As he does so, an anxious renewable energy and scientific community waits and wonders what the future will hold for them.
On Thursday night, former Vice President Al Gore told an audience at the opening of his new film, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," that despite meeting with Trump is December, he doesn't know what the new president's current thoughts are on the subject of climate change.
Speaking on the opening night of the 33rd Sundance Film Festival, Gore told attendees that he's seen plenty of people change their thinking on climate change over the years, but that whether Trump will join them "remains to be seen."
He continued by saying that global warming is "not a political issue; it's a moral issue, it's an ethical issue. ... We have the capacity to rise above our limitations. Whether or not Donald Trump will take the kind of approach that continues this progress, we'll have to see. But let me reiterate: No one person can stop this. It's too big now."
During the Republican presidential primaries Trump famously declared that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
He's since moderated his stance, but has also several appointed cabinet members who opposed the Obama administration's clean and green energy policies.
Gore noted as much, saying Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda," is "someone ... who I don't think should be heading the EPA."
The sole exception appears to be former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is Trump's nominee to head the U.S. Department of Energy and was a strong advocate for wind energy in his home state. He told lawmakers in Washington on Thursday that he supports the further development of renewables -- albeit alongside expanded development of the nation's fossil fuel resources.
While he didn't refer to Perry, Gore told the Sundance attendees that "this story has many chapters to unfold."
Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, Gore's new film surveys the alarming effects of climate change in the decade since his Academy Award-winning 2006 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
It follows Gore as he travels around the country giving presentations in his "climate leadership training" sessions: spouting off troubling statistics of air pollution levels and polar ice caps melting, but also more encouraging, upward trends in solar and renewable energy worldwide.
Photo courtesy of Sundance
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