Former US vice president Al Gore believes a second Donald Trump term in the White House may have little impact on the "momentum" of the world's fight against climate change. The return of Trump, who has pledged to pull the United States from the Paris agreement for a second time, has cast a pall over UN COP29 climate talks in Baku this week. But Gore echoed statements from President Joe Biden's climate team who sought to remind other countries that global action survived Trump's first presidency.
"We've been through this before," Gore told reporters Thursday ahead of Friday's release of the latest data findings from Climate TRACE, an independent tracker of global emissions he co-founded. "He tried one time before and the world continued to reduce emissions even during his four years as president the last time," he said. "There is so much more momentum that even a new Trump administration is not going to be able to slow it down much.
I hope I'm right about that," he said. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate said market forces were "giving us a tailwind", with renewable energy getting cheaper and increasingly used to generate electricity. "Many people around the world are not simply waiting with bated breath to see what the United States is going to do, they're moving on their own," he said.
While a US retreat from its commitments "would not be a good thing", Gore said, "I think the progress is likely to continue, regardless." Climate TRACE's new data showed Friday that greenhouse g.
