Al Gore: ‘Our Democracy Is Broken, and In Order to Solve the Climate Crisis We’re Going to Have to Pay Attention to the Democracy Crisis’

EXCERPT:

GORE: "Well, you're exactly right, and public sentiment is changing, but our democracy is broken. And in order to solve the climate crisis, we're going to have to pay attention to the democracy crisis. The same reason that it's seemingly impossible for the Congress to pass legislation banning these weapons of war, these assault rifles that are being used to murder children in classrooms and create hundreds of mass-casualty events already this year, and that's getting worse; the same reason we can't pass legislation to, for example, reinstate the ban on assault weapons; is the same reason that we can't pass climate legislation. We have a minority government. We have the filibuster, still, which ought to be eliminated. We have big money playing much too large a role in our politics, lobbyists for the fossil-fuel industry. And they're still running all of these advertisements, trying to convince people that it's not that bad, or they've got this, don't worry about it. We have got to rise to this challenge."