This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Before he was the guy with the climate change PowerPoint presentation, before he lost the U.S. presidency by a nose (and a Supreme Court decision), Al Gore had a reputation for pitching ambitious policy solutions to the knottiest societal problems. From the Senate to the vice presidency, while most politicians were yelling about oil prices, Gore was talking about connecting information superhighways to public schools and taxing British Thermal Units to fight global warming.
For the past decade and a half, Gore, a self-described “recovering politician,” has been a capitalist. He’s chair of Generation Investment Management, a $20 billion equity firm focusing on environmentally sustainable companies. It might seem like a tough time to put on that specific happy face — a pandemic and resurgent fights over racial and economic inequality might take cuts in the queue ahead of a global economic meltdown and planetary ecosystem collapse. Even Generation’s annual sustainability report shows that public attention toward climate change has taken a backseat to concerns... Read more