Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED

Name: Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable — and “Climate Realism” Is a Myth | Al Gore | TED
Duration: 24 min 11 s
Description: In this urgent and hard-hitting talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore thoroughly dismantles the fossil fuel industry’s narrative of "climate realism," contrasting the...

TED24:11Added Aug 31, 2026

In this urgent and hard-hitting talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore thoroughly dismantles the fossil fuel industry’s narrative of "climate realism," contrasting the...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

Transcript

00:08Thank you very much for the warm welcome.
00:11It’s been 10 years since the Paris Agreement.
00:15And every single nation in the world,
00:18195 nations, agreed to try to get to net zero by mid-century.
00:24And let me deal with the elephant in the room.
00:27One nation, only one, has begun the process of withdrawing,
00:32and the Trump administration has also canceled executive orders,
00:37withdrawn from international climate organizations.
00:41They have declared a so-called energy emergency
00:44in order to promote fossil fuels.
00:47They’ve phased out government support for clean energy.
00:51But bear this in mind.
00:52During the first Trump four-year term,
00:57investments in the energy transition doubled.
01:00We have seen solar capacity more than double.
01:04Electric vehicle sales have doubled.
01:06Wind energy went up by almost 50 percent
01:09during his first term.
01:12And we are seeing that 60 percent, during his first four years,
01:16of new energy came from renewable energy,
01:19and coal investments went down almost 20 percent.
01:23So there's good news and there's bad news.
01:28A lot’s happened in the last 10 years.
01:31But I want to ask this question.
01:34The fossil fuel industry wants to ignore the amazing good news.
01:40And they are labeling the commitments that the world made
01:44at the Paris negotiations as a fantasy.
01:48And they're calling for an abandonment of the efforts
01:52to reduce the fossil fuel burning.
01:56And they’re now advocating a new approach that they call “climate realism.”
02:02Well, climate realism, according to them,
02:05we should abandon the efforts to deal with the principal cause
02:09of the climate crisis,
02:10eighty percent of it comes from burning fossil fuels,
02:13and we should focus on adaptation as well, almost exclusively.
02:18Well, we need adaptation.
02:20A lot of people are suffering,
02:21but do we want to vastly increase the number of people
02:25that have to go through that hardship and suffering,
02:28instead of dealing with the cause of the crisis
02:30and solving the climate crisis?
02:33According to climate realism, historically,
02:36the energy transitions have taken place very slowly,
02:40so we have no right as human beings to even imagine
02:43that we could go faster in the future
02:46than what history has told us was the reality in the past.
02:50Even though human civilization is at stake.
02:53For the so-called climate realists,
02:56the goal of solving the climate crisis
02:59is way less important than other goals,
03:02such as, especially, increasing energy access to developing countries,
03:07which is obviously important, we'll deal with that.
03:10But they want to do it obviously by burning more fossil fuels.
03:14According to climate realism,
03:17it's just not practical to stop using the sky as an open sewer
03:22for the emissions from burning fossil fuels and the other emissions.
03:27Instead, we should just continue using the sky as an open sewer.
03:33So where climate realism is concerned,
03:37I have some questions.
03:40Is it realistic to ignore the one to two billion climate refugees
03:47that the climate scientists are warning us
03:50will cross international borders
03:51and have to move inside their own nations by 2050
03:56because of the climate crisis?
03:59You know, the temperatures keep going up.
04:0110 hottest years were the last 10.
04:04Last year, 2024, was the hottest year in all of history.
04:08Yesterday in parts of the Persian Gulf,
04:1152.6 degrees.
04:13And for those of us who use Fahrenheit, 126.7 degrees.
04:18A few days ago in Pakistan, 50.5 degrees.
04:21That's 122.9 in Fahrenheit.
04:25And they're telling us that as the temperatures go up
04:29and the humidity goes up,
04:31the few areas in the world today
04:34that are labeled physiologically unlivable for human beings
04:38are due to expand quite dramatically by 2070,
04:42unless we act to cover all of these vast, heavily populated areas.
