Former US Vice President Al Gore has had a reportedly “productive” meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.
Gore met with Trump earlier this week in Trump Tower to discuss the issue of climate change, something the President-elect previously referred to as a hoax tweeting “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”
“I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect,” Gore said, after emerging from the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City.
“It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the president-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Despite promises to slash renewable energy funding, withdraw from the Paris climate accord and dismantle the Clean Power Plan, Trump has since told the New York Times that there may be “some connectivity” between climate change and human activity.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, also attended the meeting. According to Gore, she was “very committed to having a climate policy that makes sense.”
Referring to Trump’s successful election and what this means for efforts surrounding climate change, Gore has said:
“My message would be that despair is just another form of denial. There is no time to despair. We don’t have time to lick our wounds, to hope for a different election outcome.
“We have to win this struggle and we will win it; the only question is how fast we win. But more damaged is baked into the climate system every day, so it’s a race against time.”
Details of the meeting have not yet been disclosed out of respect for the privacy of the conversations and out of hopes to continue discussing the issue with the president-elect.