VIDEO REVIEW – AL GORE: THE CASE FOR OPTIMISM ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Profile of the Author: Dadhich Indrodia is a student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He was an intern at Niti Manthan Summer School, 2020 in the project "Postulating Climate Change Policies in India"

Former Vice President of the USA and founder chairman of The Climate Reality Project focused on climate change education and spoke at the TED conference in Vancouver in 2016. In an almost half-hour speech, the politician-cum-environmentalist vividly articulates the risk of the climate crisis and its human-led causes, the scope for climate action and the possibility of macro-level change through 3 simple questions - Do we need to change? Can we change? and Will we change? Ending on multiple moral and motivational anecdotes like his childhood memories of Neil Armstrong’s foot on the moon to the provocative thought “After the final no, there comes a yes and on that yes the future world depends”. Al Gore pushes the youth of today to take the lead for a sustainable world.

On a deeper analysis, the stint does not look like political rhetoric, which most ex-leaders tend to have, as he starts with providing scientific historical factual trends about anthropogenic global warming. Green House Gases (GHGs) emissions equal to the energy of 400,000 atoms bombs/day, the rise in temperature after WW2, the hottest days, years falling in the current century, 93% heat trapped by oceans and the resultant disasters of all kinds from a typhoon to droughts to storms to pandemics to climate refugees to melting poles are all presented in a lucid but convicting way. Further, the focus on the issues being the most serious in contemporary times and the need to be non-partisan is also articulated vehemently.

The second part where Al Gore pushes for investment and prioritizing renewables demand a critical analysis when contextualized with the concept of elite environmentalism pushing for market-based solutions or the so called ‘Bourgeois Environmentalism’ (Schoepfle, 2010). Though there has been a phenomenal increase in the penetration of renewable energy worldwide and more strongly in India (Fig. 1) that are projected to accelerate further (Fig. 2) due to drastic reduction in cost as pointed by Gore, there are some areas that seem neglected or overlooked.

Figure 1: India’s renewable energy trend 2013-2019 (Source: https://www.ren21.net/what-are-the-current-trends-in-renewable-energy/)

Fig 2: India’s Energy Projection

The push on private investment and luring the business community proves to be myopic and in stark contrast to the concept of ‘Green Keynesianism’(GK). GK refers to reviving economic growth while resolving problems of environmental decline and social inequity created due to an era of neoliberal dominance. It pushes towards recalling the state to frame an active macroeconomic policy to tackle economic malaise and ecological damage. In other words, “Channelizing of public spending towards low carbon industries and environment-friendly activities”. Without such perspective, scholars say, it is next to impossible to tackle the imminent threats posed by climate change, energy insecurity, deteriorating ecosystem and worsening global poverty (Comert, 2019). Also, the encouragement on private investment demands contextualizing with a study that explores the political involvement of transnational corporations and their directors in elaborating the project of ‘climate capitalism’ advanced to address climate change. The concept “Climate Capitalism” receives attention when Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project is seen as one of the corporate-funded Climate and Environmental Policy Groups (CEPGs) that constitute major venues for the corporate elite to assemble and plan their response to the climate crisis. Climate Capitalism is viewed as the neoliberal attempt to mitigate climate change through market measures that turn aspects of nature into new means of accumulation while minimizing end-of-pipe, direct state regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Sapinski, 2015).

Lastly the question of “How fast can we mitigate through renewables?” emerges which though seems promising misses the issue of ‘adaption to climate change impacts’- one of the 2 strategies considered in the Paris Agreement, the other being mitigation. Mitigation has been considered a top-down capitalist solution to the climate crisis while adaption strategies focus on working with the communities most prone to climate change impacts like those at coastal areas and thus vulnerable to disasters - already intensified due to climate change (Sharma, 2017).

Overall, however, the speech proves to be an empowering knowledge source for the business community to engage in developing green energy projects while demanding the attention of citizens to be conscious of their carbon footprint.

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References

1. Comert, M. (2019). Revival of Keynesian Economics or Green Capitalism: “Green Keynesianism”. Sosoyoekonomi, 129-144.
2. Sapinski, J. P. (2015). Climate Capitalism and the global corporate elite network. Environmental Sociology.
3. Schoepfle, C. (2010). Bourgeois Environmentalists, International Law, Energy.
4. Sharma, A. (2017). Precaution and post-causation in the Paris Agreements adaption, loss and damage and finance. Climate Policy, 17, 33-47.