Al Gore to S-E Asia: Look beyond geopolitics, focus on people when facing climate crisis
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Former US vice-president Al Gore, founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, presenting the latest science at a climate leadership training event on Sept 8.
ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
- Al Gore urged Southeast Asia to prioritise people’s interests over geopolitics by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy to address the climate crisis.
- He highlighted falling renewable energy costs, rising investments, and worsening climate disasters as key reasons for the region to adopt sustainable solutions.
- Gore noted China’s growing climate leadership and hopes for US-China cooperation on climate and AI regulation by the 2028 COP33 conference.
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SINGAPORE – Focus on people, not geopolitics – that is former US vice-president Al Gore’s advice to South-east Asian nations who may feel caught between other countries’ priorities in addressing climate change.
“What (the region) should focus on is not how China will react to what they’re doing or how the US will react to what they’re doing, but what will best serve the interests of the people in their nations,” he said on Sept 8 while in Singapore for an event.
He was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a two-day leadership training event run by The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit he founded to help tackle the climate crisis.
The training on Sept 8 and 9 gathers around 800 sustainability professionals, students and climate activists in the region. It is being held at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Gore was asked how South-east Asia should navigate the US’ and China’s contrasting attitudes towards the climate crisis.
The Trump administration in the US has reversed climate policies by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, lobbying for fossil fuel expansion and erasing climate research, among other regulatory rollbacks.
China, on the other hand, has been aggressively rolling out renewables, and in record-breaking pace, installed 3 gigawatts of solar energy each day for the whole of May 2025.
Replying the question, Gore said there are multiple factors that have pushed the region to gear towards sustainability.
First, the US-Iran war has demonstrated that the price and supply volatility of oil and gas “is itself a reason to move away from fossil fuels”, he said.
Second, solar, wind and battery storage are enjoying a dramatic and continued decline in prices.
On this front, Gore noted that the South-east Asian market is moving towards adopting clean energy, referring to how investments in renewables in the first half of 2026 increased by 51 per cent, compared with the same period in 2025.
Third, ever-frequent and worsening climate disasters, such as the glacial collapse in Nepal, are serving as a wake-up call to governments.
“Mother Nature is persuading more and more people every day that it is ridiculous for us to slow down this transition, no matter the political power of the fossil fuel polluters,” said Gore.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the best interests of their people is obviously served by speeding up this transition (away from fossil fuels).”
His 2006 climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award, and in 2007, he, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, received the Nobel Peace Prize.
He is optimistic that China can step up in climate leadership as it is “moving powerfully towards advocacy for renewables”, while noting that the country’s greenhouse gas emissions has plateaued over the past two years, and even dipped slightly in the second quarter of 2026.
“China has decided to change its historic reluctance to use its diplomatic clout to advocate for global solutions in the diplomatic sphere for the climate crisis, and that is a welcome change,” said Gore.
China’s interest to host the 2028 UN climate change conference (COP33) is also a positive sign, he added.
Gore added: “If China does indeed seek to host COP33... it will do what China always does: It plans its work and works its plan.”
But while ramping up renewables, the world’s second-largest economy is still building new coal-fired power plants.
Coal remains important to the country’s need for energy security, partly because many regions in China have suffered the significant loss of hydroelectric power due to droughts, acknowledged Gore.
He said: “China is perhaps the only country in the world that would build new (coal) plants, knowing that they would have less than a 50 per cent utilisation rate,” he said.
“There is a completely different philosophy at work in China’s decision to build these plants.”
By COP33 in 2028, he hopes for closer cooperation between the two superpowers.
“Indeed, the two challenges that are ripe for bi-national cooperation between the US and China are the climate crisis and the regulation of advanced artificial intelligence,” said Gore.