04:50Is it realistic to ignore this crisis?
04:53Look at what a few million climate refugees have done
04:57to promote authoritarianism and ultranationalism.
05:00How can we handle one to two billion in the next 25 years?
05:05Already here in Kenya, there are 800,000 refugees,
05:10300,000 of them in this place where, of course,
05:14the USAID cuts are now cutting the food aid 70 percent.
05:19Is that what they mean by adaptation?
05:22We have to also ask if it's realistic
05:26to ignore the devastating damage predicted to the global economy.
05:31Whole regions of the world are becoming uninsurable.
05:35We see this in my country where people are having their insurance canceled.
05:39They can't get it renewed.
05:42We have seen predictions
05:44that we could lose 25 trillion dollars in the next 25 years,
05:50just from the loss of the value of global housing properties.
05:55And over the next half century, according to Deloitte,
05:57it would cost the economy 178 trillion dollars if we don't act.
06:03But if we do act,
06:05we can add to the global economy by 43 trillion dollars.
06:10You know, I had a teacher who said we face the same choice in life
06:13over and over again.
06:14The choice between the hard right and the easy wrong.
06:17It seems hard to choose correctly,
06:20but it would turn out to be even harder to take what looks like the easy wrong.
06:25Is it realistic to ignore the fact that right now,
06:27Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice every single hour?
06:33In Antarctica, decade by decade, the ice melting has accelerated.
06:38We've seen the doubling of the pace of sea level rise in the last 20 years,
06:43and the predictions are that it's going to continue dramatically.
06:47Is it realistic to ignore the rapidly increasing climate crisis,
06:52extreme events that are occurring,
06:55practically every night on the television news
06:58is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.
07:00We lost 3.5 trillion dollars just in the last decade.
07:05And you know, the fact
07:06that these scientists were absolutely correct decades ago,
07:09when they predicted these exact consequences
07:12should cause us to pay a little more attention
07:15to what they're predicting is in store for us
07:18in the years ahead, if we do not act.
07:21The drought last year and continuing,
07:25at some level, in the Amazon it’s the worst drought in the history,
07:29of the Brazilian Amazon.
07:3190 percent of the Amazon River in Colombia went dry.
07:36This is the third year in a row
07:38that we've had these massive fires in Canada.
07:41When I left Tennessee to fly over here,
07:44we were breathing in Nashville, Tennessee,
07:47smoke from the Canadian wildfires.
07:49And they're still getting worse today.
07:52The wildfires have doubled over the last 20 years in frequency,
07:57and they're due to increase even more.
08:00Is it realistic to ignore the massive health impacts of the climate crisis?
08:06You know, the World Health Organization
08:09has long told us it is the most serious health threat facing humanity.
08:15Just last week, the University of Manchester
08:18released a new study warning that three species of fungi,
08:23in the next 15 years,
08:25because of increasing temperatures and increasing precipitation,
08:29will pose a significant risk of infection to millions of people.
08:35The fact that the fungi are being pushed
08:37into the range where they can threaten humans,
08:40that is not a fiction.
08:42The particulate air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels
08:47kills almost nine million people a year,
08:50costs almost three trillion dollars per year
08:53from the burning of fossil fuels for both energy and petrochemicals.
08:57Let me show you an example from my country.
09:00“Cancer Alley” is the stretch that runs from New Orleans
09:03to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
09:05All these red plumes are particulate pollution
09:09that people are breathing in.
09:11The green areas, by the way,
09:12are majority minority,
09:15mostly African-American areas.
09:18In the middle of Cancer Alley,
09:21Reserve, Louisiana has the highest cancer rate in the United States,
09:2550 times the national average,
09:27and they want to put even more petrochemical facilities there.
09:31Is it realistic to totally ignore the acidification of the world's oceans?
09:3630 percent more acid than before the Industrial Revolution,
09:39and 93 percent of all the heat is being absorbed in the oceans.
