Do we like them?

Do we like Al Gore?

Our score: 8 out of 10. He has campaigned on climate for decades and backed same-sex marriage, with a late start on that and a messy business sale on the ledger.

Al Gore is the bloke who went from the Senate and the vice presidency to the world's most famous climate slideshow. He was a senator, then vice president, and the Democratic nominee in the disputed 2000 election. He turned that loss into a second act as a climate campaigner.

That second act got him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and, in 2024, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden, with the White House citing his work on climate change. He founded the Climate Reality Project, which he chairs. Few politicians have stuck to one cause for this long.

On the harm test, his record is clean on the things we care about. In 2008 he posted a video backing marriage rights for same-sex couples. He is a late convert: in 2000 he opposed gay marriage but supported civil unions, so he got there after plenty of others. Nothing turned up of him attacking trans people, women, migrants or science.

The messiest chapter is the 2013 sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera, which is Qatar-funded. Critics said that deal sat awkwardly with his climate message. A media consultant also sued him in court, claiming he was cut out of the deal. Gore defended the sale, saying tough competition from the big networks forced it. I couldn't confirm how the suit ended, so call it a stain on the commercial side, not on his character.

Lately he has been loud against the Trump administration's rollback of clean energy, which he called “insane” on offshore wind. He has also drawn heat for blunt language, like comparing climate inaction to officers who stood by at Uvalde. Critics, mostly on the right, say his old predictions haven't all come true. That is a fight about forecasts, and none of it counts as harm.