Al Gore Has Fighting Words at UN Climate Summit

Don't trust the oil and gas industry to report their actual carbon pollution, says former US Vice President Al Gore, who adds that the man leading the United Nations climate talks runs one of the "dirtiest" oil companies out there. "They're much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions," Gore told the AP in an interview. The Nobel Prize-winning climate activist, author, and filmmaker blasted Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the UN climate talks, who is also president of the national oil company of the host nation, United Arab Emirates. Gore said al-Jaber's Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. is "one of the largest and one of the dirtiest, by many measures, oil companies in the world."

Gore can make these claims because he just released a massive update of the Climate TRACE database of emissions that he helped create. It tracks carbon pollution from every nation and city across the globe with 352 million pieces of information. Looking at the data released Sunday, Gore said, "the No. 1 surprise was how far off the reporting from the oil and gas industry is. And we see it here in the United Arab Emirates, you know, nice folks. But the numbers they put out are just not right. And we can prove they're not right." In a rare, combative and brief press conference Monday, al-Jaber defended his record and the idea of bringing oil companies into the efforts to curb climate change. "They've stepped up," al-Jaber said of oil industry colleagues. "Is it enough? No."

"I want to recall for you that two years ago there was the global methane pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030," said Gore in a public presentation at the UN summit on Sunday. "Well, since that pledge was made. Methane emissions have increased almost 2%." The former VP, who says that he is generally is an optimist, told the AP that the world is near a "political tipping point." Climate scientists often use the term "tipping point" for when ecological systems like Arctic sea ice or coral reefs hit a point-of-no-return change. Gore sees a political version of that approaching. "We don't have time to be depressed about it," Gore said. "You just got to keep fighting. We'll get there. The question is whether we get there in time, but I think we'll get there."

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