Al Gore stopped by The Late Show to chat with Stephen Colbert on Monday night to promote his upcoming Inconvenient Truth sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, and the former Democratic presidential candidate had a unique perspective to provide for some of what’s going on in our country right now. Aside from knowing what it’s like to win the popular vote and lose a presidential election, Gore also has some experience when it comes to illicit campaign documents.
During the 2000 election cycle, someone who was apparently “very unhappy with the Bush campaign” mailed his campaign a copy of the Republican candidate’s debate prep book. When asked whether or not he kept the book, Gore chuckled and said, “No, we immediately turned it over to the FBI,” noting that the staffer who had received the book also recused himself from the entire debate process.
The topic of conversation later turned towards Gore’s new film, and to the topic of climate change in general. Specifically, when asked about the ramifications of President Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, the former Vice President had some words of encouragement.
“I worried that it would be a disastrous move, but immediately after that, all of the other countries in the world doubled down and said, we’re gonna do even more,” he said. “And here in the U.S., a lot of our most important governors and mayors and business leaders said, we’re still in the Paris agreement and we’re going to meet the commitments of the country regardless of what Donald Trump tweets.”
But when things still seem pretty doom and gloom, especially in light of a Delaware-sized iceberg recently breaking off of Antarctica, Gore still has faith in mankind. “I know a lot of young people who are feeling somewhat hopeless about this, and that they read articles and magazines, or they see interviews on TV and they hear that it is too late, don’t even have kids because there’s going to be no future for them,” Colbert asked at the end of the interview. “Is there hope, Al Gore?”
“Absolutely. Go see the movie and you’ll see, there’s tremendous hope, and we are gonna win this, the only question is how long it will take,” Gore responded. “And to young people in particular, I really recommend this movie as a date movie … it’s a hot date movie. It’s an amazingly hot date movie.” Jokes aside, the whole interview is pretty comforting for anyone who could use a peace of mind, these days.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power hits theaters on July 28, and in the meantime you can watch the trailer below.