09:44That's why the coral reefs are in such danger.
09:4784 percent are in danger right now.
09:50We've seen massive die offs.
09:53That's why a lot of the fish are at risk.
09:5540 to 60 percent of all the fish species face an extremely high risk,
10:00as the rivers and estuaries,
10:03where they have spawning
10:04and in their embryonic stages, continue to heat up.
10:08And 50 percent of all living species that we share this planet with
10:13are at risk of extinction.
10:15Is it realistic to ignore that?
10:17My faith tradition tells me
10:19that Noah was commanded to save the species of this Earth.
10:22I think we have a moral obligation as well.
10:25Is it realistic to ignore the predictions of a fresh water scarcity crisis?
10:31Already, 40 percent are facing water scarcities.
10:35In the mountain glaciers here in the Himalayas,
10:39one quarter of the world's population depends on that meltwater.
10:44But depending on whether or not we act,
10:4680 percent of all those glaciers will disappear in this century.
10:51We can act.
10:53Now this just happened in Switzerland:
10:56a 600-year-old city was completely destroyed by glacial avalanche.
11:01Now they're adapting.
11:02Is this realistic?
11:04To put white sheets over the remaining parts of the glacier?
11:06Well, God bless them, I hope it works,
11:09but these are the kinds of extreme measures
11:11that people are being pushed to
11:13in order to avoid reducing the burning of fossil fuels,
11:17because the fossil fuel industry and their petrostate
11:20and financial allies have control over policy.
11:24In lots of cities, particularly in places like India,
11:27the water wells are going dry.
11:29In Bangalore,
11:30four million people now have to buy expensive water trucked in
11:35because their wells have gone dry.
11:37What about the food crisis that scientists are predicting?
11:41Is it realistic to ignore that as well,
11:43in order to avoid doing anything to reduce fossil fuel emissions?
11:49Now why also do these so-called climate realists
11:53ignore all the good news
11:55about the miraculous decline in the cost of the alternatives to fossil fuel?
12:00Is it possibly because their business models are threatened?
12:04If there is a cheaper, cleaner alternative
12:07that creates many more jobs,
12:10might not be good for them the way they calculate it.
12:13But the rest of us have a stake in this.
12:16This could be why they've been consistently wrong in their predictions
12:21in the past.
12:22For example, ExxonMobil, in the year of the Paris Agreement,
12:27had a prediction about solar capacity in 2040: 840 gigawatts.
12:31Well, this year we've already tripled the number that they predicted
12:36for 15 years from now.
12:37(Applause)
12:39OPEC the same year predicted
12:41electric vehicle sales would barely increase.
12:44Well, they were wrong.
12:46Here's what it is.
12:48Actual sales to date right now.
12:51Same year, OPEC predicted that it was just unrealistic
12:54to think that solar power would ever be able to compete in cost
12:57with the burning of fossil fuels,
12:59but now it is by far the cheapest source of electricity in all of history.
13:05Now, you know, a lot of other people have been surprised
13:08by how quickly these costs have come down.
13:11University of Oxford studied 3,000 past projections,
13:15and the average predicted decline was 2.6 percent a year.
13:19The reality was 15 percent per year.
13:22And when you compound a number like that,
13:25it makes quite a difference.
13:26Here are all the past projections from the International Energy Agency
13:31of what solar energy was likely to do, their projections year by year.
13:35And here is the reality of what has actually happened.
13:39It really is quite extraordinary.
13:42(Applause)
13:43My goodness, nobody could have imagined that it would be this incredible.
13:49But it is and it’s right before us, and they still want to ignore it.
13:54Since 2015, the world's installed twice as much solar
13:58as all fossil fuels combined.
14:01Solar is the breakout winner in fuel sources.
14:05Electric vehicles have increased 34 times over
14:09since the time of the Paris Agreement.
