Al Gore: Mother Nature Joining Climate Crisis Debate

It's been a decade since former Vice President Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warned about the dangers of climate change, and while some detractors point out many of the movie's dire predictions have not come true, Mother Nature is now joining the debate.

"Some damage has been done," Gore told NBC's Willie Geist on the "Today" show, while discussing his new movie "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," the sequel to his first award-winning documentary.

"Major sections of Antarctica have now passed a point beyond which some huge additional sea level rise is inevitable," Gore said. "Now we are seeing these incredible downpours. This city was inundated during Superstorm Sandy, as the movie a decade ago predicted."

Since his first movie, Gore said, there have been more climate-related extreme weather events overall that have become more destructive and common.

"In the United States, we've had 11 'once-in-a-thousand-years' downpours in the last seven years," said Gore.

However, there are more solutions now than in the past, and Gore said his new movie carries a sense of hopefulness, as people can now be part of solving the climate crisis.

"The truth is inconvenient for polluters, but we've all got to be inconvenient for them," said Gore. The side benefit, he continued, is that pushing back on climate change also "creates more jobs in the process. "

But still, large carbon polluters are using "the playbook from tobacco companies from years ago, by putting out false information and pulling the wool over people's eyes," said Gore.

However, Mother Nature has "joined the debate" in recent years, said Gore, noting that the scientific community has always been almost unanimous in its opinion of the dangers of climate change.

"Mother Nature has been pretty persuasive with not only downpours, floods, and the mudslides, but with the sea rise," said Gore. "I went to Miami on a sunny day, no rain, and saw fish from the ocean swimming in the streets of Miami Beach, just because it was a high tide."

The denials continue because it is "intentionally created by the large carbon polluters trying to squeeze more profits out of their business plan, no matter the consequences," Gore commented.

The world's population has also quadrupled in less than a century, said Gore, and 80 percent of the world's energy still depends on carbon-based fuels.

"The good news is that solar electricity and wind electricity have come down so far in price, in many areas it's much cheaper than burning electricity from fossil fuels," said Gore.

That also means more jobs, said Gore.

"Solar jobs are now growing in the United States 17 times faster than other jobs," he said. "We are really seeing a surge of employment in the renewable sector. The things we need to do to solve the climate crisis are things that boost our sustainable economy as well."