According to a February 27, 2007 article in The Concord Monitor, "Gore was one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change and to call for a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases. He held the first congressional hearings on the subject in the late 1970s."[50] During his tenure in Congress, Gore co-sponsored hearings on toxic waste in 1978?79, and hearings on global warming in the 1980s.[51]
On Earth Day 1994, Gore launched the GLOBE program, an education and science activity that, according to Forbes magazine, "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment".[52]
In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Treaty, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.[53][54] He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[55] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".[56] On November 12, 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[57] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.
