Gore: Trump “Can’t Be Blamed” for North Korea Crisis
Al Gore is feeling Inconvenient again.
The former vice president of the United States and environmentalist spoke to Newsweek Friday about the sequel to his Academy Award–winning 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, titled An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
The film—directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk—follows Gore’s continued efforts to raise awareness and provoke action on climate change. It shows Gore’s direct involvement in persuading world leaders to back the Paris agreement on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015.
Those efforts were undermined in June when President Donald Trump, a noted climate-change skeptic who has appointed many deniers to his administration, announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement.
“I was worried when Donald Trump made that speech [announcing the withdrawal] it would have a negative effect. I was worried that some other countries might pull out and use him as an excuse,” Gore tells Newsweek. “But that didn’t happen. The very next day the entire world redoubled their commitments to the agreement.”
The U.S. will not be able to withdraw from the agreement until at least November 2020, when the next presidential election takes place.
“It looks like the U.S. will meet its commitments under the Paris agreement regardless of Trump,” says Gore. “A new president could just give 30 days’ notice and legally the U.S. would be back in.”
Gore also opined on Trump’s ongoing war of words with North Korea. On Tuesday the president promised to unleash “fire and fury” on the country if it continued to threaten the U.S. Trump doubled down on his remarks on Thursday, when he said the military was “locked and loaded.”
The former VP says “his intemperate comments on North Korea were really unwise,” but reasons, “I think it’s only fair to point out he inherited this crisis. The previous three presidents were not able to find an adequate solution [to the North Korea crisis], so he can’t be blamed for all this.”
“He has a secretary of defense and national security adviser, both of whom are immensely respected. I hope he will listen to them, and I hope their cooler heads will prevail,” he adds.
As for America’s neighbor, Canada, Gore says he is conflicted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to back the Keystone XL pipeline, which Trump signed off on in January.
The otherwise people-friendly Trudeau upset environmentalists concerned about the damage the pipeline will do ecologically when he said he was “very pleased” Trump approved the pipeline because he believes it will boost economic growth.
“I don’t agree with what some of Justin Trudeau has been doing and proposing,” Gore says. “But I do think he’s an immensely positive force for the environment. He was instrumental in getting the Paris agreement 18 months ago. To me, he’s a breath of fresh air compared to his predecessor.”
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power began its global release August 4.
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