COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 18/03/2020
Michael Specter
One day in 1990, a friend of mine asked if I would have lunch with Al Gore, who was then the junior senator from Tennessee. Gore was writing his first book, Earth in the Balance, which, when it was published, in 1992, would warn of an impending crisis of global warming. (The term “climate change” was less commonly used in newspapers in those days.) Gore had told my friend that he wanted to talk about the gravity of the subject and make a pitch for more coverage.