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Former Vice President Al Gore is comparing the struggle to win over climate change skeptics to the fight against racism.

When racist comments would come up in the course of conversations, “There came a time when people said, 'Hey man, why do you talk that way? That's wrong, I don't go for that, so don't talk that way around me. I just don't believe that,'” Gore said in an interview Friday with FearLess Revolution founder Alex Bogusky.

"That happened in millions of conversations, and slowly the conversation was won,” Gore said. “And we still have racism, God knows, but it's so different now and so much better. And we have to win the conversation on climate.”

Gore also wants people to give up meat and go organic to combat global warming.

"Industrial agriculture is a part of the problem,” Gore said. “The shift toward a more meat-intensive diet,” the clearing of forest areas in many parts of the world in order to raise more cattle and the reliance on synthetic nitrogen for fertilizer are also problems, he added.

Gore advocated organic farming and relying on “more productive, safer methods that put carbon back in the soil” to produce “safer and better food.”

Gore also railed against the mining industry, calling mountaintop-removal mining a “horrible practice” that is “just incredibly harmful to the environment and to people.”


Click here for Al Gore's entire FearLess Revolution interview