14:12Vehicle sales in China,
14:1452 percent are already EVs
14:16and within five years,
14:17the prediction is 82 percent of all car sales
14:21will be electric vehicles.
14:23Also, by the way, China in April installed 45 gigawatts of new solar capacity
14:28in one month.
14:30That's the equivalent of 45 brand new giant nuclear reactors
14:34in one month.
14:36It's actually incredible what is happening,
14:38and the cost of all of these clean-energy technologies
14:42has come down quite dramatically, particularly solar.
14:46And even more dramatic is utility-scale batteries, 87 percent down.
14:52That's making a huge difference as well.
14:55But I have to say this.
14:56There's one thing that the so-called climate realists are right about.
15:02In spite of this progress,
15:03we are still moving too slowly to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
15:09We have got to accelerate it.
15:11We have the ability to do so.
15:13But the single biggest reason we have not been able to move faster
15:18is the ferocious opposition to virtually every policy proposal
15:24to try to speed up this transition
15:26and reduce the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
15:31And the fossil fuel industry has used a lot of bright,
15:34shiny objects to divert the public's attention
15:37and deceive them into thinking there are solutions
15:40other than reducing fossil fuel use.
15:43For example, carbon capture and storage
15:46and direct air capture and the recycling of plastics.
15:50And, you know, they're much better at capturing politicians
15:54than they are at capturing emissions.
15:56And they are employing --
15:58(Applause)
16:00They're employing their captive politicians and policymakers
16:04to help confuse the public.
16:06Here's an example.
16:07Tony Blair, speaking for his foundation,
16:11his foundation gets massive funding from Saudi Arabia,
16:14the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, etc.
16:19He said, “Oh, well,
16:20the center of the battle has to be carbon capture
16:24and direct air capture."
16:26Well, he really should know better.
16:29You know, Upton Sinclair wrote in my country,
16:32years ago,
16:33"It's difficult to get a man to understand something
16:35if his income depends on him not understanding it."
16:39The income goes to the foundation, as I understand it.
16:43But here is carbon capture.
16:45These are the ones operational.
16:47These are the ones that have applied for permits.
16:49These are the ones that have had the big public announcements.
16:53Oh, boy, look, we're going for carbon capture.
16:56We don't have to reduce the burning of fossil fuel.
16:58We'll capture it all as it goes out the smokestack.
17:01It is a fraud.
17:03It is a deception imposed on the people
17:07in order to try to change policy
17:09and to make the policy what they want.
17:13And because they've captured the politicians,
17:16they have been able to force the taxpayers in countries around the world
17:20to subsidize fossil fuels.
17:24To actually subsidize the destruction of humanity's future.
17:29What would happen if we got rid of those subsidies?
17:32Well, the International Monetary Fund said
17:35that we would get 4.4 trillion dollars in savings,
17:39which happens to be just about the exact amount we need
17:42to finance the transition to renewable energy.
17:45That's where a lot of the money can come from.
17:48We'd also save a lot of lives,
17:50and we'd also reduce emissions by a third in five years,
17:55and we'd reduce income inequality.
17:59So is it realistic to ignore this urgent need
18:02to reform the world's financial infrastructure
18:05so that we can properly invest in the climate crisis?
18:09Most of the financing comes from private sources,
18:12but developing countries are not getting their share of it.
18:15We need to reform the policies that are leading to this,
18:18because 100 percent of the increased emissions expected
18:22are going to come from the developing countries.
18:24We're about to see massive reductions in emissions.
18:28It may have already started,
18:31especially in China with all their renewables,
18:34but the developing countries,
18:36that's where the emissions increases are due to take place.
18:39And yet they only receive less than 19 percent of the world's financing
18:45for clean energy,
18:46but almost 50 percent of the money flooding in
18:49for more fossil fuels.
18:51The single US state of Florida has more solar panels
18:55than the entire continent of Africa.
18:58That is a disgrace,
19:00because Africa has 60 percent of the world's prime solar resources,
19:05yet only 1.6 percent of the financing for renewable energy.
