Climate security

Al Gore warns: UN climate change report shows 'we have a global emergency'

Former Vice President Al Gore said Friday that the United Nations' new report on climate change demonstrates that the world is experiencing a "global emergency."

“We have a global emergency,” Gore said in an interview on PBS NewsHour. "You use a phrase like that and some people immediately say, ‘okay calm down, it can’t be that bad.’ But it it is."

"What the scientists have warned us in this recent report is that if we do not take action quickly … then consequences down the road would be far, far worse than what we’re experiencing now," Gore added, stating that climate change could become an existential threat to civilization based on the report's findings. 

His comments came days after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that included a range of dire warnings about the globe's warming climate. 

The report noted that climate change could have catastrophic consequences in the coming decades if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t cut drastically by 2030.