Al Gore, Climate Reality Project Launch Two Major Initiatives to Identify the Costs of Carbon Pollution

New York, NY (September 24, 2013) – Today at the Social Good Summit in New York City, Former Vice President and Climate Reality Project Chairman Al Gore announced two major initiatives that focus on how carbon pollution-fueled climate change is already costing our communities and altering our everyday lives, as well as the solutions that can change the course of our future. 

WhatILove.org is a new, web-based experience launched today by Climate Reality – in collaboration with integrated and digitally-minded production company B-Reel – that seeks to transform climate change from a global abstraction into a deeply personal reality. Via a simple but visually arresting interface, users are asked to identify the canvas of people, places and things that make them who they are. Once this canvas is complete, What I Love immerses the user in a cinematic vision of what makes life meaningful before showing how climate change specifically threatens these things we love.

“Climate change has already cost us – in more costly extreme weather disasters, in failed crops, in heat and pollution-related health costs,” said Al Gore. “What I Love goes beyond the dollar figure to capture the true, human cost of climate change by inviting us to imagine who we would be and how we would live our lives without what matters most.”

Vice President Gore also announced that this year’s third annual 24 Hours of Reality: The Cost of Carbon will be broadcast live from Los Angeles, California, October 22-23rd. This year, 24 Hours will take a hard look at the yet to be calculated and incalculable price both individuals and communities all around the world are already paying for carbon pollution. The event will highlight stories and solutions from Climate Reality and crowd-sourced reporting.

“Carbon pollution is changing our climate and transforming our world – with profound and costly consequences to governments, communities and individuals,” said Maggie L. Fox, CEO of The Climate Reality Project. “As citizens, we are already paying the high costs of carbon in everything from taxes to insurance bills to more expensive grocery bills. 24 Hours will call for putting a price on carbon to shift this burden back to the fossil fuel companies responsible.”

Building on the award-winning programming of the previous two installations of 24 Hours, this year’s program will tally the ways in which carbon pollution costs communities around the world in terms of extreme weather destruction, water scarcity, climate refugees, rising food insecurity and risks to our cities and health. Individuals will also be invited to participate directly by sharing the ways in which carbon pollution is costing them and their families.

These announcements came at the culmination of a 90-minute panel on climate change impacts and solutions that featured Al Gore, Maggie Fox, Rachel Kyte of the World Bank, Christiana Figueres of the UNFCCC, Jeff Seabright of Coca-Cola, Tim Wirth of the UN Foundation, Joe Romm of Climate Progress, Pete Cashmore of Mashable and rock band Linkin Park in the first-ever session dedicated to climate at the Social Good Summit.