With the looming threat of a change in Ontario’s political climate, Premier Kathleen Wynne got some help from one of the world’s most famous climate-change activists.

Al Gore, the former American vice president whose Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth popularized the perils of extreme weather, was at Ryerson University on Thursday to give Wynne’s June re-election bid a boost.

“It’s been a privilege for me to have had the opportunity over the last many years to work with Premier Kathleen Wynne,” said Gore, former president Bill Clinton’s running mate in 1992 and 1996, before he lost the disputed 2000 presidential election narrowly to George W. Bush.

“I travel all over the world and I cite Ontario as an example of a provincial government that is doing it right: creating jobs, building the base for economic progress, while also staving off the severe danger that the climate crisis poses to all of us,” he said.

Gore said he was alarmed that Wynne’s main political rivals, the Progressive Conservatives, want Ontario to abandon the “cap-and-trade” carbon-pricing market it shares with Quebec and California if it is elected June 7.

Under such a regimen, businesses have greenhouse-gas-emission limits — or caps — and those polluting less can sell or trade credits. The climate guru noted that this creates an economic incentive to reduce emissions and promote clean technology.

“Anyone in Ontario who imagines for a moment that elections don’t have consequences, think, for a moment, about my country and what is going on there right now,” he said with a trademark heavy sigh during a 30-minute roundtable with journalists from the Toronto Star, The Canadian Press, and The Globe and Mail.

Asked what would happen if Wynne is defeated June 7, Gore did not mince words.

“When we were approaching an election a little over a year ago in the United States, some people said: ‘What would happen if Donald Trump wins?’ And a lot of people said: ‘Well, it might not be so bad,’ ” he said.

“Oh yeah? It’s worse than anybody thought it would be. I do know this: Ontario is moving forward; Ontario is making progress; Ontario is setting the standard for provincial and regional governments around the world,” added the former vice-president.

“Ontario’s economic progress is the envy of North America and many parts of the world.”

His comments came before he and Wynne addressed 800 people in a campaign-style event at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre in the former Maple Leaf Gardens.

The premier, for her part, was grateful for Gore’s remarks.

“We’re at a really interesting moment in the history of this province . . . . This issue is going to be very much a part of the political discussion,” she said of climate change.

Regardless of who wins Saturday’s Tory leadership, all four candidates — former MPP Christine Elliott, ex-councillor Doug Ford, rookie PC politician Caroline Mulroney, and social conservative Tanya Granic Allen — have said they will end cap-and-trade and fight any carbon tax.

Recent public opinion polls suggest whichever PC hopeful is victorious could defeat Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath in the spring election.

At the conference, Wynne said cap-and-trade beats carbon taxation because it costs less for businesses and families.

Further, she continued, it “guarantees that we will hit our targets for pollution reduction,” although she did not elaborate on this point.

“Last week, we learned our first joint (carbon) auction sold out; more than $400 million will go toward making our province greener, building things like public transit, affordable housing and bike lanes.”

Gore, citing natural disasters that have recently hit North America, said the costs of climate change are already felt.

“Fires burned for more than a year in Fort McMurray, and, last year, in my country, California had by far the worst fires in history — all climate-related,” he said. “Seventeen of the 18 hottest years ever measured have been since 2001. In Houston, Texas, 1.5 metres of rain — 500 days worth of the full flow of Niagara Falls (fell) right into the middle of Harris County, Texas. The records continue to be broken.

“Mother Nature (is telling) us, in other words, yes, we must change. The scientists have long given us the same answer.”

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Gore cited California’s climate-change policies as spurring its economy. “Solar jobs now represent the single fastest growing job category in the United States, growing 17 times faster than other jobs are grown.

“The will to change is, itself, a renewable resource,” he said.

Gore denounced industrial lobbyists, who “claim a right to use the sky as an open sewer, so that they can dump their pollution,” the consequences of which, he said, are borne by future generations.

With files from Julien Gignac

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