Al Gore’s son carrying on father’s climate change legacy as new face of EV policy

If you thought you saw a familiar face during the Environmental Protection Agency’s electric vehicle (EV) announcement on Wednesday, you’re not wrong.

Taking center stage to voice support for the Biden administration’s most aggressive emissions standards yet was Al Gore III, taking a page from his father’s playbook, according to one energy expert.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, whether it is the former vice president or his son who is maybe a little more tempered than his father, but he’s largely in alignment,” Independent Women’s Forum Center for Energy and Conservation director Gabriella Hoffman told Fox News Digital Friday. “This could be more of an embarrassment for [the] unveiling, especially when consumer demand, EV stocks, everything is not working in their favor.”

The White House and EPA announced new multi-pollutant emission standards targeted at gas-powered vehicles this week. Officials claim the rules push a wider nationwide adoption of EV’s and are expected to ensure nearly 70% of all new car sales are zero-emissions within a few years.

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The regulations will reportedly help “tackle the climate crisis” by reducing the transportation sector’s carbon dioxide emissions by a staggering 7.2 billion metric tons over the course of the program, which will be in effect through 2032.

During Wednesday’s “Accelerating America” ceremony in Washington, D.C., Gore III – who recently took an executive director role at the Zero Emission Transportation Association – called the announcement a “truly historic moment.”

“These standards make clear that securing America’s global leadership in manufacturing and securing a better future are 100% aligned,” Gore III said. “We have everything we need today to meet and exceed this standard, and that means more of the vehicles sold in America will be made in America.”

“Mr. Gore’s statement couldn’t be more further from the truth,” Hoffman reacted, “because as we’ve seen from federal directives that have been handed down from Washington, there’s a reluctance to harness rare earth minerals here in the United States in order to meet even a fraction of this, to meet the demand that they’re saying that they need to build EVs and other clean energy technologies. So that outright is very inaccurate.”

Gore III did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.  

His father, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has a long history of climate change alarmism. During the 2023 World Economic Forum, Gore Jr. claimed global warming was “boiling the oceans.”

In a 2009 speech at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, Gore Jr. said there was “a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” The former vice president made similar comments at least twice before in speeches, citing research.

Also, in his 2006 global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore predicted that the global sea level could rise as much as 20 feet “in the near future.”

These predictions have since been disproved by data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NOAA and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

Hoffman pointed out that this isn’t the first time Gore III has followed in his father’s footsteps, as he was previously quoted in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live saying the Inflation Reduction Act is a great incentive for EV sales.

“If the Biden administration’s EPA was able to trot him out for this announcement, I bet he’s going to be utilized a lot going forward because he does come off a lot more polished,” she noted, “and that’s strategic because they want to have kind of a calm face, maybe someone familiar who might be reminiscent of someone that maybe can deliver EV evangelism a lot more to the public.”

“But even if you look across some of his past statements, he’s worked very closely in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has done a lot to exacerbate inflation, especially on the energy front.”

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Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.