Trump, ex-Vice President Gore meet to talk climate policy

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against climate change, and Donald Trump, who at one point called it a hoax, met on Monday in what Gore called a "productive" session.

Gore, a Democrat, spent about 90 minutes in meetings at the Republican president-elect's Trump Tower apartment and office building in Manhattan. He also met briefly with Trump's daughter Ivanka, who has attended a series of high-level meetings since her father won the Nov. 8 election.

Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, has been devoted for years to lowering carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

As he campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton earlier this year, Gore, who was vice president under Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, warned that Trump would steer the world toward "climate catastrophe" if elected.

That warning came as Trump gave speeches calling on the United States to drop out of last year's global climate accord, signed in Paris to lower carbon emissions blamed for a warming planet.

Trump also referred to human-induced climate change as a hoax and had tweeted that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

Since then, however, in an interview with the New York Times, Trump has indicated he might have an open mind to joining the effort to battle climate change.

(REUTERS)