Al Gore: "I am optimistic"

In an interview, the Nobel winner and former vice president talks about how to save the world

Editor's note: This interview originally appeared in Der Spiegel.

By Philip Bethge, Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart

Read more: Al Gore, Politics, News, Global Warming, Climate Change, Barack Obama

Nov. 2, 2009 | Mr. Vice President, you write in your new book, "Our Choice," that we have at our fingertips all of the tools that we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient would be collective will. What makes it so hard for governments to implement change even though most people know what needs to be done?

As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions. Neuroscientists point out that we are inherently better able to respond quickly to the kinds of threats that our evolutionary ancestors survived -- like other humans with weapons, snakes and spiders or fire. Also, there is a real-time lag between the causes of the climate crisis and its full manifestation. That makes it seem less urgent to many people.

But America always took pride in being faster and more flexible than other nations. Does that no longer apply?

America's political system has evolved over the last 50 years in ways that have enhanced the power of business lobbies. The power of television and of money has grown exponentially. Eighty percent of the campaign contributions that candidates and officials running for re-election raise and spend go to TV ads, so they are required to raise enormous amounts of money, mainly from business lobbies. In a way, that has "re-feudalized" the political power and it gave much more power to established interests. When Obama was elected, I said: "What an exciting moment in our history." But his election did not cure all of the problems in the American system.

Seventeen years ago you, a young Senator from Tennessee, and Bill Clinton, a young governor from Arkansas, moved into the White House on the promise of change. Clinton played the saxophone and there was a feeling of spring in the air. Why has it been so much tougher for Barack Obama?

It was hard for us, too. Just remember the resistance to our healthcare reform bill. Obama's progress on healthcare has already surpassed what we were able to do on healthcare. He will get a climate change bill adopted. So I am optimistic. These are still the early days of the Obama presidency. He had a bad summer, but he is having a good fall.

Isn't it getting harder and harder to remain an optimist?

I think there is a realistic basis for optimism. The Internet empowers individuals to play a more active role in the political process, as Obama's campaign has manifested. They felt shut out of the conversation of democracy during the television age, but they are coming back. It is not an accident that virtually every progressive reform movement in the world is now based on the internet. There are more than 1 million, perhaps as many as 2 million grass-roots organizations that have been established worldwide on the issue of the climate crisis, most of them on the Internet.

Obama's political opponents also rely on the Internet, though. Could the reason for the resistance to his government be his skin color? Former President Jimmy Carter said many Americans still have a problem with a black man in the White House.

There is no doubt that the issue of race is always present in American politics and in the politics of any multiracial society. There is also no doubt that for some people it is an element in the manifested hostility to Obama. But I don't think it is the major theme at all. Obama is right when he reminds people: By the way, I was black before the election.

Perhaps the aggressive reactions can be explained by the fact that he, you and large parts of the Democratic Party misinterpreted the will of voters. Perhaps the last election had less to do with a desire among voters to implement transformational change than just getting rid of Bush.

Isn't that all related? The Bush-Cheney administration had betrayed some basic American values. So there was hunger for change. The difficulties the new government has encountered are in the Congress, and they are connected to the growing influence of business lobbies and people who are simply afraid of government.

Is that a new phenomenon?

People in Congress listen less to each other. The Senate chamber, for example, is now commonly empty when speeches are made. That was different in the past and I know why it has changed. The chamber is empty now because the senators have to be at cocktail parties and fundraisers to raise money. They feel as if they have to spend virtually all their time raising money.

"It is realistic to expect a treaty"

Isn't Obama's plate too full? He conducts war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he wants to close Guantanamo, he is trying to reform the healthcare system, he is promising progress on climate change and wants to strengthen, almost in passing, the rights of trade unions and homosexuals. Isn't that too much change for a rather conservative country like the United States?

I disagree with that criticism. After eight years of retrogression, Obama would have been more bitterly criticized if he had chosen only one priority and had not tried to address the many challenges that need to be undertaken. So I do think there is a grain of truth to it, but I also know that his mandate was and is strongest at the beginning of his term.

But Obama hasn't achieved much so far -- most of the reforms he announced still haven't been implemented. Many people already call him a sweet talker -- all talk, but little action.

One of the tools that a president has is to command the attention of the American people. It has to be used judiciously. There is such a thing as overexposure when a president depreciates the welcome. I think it is too early to make that judgment. There have been times when I thought that President Obama maybe got close to that line -- for instance, with regard to his television interviews. But it is the most powerful tool he has to make his direct presentation to the people.

Next page: "Sometimes the language of Yiddish is the most expressive. I want to be a 'nudge' in Copenhagen. Someone who is pushing for action"