Former US vice president Al Gore told the Associated Press during New York Climate Week that 2026 could be remembered as the start of a 'positive tipping point' in the fight against climate change. He said the world stands a good chance of peaking its use of coal, oil and gas as solar and other renewables overtake dirtier fossil fuels.

Gore compared the clean-energy effort to earlier morally driven movements, including the US civil rights movement, Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid struggle and the women's equality movement. 'Courage is not the absence of fear, it's the determination to go forward in spite of it,' he said.

He warned that warming is accelerating and extreme events are coming 'fast and furious'. He cited the glacier collapse and flooding in Nepal that killed 1,300 people. 'I am temperamentally optimistic, but the dangers are extremely grave, getting more so all the time,' he said.

Gore framed the current moment as a race between escalating climate risks and the rapid spread of cleaner, cheaper technologies that are creating jobs worldwide.