South By Southwest (SXSW) is a 20-year-old film and music festival in Austin, Texas that is running this year from March 9 to 22. Among those speaking about technology and innovation was Al Gore, who spoke on Friday about the climate crisis.
Gore said we need to "punish climate change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting 'accepted science,'" according to the Chicago Tribune.
"We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends, and in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics," Gore said, according to the Chicago Tribune, referring to the federal cap-and-trade system.
Gore appealed to the tech-savvy millenials to take charge and call out those who deny global warming. "We have this denial industry cranked up constantly," Gore said, according to the Chicago Tribune. "In addition to 99 percent of the scientists and all the professional scientific organizations, now Mother Nature is weighing in."
Gore told the SXSW audience that the next generation will look back and ask, "How did you change?" According to MacWorld, Gore provided a possible response: "Part of the answer may well be that a group of people came to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas in 2015 and helped to make a revolution."
