SUMMARY:Former Vice President and climate change activist Al Gore warns that climate change could be an “existential threat” and calls President Trump’s response an “outlier reaction.” In a wide-ranging interview, Judy Woodruff speaks with Gore about Hurricane Michael, President Trump, the UN Climate Change report out this week, and why he thinks Democrats will fare well in the midterm elections.
SUMMARY: Former Vice President Al Gore is troubled by what he sees as an American vulnerability to false assertions driving political policy. Gore has just re-released his book “The Assault on Reason,” 10 years after its original publication with an update for the Trump era. Gore joins Judy Woodruff in a discussion about the state of democratic dialogue, as well as his interactions with President Trump.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Has faith in the power of reason fallen victim to modern politics?
Ten years after its original publication, former Vice President Al Gore has updated his book “The Assault on Reason.” Its new subtitle is telling: “Our Information Ecosystem: From the Age of Print to the Age of Trump.”
I sat down with him this afternoon, and started by asking about the sharp criticisms he made in the original version against then President George W. Bush.
AL GORE, Former Vice President of the United States: My criticisms were not mainly aimed at any individuals, including President George W. Bush or Vice President Cheney, but rather the way in which our democratic conversation has been degraded over the last several decades.
And I would say the same thing about President Trump. For me, the most serious problem is how our nation became so vulnerable to the assertion of blatant falsehoods that drive policy and are not corrected by the so-called immune system of democracy, a free press and a free democratic discourse.
And I think we have a huge systemic problem that we have largely ignored. When our founders created America, it was in the age of the printing press, when individuals could freely join the conversation. And that robust, democratic dialogue more often than not lifted up the best available evidence and asserted what was more likely to be true than not.
Now we have things that are obviously false, leading us to war, leading us to deny people health care, leading us to ignore the climate crisis. We have to restore the integrity of the democratic conversation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, back when you first wrote the book, you were pretty optimistic, you wrote, that the Internet would be an open — an opportunity for the kind of discourse that you would like to see.
AL GORE: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Has it turned out that way?
AL GORE: Not as quickly as I had hoped, that's for sure.
I still do have hope, however. If you look at the way all of the new reform movements dedicated to the public interest are living and thriving on the Internet, I do think there is still some considerable hope that the full participation of individuals in that conversation of democracy can once again restore the integrity of the way our democracy works.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And now to our interview with former Vice President Al Gore.
Since he conceded the 2000 presidential election, Mr. Gore's of course become best known for his advocacy on climate change issues, work that led to both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. Lately, his business and corporate connections have also been in the news, when he sold his cable channel, Current TV, to Al-Jazeera, the network owned by the government of Qatar in the Persian Gulf.
Gore is back in print now with a new book titled "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," examining major shifts in science, technology, the global economy, and American democracy.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
LINK DISCLAIMER:
There is no guarantee that any link provided in this blog will always work, especially for older links. The validity of any link is governed by the source-site policies. Some sites will archive articles and require subscription to access. Very small sites, such as a local town newspaper, may not archive at all.
