Former Vice President to discuss climate change during UM series

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will participate in “A Climate Conversation” on Thursday, Oct. 28, as part of an annual speaker series hosted by the University of Montana’s Max S. Baucus Institute.

Gore will speak at 7 p.m. MST on Zoom, along with former U.S. Sen. and Ambassador Max Baucus.

“It’s exciting to have someone with the expertise of former Vice President Gore come speak to Montanans about a really important issue,” said Sam Panarella, director of the UM institute and a professor in the University’s Blewett School of Law. “He’s been on the front lines of getting the word out about climate change long before most people were talking about it in such a public way.

“I think there are very few politicians – or anybody, frankly – who have been talking about it as much or for as long or with as much passion as former Vice President Gore,” Panarella said.

The Baucus Institute’s annual speaker series brings global thought leaders in the areas of economic development, foreign policy and politics to Montana for public discussions about issues of critical importance to the future of the country. This year’s topic will be the current climate, both environmental and political. Free and open to the public, participants are invited to register for “A Climate Conversation” online.

Gore was the vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He is the author of the 2006 book “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It,” which was developed into an Academy Award-winning documentary film the same year. In 2007, he was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A longtime colleague and friend of Gore, Baucus was U.S. senator for Montana from 1978 to 2014 and ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017. He was a sponsor of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and a leader in protecting wildlands along the Rocky Mountain Front.

“As an institute, one of our main areas of focus is climate change,” Panarella said. “We have the Baucus Climate Scholars Program, which gets students on the ground working on climate change issues and solutions.

“My hope with this talk is to increase the velocity and amount of conversation around the issue of climate change,” he said, “and perhaps introduce it to Montanans who haven’t thought very much about it or who have thought about it but are looking for more and better information. This is a good educational opportunity.”

For more information about the event, visit https://www.umt.edu/law/baucus-institute/about-institute/speaker-series.php and register at https://www.tinyurl.com/uuk3xx9e. Learn more about the Baucus Institute at https://www.umt.edu/law/baucus-institute/.