Al Gore Likens Global Warming Doubters to Racists

Former vice president Al Gore recently compared climate change doubters to racists.

Gore, speaking with former advertising executive and Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on a UStream interview this past week, said one day climate change doubters will be looked at like racists. He urged people who support curbs to greenhouse gasses to change the minds of these skeptics.

He talked about how racism changed over time. When a racist comment was made, There came a time when people said, 'Hey man, why do you talk that way? That's wrong, I don't go for that, so don't talk that way around me. I just don't believe that,' Gore said.

That happened in millions of conversations, and slowly the conversation was won. And we still have racism, God knows, but it's so different now and so much better. And we have to win the conversation on climate.

During the interview, Gore also focused on meat eating and organic foods. He said the shift to a meat-intensive diet has caused the clearing of forests in many parts of the world in order to raise more cattle. He also said a reliance on synthetic nitrogen for fertilizers has caused problems.

Gore has recently stepped up his game in the fight against climate change doubters. This past month, at the Aspen Institute media forum Networks an Citizenship, he pulled no punches, cursing numerous times in a speech that spread around the internet.

After referencing how tobacco giants succeeded in delaying the implementation of the surgeon general's report for 40 years, Gore compared it to the current situation with climate change.

That same model of media manipulation was transported whole cloth into the climate debate. And some of the exact same people -- I can go down a list of their names -- are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: 'This climate thing, it's nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn't trap heat. It may be volcanoes.'

Gore said these skeptics have polluted the debate and there's no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate, even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened.

People have no idea! It's no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the [expletive] word 'climate.' They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it, said Gore.

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