Atmosphere ‘used like an open sewer’

We are using the atmosphere as if it is an open sewer, former US vice-president Al Gore, told a major international conference on hunger and climate change in Dublin yesterday.

“The world as a whole is putting 90m tonnes of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every day as if it is an open sewer,” Mr Gore said on the second and final day of the conference, co-hosted by the Government and the Mary Robinson Foundation.

“The accumulation of this man-made global warming pollution now traps as much extra energy in the atmosphere each day than would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” Mr Gore said.