali was the final event for that Saturday evening at the Netroots Nation Conference 2017.  The  closing event was followed by a spontaneous protest against the Charlottesville white supremacy terrorism.   The Atlanta protest was not an official Netroots Nation event but involved many Netroots participants as well as other concerned citizens in the Atlanta area.  The march is featured in a separate blog:  Atlanta Protestors Marched on August 12th Against White Terrorist Violence in Charlottesville Earlier Saturday.