Al Gore strikes hopeful note during L.V. presentation on climate change

As he proved Tuesday at UNLV, Al Gore is a maestro at shocking and awing an audience with his presentation on climate change.

The wall-to-wall crowd at the Ham Concert Hall sat rapt as the former vice president clicked through chart after chart and video after video showing the ravaging effects of man-made global warming — floods, wildfires, record heat events and more. They laughed when Gore showed a picture of a Kentucky coal museum that had installed a rooftop solar array. They gasped when he showed an image of a heavy truck that had sunk partway into the heat-softened asphalt on a roadway.

But for all of the distressing facts and imagery that Gore passed along, his overall message was anything but gloom and doom.

In fact, he showed that the tide is already turning toward reducing greenhouse gases, and expressed optimism that the trend will accelerate. For that, he gave significant credit to a demographic that was well represented in Tuesday’s crowd.

“The new, rising generation is demanding a cleaner future,” he said. “These young people are serious about this, and they ought to be. Young people traditionally have the energy and drive, and on an issue like this, they realize they’ll have to live with the consequences for much longer, so they’re taking the lead.”

Gore’s appearance, which was orchestrated by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, was a proud moment for UNLV. For the campus community and the valley at large, it was an opportunity not only to be enlightened but to be empowered with information to counter climate skeptics.

Case in point: The next time you hear the tired “So much for global warming” joke during a cold snap, know that climate change has caused atmospheric air patterns to shift, causing warm air to flow over the North Pole and in turn pushing arctic air south. So when the upper Midwest experiences brutally cold weather or flirts with records for late snowfall, as it has this year, the effects of climate change are actually manifesting themselves in that unusual weather.

Gore, the subject of the 2006 Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and a 2017 sequel, has an infectious passion about the subject. He’s appeared in Las Vegas a number of times, including giving an early version of his presentation two years ago during the annual Clean Energy Summit.

The former vice president’s message can’t be repeated often enough. Climate change is already resulting in widespread deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and the displacement of untold numbers of people, and it’s quickly approaching a tipping point at which its effects will become irreversible. If and when that happens, the ramifications literally include the end of human existence.

But as Gore pointed out, progress is being made to reduce the emissions that are speeding the change. He noted that despite President Donald Trump’s support of the coal industry, more coal-fired power plants had been closed in the U.S. during the first two years of the Trump administration than under Barack Obama, for instance.

“(Trump) can put on a miner’s hat and shovel that stuff, but we all know what he’s really shoveling,” Gore said.

The change is largely due to the availability of cheap natural gas but also is being driven by an increase in power generation from renewable energy sources. With the costs of renewables steadily decreasing, he said, that trend will accelerate.

But far more progress is needed, he said, and the repairs to the environment will be gradual.

That being the case, it was good to see Gore back in Las Vegas, keeping up his fight to reverse climate change.

With the fossil fuel industry partnering with Fox News and other conservative media on a widespread disinformation campaign on the subject, it’s important to counter that damaging message with facts.

Gore armed the audience at UNLV to do just that, and urged them to use not only their voices but their votes to demand change.

Bravo to him, to Reid and to UNLV for giving him the stage.