Ex-US politician and renowned climate campaigner Al Gore has delivered a hard-hitting speech on climate urgency at a recent TED event drawing rapturous applause from the audience.

Gore pointed out that since COP26 in Glasgow, UK, the world had been ‘backsliding’ and key players had been putting “short-term profit over activities that destroy the planet”.

He also broadened the debate out to the political level, stating he believes that the climate crisis is ultimately a “political crisis” at root, stating that the energy of 600,000 nuclear bombs had built up in the stratosphere.

He ended with a rallying call to “not give up hope” as we have the technology and solutions to fight the crisis.

The former Vice US President has become a leading figure of the climate change movement since the early 2000s.

Since then, he has won a Nobel Peace Prize (joint award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2007, and a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for his book An Inconvenient Truth.

Gore was also the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006.

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