If former US Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore was pulling the strings, he would fire World Bank President David Malpass.
Malpass, who worked as chief economist at Bear Stearns before becoming the U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs under the Trump Administration, was named president of the World Bank in 2019. Head of the global humanitarian financial institution with $7.9 billion in capital, has remained tight-lipped on climate change, while funding sustainability-focused projects around the world.
“Having a climate denier who was appointed by the previous president, also a climate denier, in charge of America’s premier institution and helping to deal with the dimensions of this global capital allocation problem is ridiculous” , Gore told the fortune‘s Global Sustainability Forum on Thursday. “That’s why it needs to be replaced immediately.”
Unlike Malpass, Gore has made his career in the post-presidential administration on climate activism. Since serving as former President Bill Clinton’s vice president and a failed presidential bid in 2000, Gore has been committed to climate advocacy. Following the release of his 2006 Oscar-winning climate documentary An inconvenient truth, Gore won the 2007 Nobel Prize for his activism. Since then, he has become a vegan and climate-focused partner at the top venture capital firm Klein Perkins and the founder of the Climate Reality Project and Generation Investment Management. He has recently expressed optimism about the climate with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Australia’s climate change bill, and dismay over Malpass.
Under Malpass’ tutelage, the World Bank recently delivered $300 million to Cameroon, $512 million to Turkey, and $335 million to Tanzania to finance climate-resilient infrastructure projects, among other initiatives.
The drama between the two politicians is unfolding to the soundtrack of climate catastrophes: Hurricane Ian has ravaged Southwest Florida, floods in Pakistan have displaced more than 33 million people, and researchers found that twisting, the practice of burning methane that warms the planet, is far away. less effective than everyone thought. These events are just samples of fires, floods, hurricanes, etc. that characterize the effects of climate change.
In response to the fortuneAsked by Malpass to respond to Gore’s remarks at the Global Sustainability Forum, a World Bank representative pointed to Malpass’s Sept. 28 remarks at Stanford University, where he said: “Developing countries are being affected by more frequent and more severe climate-related disasters. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, which in turn is having tragic impacts on development in multiple ways.” .
When Gore called Malpass a “climate denier” aa News from New York At last week’s event, Malpass called Gore’s attack “very strange” but declined to answer questions about whether he accepted climate science.
“It’s very, very bad,” the former vice president said Thursday in conversation with reporter-turned-climate-venture capitalist Molly Wood. “Under his leadership, he has directed the continued financing of fossil fuels, which is ridiculous.”
In addition to his comments on Malpass, Gore also distinguished between capitalism and climate disaster in the the fortune forum. He said capitalism is “not the problem or the cause” of the climate crisis. Rather, he said he believes in a multi-stakeholder brand of capitalism to alleviate the climate crisis and provide developing countries with sustainable energy, food and production mechanisms that can slow the devastation.
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