But Lord Lawson hit out at the costs involved in climate change policies and said the money should be spent on more pressing matters.
His comments come as Donald Trump controversially pulled the US out of the Paris climate change deal, signed in 2015 by 195 countries, in June.
Speaking on the Today programme, on BBC Radio 4, Lord Lawson, chancellor from 1983 to 1989, said: “Al Gore has a substantial economic interest in renewable energy.
“If it is fully economic, why on earth do we subsidise it and support it by all sorts of government policies which are driving up the cost of energy, particularly in the United Kingdom.
Lord Lawson said Al Gore’s climate change rhetoric was
I’ve heard what Al Gore has to say and it’s the same old clap trap
Lord Lawson
“To begin with you might be a little bit scared but after ten years of him doing that and the end of the world isn’t nigh, then you think ‘maybe we should forget that and concentrate on real problems like North Korea’, like world poverty, like disease and all these other issues which we should be diverting our attention to.
“International terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, these are real problems.
“The world is not short of problems and to devote resources and energy to non-problems is really ridiculous.”