WHAT AL GORE HAD TO SAY ON VISIT TO GEORGETOWN
Former vice president holds up city as leader in climate change fight.
Former Vice GEORGETOWN — President Al Gore delivered more warnings about the threat of global climate change at a renewable energy conference in Georgetown on Monday, before holding up the Central Texas city as an example of the progress being made to alleviate the crisis.
Georgetown is the only city in Texas to operate solely on renewable energy. It had been the biggest city in the U.S. to get its power entirely from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, until being displaced recently by Las Vegas.
Gore, speaking at the GridNEXT renewable energy conference, used a litany of data points to paint a picture of climate change induced by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities that he said is fueling global catastrophes, from storms and droughts to fires and famines.
The earth’s atmosphere “really is a very thin shell around the planet,” Gore said. “That is what we are kind of using as an open sewer now for seven and a half billion people.”
Gore linked Hurricane Harvey and the destruction that it recently wrought in Houston and along the Texas coast to climate change, saying warmer-than-normal ocean water boosted the storm, as well as hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Atlantic.
“Hurricane Harvey crossed waters in the Gulf that were 7 degrees warmer than normal,” said Gore, who has produced two high-profile documentaries on climate change. “This is a new reality that we are having to deal with — again because of all this extra heat energy” locked in the atmosphere.
Instead of dropping in inten-