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Despite months of discouraging news about extreme weather conditions, the former Vice-President Al Gore still believes that there is a solution to the climate crisis clearly in sight. \u201cWe have a switch we can flip,\u201d he tells David Remnick. The problem, as Gore sees it, is that a powerful legacy network of political and financial spheres of influence are stubbornly standing in the way. \u201cWhen ExxonMobil or Chevron put their ads on the air, the purpose is not for a husband and wife to say, \u2018Oh, let\u2019s go down to the store and buy some motor oil.\u2019 The purpose is to condition the political space so that they have a continued license to keep producing and selling more and more fossil fuels,\u201d Gore says. But it\u2019s also what he describes as our ongoing \u201cdemocracy crisis\u201d that\u2019s playing a factor as well. He believes lawmakers who know better are turning a blind eye to incontrovertible data for short-term political gain. \u201cThe average congressman spends an average of five hours a day on the telephone, and at cocktail parties and dinners begging lobbyists for money to finance their campaigns,\u201d Gore says. Still, Gore says he is cautiously optimistic. \u201cWhat Joe Biden did last year in passing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act\xa0.\xa0.\xa0. was the most extraordinary legislative achievement of any head of state of any country in history,\u201d Gore says, adding that temperatures will stop going up \u201calmost immediately\u201d if we reach a true net zero in fossil-fuel emissions. \u201cHalf of all the human-caused greenhouse-gas pollution will have fallen out of the atmosphere in as little as twenty-five to thirty years.\u201d