"Al Gore made two cameos on the acclaimed NBC sitcom "30 Rock," showing up to assist the fictionalized version of the TV network in its hapless attempts to go green. He used a phrase that's become intimately familiar to climate activists in recent months.
"If we're going solve the climate crisis, we've got to change more than the lightbulbs and the windows. We've got to change the laws and the policies through collective political action on a large scale," the former vice president said in one 2009 appearance, before telling Kenneth the NBC page that it was "an old African proverb that I made up."
Although Gore's character was a spoof (he ended each appearance by exclaiming that "a whale is in trouble" and scrambling off screen), he was reiterating an argument he famously made in "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006: Climate change is a global crisis.
Before it was adopted as a rallying cry for House Democrats and progressive groups, Gore had been promoting the phrase "climate crisis" for years."
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