Social Good Summit: Climate and energy — the next digital frontier

He’s the King of Inconvenient Truths and former US vice president Al Gore wants to get social media involved in his latest project to help address the issue of climate change.

At the 2012 Social Good Summit, Al Gore presented, via video, his new initiative, called “The Dirty Weather Report”, where he hopes to show the links between climate change and the effects of extreme weather worldwide.

Gore’s advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project, announced its second multi-media “24 Hours of Reality” event, which will occur on November 14 and 15. Gore says “dirty weather” is weather that’s enabled by emissions from fossil fuels and “misinformation” about climate change. “This crisis has to be understood in order to be stopped,” says Gore. “The misinformation includes messaging that it is not happening, that we can’t solve it, that we can’t afford to act.”

Gore believes 21st century technology and media can help stop the misinformation and the dirty weather, and as such, solve the climate crisis.

The live-streamed online event in November will provide content from nations all over the world, and encourage participation through social media sites including Twitter. It will include expert commentary, as well as “crowd-sourced videos about how weather is altering our lives and homes, and profiles of communities developing solutions to the climate crisis,” Gore explained.

Gore believes the issue of climate change is not being addressed in the upcoming US election, and hopes the push to use social media will boost interest.

CEO of the Climate Reality Project Maggie Fox believes we are in a new era, one “where the extreme weather that is occurring is not fully caused by the natural cycles of time and natural events, but by dirty energy, so it is really important to articulate that and name it more precisely.”

She, like Gore, believes everyone has a role to play: “You have your dime, your time and your voice. Wherever you are in the world, you need to step up to the issue, take it and run with it. The power of social media will help us drive this change forward.”