Al Gore will host canceled climate change summit

Climate activist and former vice president Al Gore is teaming up with the American Public Health Association and other organizations to hold a summit on climate change and health that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled earlier this week.

The CDC quietly called off the summit after President Trump’s inauguration, telling reporters it was “exploring options to reschedule the meeting.” The scientific community has accused CDC officials of canceling the event out of fear of the Trump administration.

The CDC falls under the Department of Health and Human Services, and Trump has nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who has expressed skepticism about the scientific consensus on climate change, to lead the department. 

{mosads}“They tried to cancel this conference but it is going forward anyway,” Gore said in a statement on the event. “Today we face a challenging political climate, but climate shouldn’t be a political issue. Health professionals urgently need the very best science in order to protect the public, and climate science has increasingly critical implications for their day-to-day work. With more and more hot days, which exacerbate the proliferation of the Zika virus and other public health threats, we cannot afford to waste any time.”

The meeting is organized in partnership with The Climate Reality Project; Harvard Global Health Institute; the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment; and Howard Frumkin, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

Gore has made climate his top priority since losing the 2000 presidential election.

He created and starred in the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which framed the climate issue as a coming catastrophe, and has pushed for dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. He also campaigned with Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, with climate as his focus.