In Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” Hyacinth the Hippo and her servants dance to Amilcare Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” The scene is a fantastical alternate reality in which a hippopotamus is graceful enough to perform the classical ballet piece with ease.

“I think of that image sometimes when I hear oil companies saying, ‘We're going to change ourselves into renewable energy companies,’” said former Vice President Al Gore during an interview in Houston on Wednesday.

Perhaps anything is possible, but during Gore’s visit to Texas Southern University in Houston, where he kicked off a national campaign to increase voter registration and turnout among young voters who care about climate change, he said enlisting the help of oil and gas majors in the climate crisis seems to him, like the dance, just an amusing fantasy.

It’s certain to prove difficult. In 2018, oil and gas majors only spent around 1 percent of the industry’s total capital expenditures on low-carbon technology, according to an analysis by CDP, a climate research provider; 70 percent of the spending on reducing carbon dioxide came from European companies, where regulations and public pressure have both accelerated at a much quicker pace than in the United States. (British oil-major BP, for its part, just announced a net-zero carbon goal by 2050.)

On HoustonChronicle.com: BP's new CEO sets net—zero carbon goal to fight climate change

With climate solutions advancing at a snail’s pace, the former vice president/environmental activist said that the climate crisis is too severe, too far along, to entertain compromises with — or wait for — the energy industry. That’s why, he said, natural gas is not the answer.

“I used to believe, as some still do, that natural gas could serve as a so-called bridge between the age of coal and oil to the age of solar and wind,” Gore said. “But we’re now facing such a dire emergency that it’s increasingly obvious we need to get off all fossil fuels as quickly as we possibly can, including natural gas.”

That’s where (among many, many other areas) Gore and those Republicans who agree something needs to be done on climate change, disagree. House Republicans, for example, are pushing for market-based solutions, such as expanding tax credits for carbon capture and increasing investment in technology that would store carbon underground and find more industrial uses for it.

On HoustonChronicle.com: House Republicans push climate change bills that protect fossil fuels

Gore, meanwhile, argues it is far past time to compromise with the fossil fuel industry, allowing them to pursue free-market solutions and skirt tougher regulations. The climate debate is different this time around, he said.

Nowadays, 17-year-old activist Greta Thunberg is making waves at the United Nations and around the world. The powerful New York investment firm Blackrock is signaling it wants companies to start disclosing climate risks to continue investing in them. The oil and gas industry is spending millions on advertising campaigns to convince the American public that they are committed to transitioning to a sustainable future.

Perhaps that’s why Gore and other prominent environmentalists feel they have the leverage to stake out the hard line against compromise with the energy industry, even as some companies, he said, appear to be making a good faith effort. For example, Royal Dutch Shell (another European company) committed to tie executive compensation to reducing carbon emissions.

Maybe energy companies can make the transition, as Houston business leaders and local officials tirelessly claim. But as Gore points out, making money in a low-carbon world is not something to which oil and gas companies are accustomed. It goes against their natural interests and contradicts the very core of their business.

After all, the reason Disney’s “Fantasia” scene is entertaining is not because the ballet choreography is beautiful, Gore said. “It was funny because a hippopotamus can’t dance ballet.”

erin.douglas@chron.com

Twitter.com/erinmdouglas23