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Al Gore on China’s climate rise: ‘I would not have seen this coming’


Al Gore and Lila Preston of Generation Investment Management talked with TechCrunch about recent headlines, including the tech industry's growing appetite for rare earth minerals, how the AI boom's demand for massive data centers could impact global energy consumption, and whether the space industry's rocket launches are truly a net positive.

“Looking from the standpoint of 25 years ago, I have to say no, I would not have seen this as the most likely outcome,” Gore admits when asked about China’s emergence as the world’s leading force in the energy transition, a reality that would have seemed almost fantastical to the candidate who once hoped to steer American climate policy from the Oval Office. The United States has played a key role, but it’s been back and forth with changes in party control, which is unfortunate because the world would greatly benefit from sustained, consistent leadership from the U.S. We will survive this setback in the form of all these negative steps Trump has been taking. My friends and former constituents in southwest Memphis have been through a lot of environmental injustice already, and to have a 97% Black community, which already has a 5x cancer risk compared to the national average, be assaulted by these extra emissions from large methane turbine generators is really unjust.

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