Al Gore says it’s no coincidence that the Trump administration released a damning report on climate change on a day when Americans are more preoccupied with snagging the best deals for TVs than they are with the future of the planet.
On Friday, the White House released the National Climate Assessment by 13 scientists from Trump administration agencies and outside bodies. The report made it clear there’s no doubt that climate change is real, and serious.
“Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us,” the report says.
It also details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the U.S. and different sectors of the economy, and projects increased deaths and disease.
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Former vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Gore accused Trump of seeking to “hide the truth” by releasing the report on Black Friday. He said that unlike Trump, most Americans are worried about climate change.
“Unbelievably deadly and tragic wildfires rage in the west, hurricanes batter our coasts — and the Trump administration chooses the Friday after Thanksgiving to try and bury this critical U.S. assessment of the climate crisis,” Gore said in a release.
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“The President may try to hide the truth, but his own scientists and experts have made it as stark and clear as possible.
“The rest of us are listening to the scientists — and to Mother Nature. The impacts of the Climate Crisis are being felt in all regions across our country – extreme weather, heat waves, deeper and longer droughts, crop failures, strengthening wildfires, sea level rise – and they are disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable among us.”
Indeed, the White House report dismissed the idea, pushed by President Donald Trump himself among others, that cold weather suggests that global warming might not be occurring.
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Instead, it asserts that warming is occurring, and it’s largely caused by humans.
“Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity,” the report says. “Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”
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Gore said he hoped the report would push Trump to take action to tackle climate change.
“Mr. President, the majority of Americans are deeply concerned about the climate crisis and demand action. Even as local leaders are responding in the wake of fires and storms, national leaders must summon the will to respond urgently to the dire warnings of this report with bold solutions.”
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— With files from the Associated Press
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