Courtesy of The Climate Reality Project
Al Gore at the Climate Reality Project's Training in Minneapolis
Former Vice President Al Gore led a Climate Reality Leadership Corps training at the Minneapolis Convention Center this past weekend, giving climate activists, organizers, and leaders the opportunity to further their knowledge about the science surrounding climate change, and solutions to prevent further harm to the planet.
The conference held several breakout sessions tackling facets of the climate conversation, including sustainable agriculture, the Green New Deal, and the disproportionate impacts of climate change on marginalized people. Governor Tim Walz, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and other climate experts were among the speakers at the three-day training.
It’s been 13 years since Gore released the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, galvanizing the current environmental movement as it's understood today. After the film's release, Gore founded The Climate Reality Project as a grassroots campaign to train and mobilize activists around the world, to speak to the effects of climate change in their own communities.
“The crisis is worse now, and it has grown worse more rapidly than the scientists predicted," Gore said in a press roundtable after his presentation on Friday. "Their estimates were a little too conservative. Like today in Greenland, we lost 11 billion tons of ice. That’s in line with the worst-case projection for the year 2070–50 years from now."
The Minneapolis conference was the 42nd training of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. The first Climate Reality training happened on Gore’s farm in Carthage, Tennessee back in 2007. The project has since trained more than 20,000 people from 152 countries. About 32 percent of the 1,100 climate activists who attended the conference are from Minnesota.
The world is currently putting 110 million tons of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere every day, which Gore says is the equivalent of 500,000 Hiroshima-level atomic bombs exploding. Despite the federal government's refusal to acknowledge the effects of climate change, Minnesota is continuing to act. The state is a member of the U.S. Climate Alliance to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, and Minneapolis has committed to 100 percent clean energy by 2030.
“[President Trump] has done a lot of damage, but less than I thought he’d be able to,” Gore said. “If his time in the White House can be limited to four years, and if he can be replaced in the next election by someone who gets it and who will do the right thing, then most of the damage he’s done can be undone.” Despite causing an uproar by announcing his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the earliest that President Trump could legally withdraw under the agreement is one day after the next presidential election in 2020.
Minneapolis and Mankato are two of the three fastest warming cities in the U.S. for winter temperatures. In the next 50 years, Minnesota is projected to see 30 fewer days per year with below-freezing temperatures, and 30 more days each year with temperatures above 90 degrees. The number of very heavy precipitation days in the Twin Cities has already increased 58 percent since 1950–and total precipitation has increased 21 percent.
Walleye, loons, and moose are expected to leave the state this century as a result of the changing environment. The disruption of natural ecosystems is also exacerbating the spread of infectious diseases. The average mosquito season in Minneapolis lasts 108 days per year, whereas 30 years ago it averaged 74 days. Tick-borne diseases in the U.S. have more than doubled between 2004 and 2016, as mosquito-borne infections increased about 10 times in the same period. Be prepared for worse allergies, too: Ragweed pollen season lasts three weeks longer in the Twin Cities than it did 20 years ago.
"The solutions have become affordable way more quickly than was predicted. We have the solutions we need right now. Would more be helpful? Sure, bring them on. But we have solar, we have wind, electric vehicles, batteries, efficiency improvements, regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, circular manufacturing–we know what to do," Gore said. "And in most cases, it’s more economical and more profitable to do it the climate-friendly way."
Up to 4,000 deaths are attributed to air pollution every year in Minnesota, equal to 10 percent of all annual deaths in the state. But the switch to renewable energy from burning coal is happening: Wind is the cheapest source of new electricity generation in the state, and it currently produces 18 percent of Minnesota’s electricity. There are 40 percent more jobs in wind than in coal in Minnesota, and almost three times as many jobs in solar as in coal.
“What’s the fastest growing job in the United States? Solar installer. What’s the second fastest growing job? Wind turbine technician," Gore said. "Solar is now growing six-times faster than the average job growth. This is good for the economy–this is good for Minnesota. We also could see cleaner air in the cities of Minnesota, and less diseases related to air pollution.”
The Green New Deal has the potential to be a catalyst for enacting climate legislation through tackling income inequality. The shift in labor from coal and fossil fuel industries to green jobs is happening rapidly, with the enticing cheap cost of renewable energy flooding the market.
“I see the Green New Deal as an aspirational proposal that has already had a beneficial impact on people’s thinking," Gore said. "I like the implication that it carries with it for a lot of new jobs. That’s the New Deal reference that I hear. And that’s true, we can create millions of new jobs, and save the future at the same time.”
In the years since An Inconvenient Truth was released, the need to act on the climate crisis has become an ever more urgent topic in political debates. More recently, the current environmental movement has also seen youth activists take charge worldwide. In fact, the youngest participant at the Minneapolis training was 12-years-old.
"There is now a much larger and more vibrant grassroots climate activist movement. The school strike movement, the Extinction Rebellion movement, the Sunrise Movement, and many others–all alongside the mainstream environmental groups," Gore said. "The two co-sponsors of the school strike movement in the U.S. are both young women who are graduates of The Climate Reality Project Training Program, so I feel a particular fondness for what they’re doing. But we’re seeing this all over the world now, and I think that’s good.”
And the reality of climate change has become impossible to ignore as people reckon with the fallout of a changed planet. Farmers are already seeing the immediate effects of climate change in their fields and crops.
“I personally believe that people in rural areas, and farmers in particular, are beginning to change the way they talk about the climate crisis,” Gore said. “They may not use the phrase global warming, or climate crisis, or climate change–but they are beginning to say to one another ‘Hey, wait a minute. These weather patterns are so damn strange and they’re hurting us. If we’ve got anything to do with this we need to change what we’re doing.’ I’m hearing those kinds of sentences from farmers and people in rural areas.”
Minnesota’s top 10 warmest and wettest years on record have all occurred since 1998. Between the increasing frequency of extreme, rapid rainfall events interspersed with prolonged droughts, and higher temperatures, farmers are seeing a decrease in crop yields because of the erratic weather patterns.
“A lot of farmers haven’t been able to plant at all this year because of the disruption of the water cycle, and the fields being flooded out,” Gore said. “In other years the drought is so severe that they cant get their crop, and even in so-called normal years the higher temperatures are decreasing yields.”
The movement toward regenerative agriculture is gaining momentum, as are new farming techniques like rotational grazing, cover cropping, and low-till or no-till.
“Many of them are having better results than their neighbors who are still continuing the old ways of farming that are not as well suited to these new conditions that the climate crisis is bringing us," Gore said. "This is a new time, and farmers are nothing if not clever at adapting to new challenges.”
