Climate change helped cause Brexit, says Al Gore
Gore: Man-made global warming caused drought and then upheaval in Syria which led to 'flow of refugees' to UK which led to Brexit vote
Gore: The [Syrian civil ]war broke out in 2011 as people took to the streets during the Arab Spring protest movement against dictators in the Middle East. President Bashar Assad responded by sending in the troops. Mr Gore said this had produced an “incredible flow of refugees into Europe, which is creating political instability and which contributed in some ways to the desire of some in the UK to say ‘whoa, we’re not sure we want to be part of that anymore’”. He said this kind of political instability was being felt by a number of countries around the world. “Some countries have a hard time even in the best of seasons but the additional stress this climate crisis is causing really poses the threat of some political disruption and chaos of a kind the world would find extremely difficult to deal with,” Mr Gore said.
2013 conflict in Syria blamed on drought caused by global warming — Flashback 1933: ‘YO-YO BANNED IN SYRIA – Blamed For Drought By Moslems’ - Real Science reaction: 'In 1933, drought was blamed on Yo-Yos. Eighty years later, modern Yo-Yos blame drought on CO2'
Latest science refutes global warming/drought claims: Globally, 'there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.'
By Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent
Brexit was caused in part by climate change, former US Vice-President Al Gore has said, warning that extreme weather is creating political instability “the world will find extremely difficult to deal with”.
Mr Gore, speaking at an event in which he previewed a sequel to his landmark 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, said the “principal” cause of the Syrian Civil War had been the worst drought in 900 years, which forced 1.5 million people to move from the countryside to the cities.
There they met a similar number of Iraqis who had fled the conflict in their homeland, creating powder keg conditions that Syrian government officials privately feared would explode.
The resulting war brought more refugees into Europe, causing political instability and helping convince some in the UK to vote to leave the European Union.
One of the most controversial Leave campaign posters showed a queue of refugees stretching into the distance with the caption “Breaking point: The EU has failed us all”. The then-Chancellor, George Osborne, described the poster as “disgusting and vile” and, like others who explicitly compared it to Nazi propaganda, said it had “echoes of literature used in the 1930s”.
Mr Gore, whose new film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is due out in the UK in August, told an audience at the Advertising Week Europe event in London: “This collision between the power of industrial civilisation and the surprising fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem now poses a great danger that could even threaten the future of human civilisation itself.
