PODCAST. Climate failures (4/6): Al Gore’s failed election

In the United States, Al Gore has long been one of the few leaders to care about climate change. But in 2000, he lost the presidential election to George W. Bush. What would have happened if Al Gore had been elected?

When he was a student at Harvard, Al Gore had a class with Roger Revelle, one of the pioneers of climate science in the United States. At the time, climate change was still relatively little known, and the first modeling work was hardly taken seriously.

In 1981, Al Gore, a young elected official from Tennessee, was chairman of a control subcommittee of the Congressional “Science and Technology” committee. Suffice to say that he is completely unknown. He has the idea of ​​using the subcommittee he chairs to organize hearings of scientists on various environmental subjects.

But this emerging interest in climate change will be nipped in the bud by the Reagan administration, which sees no reason to panic. And governments would instead focus on solving another environmental problem: that of the hole in the ozone layer, which had been discovered a few years earlier. For the ozone layer, everything is happening very quickly: the greenhouse gases which are responsible for its destruction are CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons. We will quickly find industrial substitutes for them, and politicians will tackle the problem: the hole in the ozone layer alarms public opinion, and captures the fears of the time.

A Republican colleague of Al Gore, Curtis Moore, will have the idea of ​​using the craze for the ozone layer in such a way as to benefit climate change: like a cyclist who places himself in the wake of a another to benefit from its drag, it is a question of linking climate change to the locomotive of the hole in the ozone layer, against which we are taking radical measures. And in June 1986, with Al Gore, James Hansen and the whole gang, we will hold a joint hearing in the American Senate on the hole in the ozone layer and climate change. The press will take up both subjects, and it is from there that public confusion between the hole in the ozone layer and climate change will become common.

At the time, we were convinced that climate change would also be the subject of a binding environmental treaty, as for the ozone layer. Meanwhile, Al Gore was elected senator from Tennessee, and he even considered running for president in 1987, to bring attention to the topic of climate change. He will therefore again summon James Hansen for hearings in the Senate. The most significant hearing took place on June 23, 1988. That day, the heat was stifling: it was 37 degrees in Washington, it was the hottest June 23 that the United States had ever recorded. Harvard University will even have to close for a few days because of the heat. Before the senators, Hansen made a shocking declaration: climate change was already here.

In the United States precisely, in the middle of the electoral campaign, the future president George Bush Senior presents himself as a great environmentalist. The day after his election, he took advice from former Presidents Carter and Ford, who advised him to make the climate a major national priority, and to double the budget of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But throughout his mandate, the United States will drag its feet on the climate, until this famous sentence he uttered during the Earth Summit in Rio: “The American way of life is non-negotiable“.

In 1992, Al Gore could have run for president, but a tragic event would decide otherwise: in 1989, his son was seriously injured in a car accident, which led him to reconsider his priorities. But during the 1992 electoral campaign, Al Gore was nonetheless chosen as Bill Clinton’s running mate: as a senator, he already had solid political experience, and above all he was known for his environmentalist commitment. Clinton is going to be elected, which will give Al Gore the opportunity to bring climate change back to the forefront.

Thanks to his closeness to Bill Clinton, Gore is generally considered one of the most influential and active vice presidents in United States history. He is undertaking several initiatives aimed at promoting renewable energies or reducing deforestation, but above all he will play a leading role in the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol. He got personally involved and made the trip to Japan.

In 1999, it was his time. On July 16, he officially announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. He will easily win the Democratic primary against a former basketball player, Bill Bradley, and will choose Connecticut Senator Joe Liebermann as his running mate. The campaign is close, he is neck and neck with George W. Bush, the son of the former president. Climate change is a central focus of his campaign, but Gore sometimes comes across as condescending to George W. Bush in televised debates. He is hampered by a small independent environmentalist candidate, Ralph Nader, who ultimately obtained 2.79% of the vote.

On election day, November 7, 2000, Al Gore will lose three key states. If he had won just one of these states, he would have been elected president. He will first lose his own state, Tennessee. Then, he will lose West Virginia and its five electors. At the time, West Virginia was a rather Democratic state – Bill Clinton won it easily, in 1992 and 1996. But it was also a state whose economy was largely based on coal mines. And Al Gore’s climate commitment will scare West Virginia voters. And above all, he will lose Florida, which was still considered a pivotal state at the time. The vote is going to be incredibly close. There are a lot of disputed ballots, recounts must be carried out.

Finally, it was the Supreme Court, more than a month after the election, on December 12, which awarded Florida to George W. Bush, by 5 votes to 4 among the judges of the Court. Al Gore won the popular vote nationally, but George W. Bush won Florida by a margin of 537 votes, or 0.009%. This is one of the most hotly contested elections in American history. George W. Bush was elected with 271 voters, compared to 266 for Al Gore, who recognized his defeat on December 13, 2000.

What would have happened if Al Gore had elected? “The United States could have taken leadership in the fight against global warming”, believes Jean Jouzel. But unfortunately that will never be the case.

“Climate failures”, a franceinfo podcast by François Gemenne in collaboration with Pauline Pennanec’h, produced by François Richer, broadcast by Thomas Coudreuse. A podcast to be found on the franceinfo website, the Radio France application and several other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Podcast Addict, Spotify, or Deezer.