19:09But look at what's happening
19:11with the investments for fossil fuels in Africa.
19:15There's a dash for gas.
19:17All of these new facilities,
19:19there are three times as many fossil fuel pipelines
19:22under construction and proposed for construction to begin in Africa
19:26as in all of North America.
19:29And you take those LNG terminals,
19:32the cost of one of them,
19:33there's 71 in the works, 31 already existing,
19:3725 billion dollars.
19:39That's the exact amount that would provide universal energy access
19:43to all of Africa.
19:45So maybe we could spend that money a little bit better.
19:48But instead of financing actual energy access to renewable energy,
19:53they want access to the resources to export it from Africa
19:58instead of giving access for Africans.
20:02You know, the potential for solar and wind in Africa
20:06is 400 times larger than the potential energy from fossil fuels.
20:11Every single country in Africa
20:13could have 100 percent energy access
20:16using less than one percent of its land.
20:18Most, including the country we're in,
20:21less than 0.1 percent of their land.
20:25What else are they ignoring?
20:27Well, they're ignoring that with solar and wind
20:30you don't face the fuel supply-chain risk,
20:33you don't face price volatility for fuel.
20:37Look at what's happening to energy,
20:38oil and gas soaring because of the war in the Middle East.
20:42In fact, they don't have an annual fuel cost at all.
20:45So we should be moving in this direction,
20:48not least because it creates three times as many jobs
20:52for each dollar spent
20:54as compared to a dollar spent on fossil fuels.
20:57Why do they also ignore the fact that methane is as bad as coal
21:03when the leaks are factored in, and the leaks are ubiquitous?
21:06And right now in the European Union,
21:09the fossil fuel lobbyists are arguing as hard as they can to stop legislation
21:14to try to deal with methane leaks
21:17because they think it’ll cost them some money.
21:20So what's really behind this preposterous theory
21:24they call climate realism?
21:26Could it be that they're kind of panicking a little bit
21:29about the loss of their markets?
21:31According to the IEA,
21:33all of the fossil fuels are projected to peak within the next few years.
21:37We've seen, since the Paris Agreement, a complete turnaround
21:41in where the majority of investment is going,
21:44and emissions may have already peaked in several of these sectors.
21:49And this is according to the Climate TRACE,
21:52precise measurements of peaking.
21:54And a lot of these sectors are ones that need even more attention:
21:59agriculture, steel, etc.
22:02But last year,
22:03if you look at all the new electricity installed worldwide,
22:0693 percent of it was renewable, mostly solar.
22:11So,
22:12the IEA’s told us long since,
22:14we have all the technologies we need
22:17and proven deployment models
22:19to reduce emissions 50 percent in this decade
22:22and clear line of sight to the other 50 percent.
22:27A friend of mine in Tennessee said,
22:29"If God wanted us to have unlimited free energy,
22:32he'd have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky."
22:36Well, if you look at how long it took to install a gigawatt of solar
22:4120 years ago, a full year.
22:42Now it’s down to 15 hours, and it’s on the way down still.
22:47So here's what I believe that the so-called climate realists
22:53are most wrong about.
22:55They don't believe that we, the people who live on this planet,
23:00have the capacity to make the changes necessary to save our future.
23:06The greatest president in my country's history,
23:09Abraham Lincoln, said, “At a time of dire crisis,
23:12the occasion is piled high with difficulty.
23:16We must rise with the occasion.
23:19As our case is new, we must think anew."
23:23I believe that we as human beings
23:27have the capacity to recognize that our survival is at stake,
23:32and that we need to move faster,
23:35even though the big polluters have the political and economic power
23:40to try to block us.
23:42We've got everything we need.
23:44The people are demanding change.
23:47The one thing that they tell us might be in short supply
23:51is political will.
23:53But always remember,
23:55political will is itself a renewable resource.
23:59Let's get out there and renew it.
24:01Thank you, thank you very much.
24:04(Cheers and applause)