Gore begins US$300m climate change campaign

Former US vice president Al Gore will launch one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in US history in a bid to change the way Americans think about climate change, according to US reports today.

The three-year, US$300m (€188m) campaign, to be launched on Wednesday, will employ online and television advertisements on shows ranging from American Idol to the late night Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign will be partly funded by Mr Gore and was undertaken because of his fear that US politicians are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change, he told the Washington Post.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” he said.

“I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

Mr Gore said he has devoted all his proceeds from the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the best-selling companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and several international prizes, such as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which add up to more than a US$2.7m (€3.4m).

Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he added.

He told the newspaper he wanted to ensure the US enacts a national carbon emission cap and ratifies a new global pact on climate change in the next three years.

“The simple algorithm is this,” he said.

“It’s important to change the light bulbs, but it’s much more important to change the laws.

“The options available to civilisation worldwide to avert this terribly destructive pattern are beginning to slip away from us. The path for recovery runs right through Washington, DC.”

The Alliance for Climate Protection aims to enlist 10 million volunteers through TV commercials, adverts in US magazines and online social networks.

The Washington Post reported that, by contrast, the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s each boasted about five million activists.