Former Vice President Al Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election due to contested ballots in Florida, reminded a crowd there on Tuesday of the importance of voting.
“Your vote really, really, really counts. A lot,” Gore said at a campaign event in Miami with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “You can consider me as an Exhibit A of that truth.”
Gore said that he was a fitting messenger to get voters to the polls, though he acknowledged that younger voters “may not remember the election of 2000.”
The environmental activist linked the gravity of the November election to the looming threat of climate change. Clinton’s opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has called climate change “a hoax” and suggested it “was created by and for the Chinese.”
“The consequences, not just for our children and grandchildren and future generations, but for all of us, are really quite significant,” Gore said. “Because of that, please take it from me: Every single vote counts.”
Gore and Clinton both discussed the urgency of enacting policies to combat climate change, noting that its effects have been particularly acute in South Florida. The region is being threatened by rising sea waters, and climate change exacerbated the outbreak of the Zika virus earlier this year.
Clinton reminded voters that Trump even tried to deny his own climate change denial when she brought it up during the first presidential debate last month.
The GOP presidential nominee has also promised to “cancel” the historic United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change, which was adopted last December and goes into effect this month. As part of the deal, 192 nations pledged to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit the rise of global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
“We cannot risk putting a climate change denier in the White House,” Clinton said.
Both Clinton and Gore also took stabs at Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has dismissed the threat of climate change, drawing the ire of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the state. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.), who is running a close race to unseat Rubio, introduced Clinton and Gore at Tuesday’s event.
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Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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