Al Gore: Congressional Republicans could help defeat Donald Trump's anti-environmentalist agenda

A group of Republicans in the US Congress are about to commit to taking action on global warming with only “a few more” needed to create a working majority on the issue, Al Gore has said.

If the Trump Administration embraces full-scale climate science denial, the actions of Congress could be crucial as it could prevent many of its plans under the ‘checks and balances’ system designed to limit the power of any single branch of the US government.

Speaking at a preview of his forthcoming documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Mr Gore, a former US Vice-President, agreed that Donald Trump’s election as US President was a setback, but took comfort from record levels of support for dealing with climate change among the public and action being taken by US states and cities.

And he added that Congress “may not go along with what he’s recommending”.

“Mother Nature turns out to be a pretty persuasive advocate. Just as you have had these exceptional downpours we have as well and droughts,” Mr Gore told an audience at an Advertising Week Europe event in London.

“Last week there was what was called the Hurricane Katrina of the Plains with a million acres burned and thousands of cattle burned.

“Literally almost day now there are these events. Even those who don’t necessarily want to use the phrase global warming or the climate crisis are saying ‘ok, it’s time to do something about this’.

“As of yesterday there’s a new development, there are now 30 Republican members of the House of Representatives who have changed sides on this issue and have become part of a group committed to solving the climate crisis.

“We only now need a few more to have a working majority on this issue in the US Congress.

“There are about 10 Republican senators who right now are considering changing sides, a couple already have.

“So we are going to win this, there’s no question about that. History is on our side.”

He also said he thought there was “a realistic chance” that Mr Trump would not withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, as the President has repeatedly promised.

“There is an active debate within his inner circle, I have some visibility to that debate. I don’t know what is going to happen but I think there is still a chance that he will not pull out of the Paris Agreement,” Mr Gore said.

“He is seemingly determined to eliminate all of the Government programmes that he can eliminate that would help the US reach its goals but the speed and force of this transformation underway in the West may lead to the achievement of the US goals regardless of what he does.”

But he suggested time could be running out to avoid climate change becoming a threat to human civilisation.

“The remaining question is how quickly will we win, because every day we still contributing to this over-burden of heat trapping in the atmosphere,” Mr Gore said.

“And, you know, the atmosphere is very thin. We walk outside after this event and look up at the sky, it seems like a vast and limitless expanse.

“Actually the scientists have long told us and the pictures from the astronauts show it’s an extremely thin shell around the planet.

“The late Carl Sagan used to say if you have a large globe with a coat of varnish, the thickness of that varnish on the globe is analogous to the thickness of the atmosphere.

“If you could drive a London taxi cab at normal speeds straight up in the air it would only be a few minutes before you reached the top of the sky.

“It’s a small enough space that we are capable of radically changing its chemical composition. That’s what we are doing.”