Donald Trump met in New York Monday with Al Gore to discuss an issue the Republican president-elect has long scoffed at: Global warming.
The meeting at Trump Tower was initially scheduled with the president-elect’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. After Gore emerged, the Democratic politician-turned climate activist told reporters he wound up spending "the bulk of the time" with Trump himself.
“I had a lengthy and very productive meeting about the transition with the President elect,” Gore said. “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I found it an extremely interesting conversation and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Ivanka Trump, who has a fashion line and helps run her father’s real estate business, may be the closest thing to a climate advocate in Trump’s inner circle. She plans to make global warming one of her key issues once he takes office, according to the news site Politico.
Ivanka Trump holds no official position on her father’s transition team. The head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, Myron Ebell, is an outspoken climate-change skeptic, and the president-elect’s NASA adviser Bob Walker told the Guardian that he would do away with funding for climate research.
Ivanka Trump holds no official position on her father’s transition team. The head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, Myron Ebell, is an outspoken climate-change skeptic, and the president-elect’s NASA adviser Bob Walker told the Guardian that he would do away with funding for climate research.
Donald Trump’s perhaps most well-known statement on climate change came in a 2012 tweet saying that it was “created” by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive. He shifted his tone somewhat last month during a meeting with the New York Times, saying there might be some “connectivity” between human activity and the rising temperatures that are melting polar ice caps and have been linked to extreme weather around the world.
Trump’s incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus later clarified the statement on Fox News, saying the president-elect still believes global warming is mostly “a bunch of bunk.”
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