Climate advocate and former Vice President Al Gore today, Sunday, questioned the decision to hold the COP28 climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, the world's leading oil producer.

Gore also criticized the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as the conference chair, given that the countries gathered in Dubai for the annual climate conference are discussing ways to reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

Gore said on CNN's "State of the Union" program, “It’s not about how much is happening in a country that produces oil," emphasizing that appointing the CEO of one of the largest and least responsible oil companies on the planet as the conference chair is "a direct conflict of interest," and that the fossil fuel industry "has gone beyond that."

However, Gore remained optimistic, saying the controversial location of the UN-backed summit and its leader could be a "mixed blessing" that "awakened many people to how absurd this situation is."

He said, "I think there is a chance to see an amazingly good outcome here if most countries there stick to their convictions and demand the phase-out of fossil fuels."

Al Jaber, in a panel discussion held in late November, said there is "no scientific basis" for calling for the phase-out of fossil fuels to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius - the goal of the Paris climate agreement. After these comments surfaced last week, Al Jaber strongly defended his commitment to climate science, stating that the phase-out of fossil fuels is "inevitable" and "necessary."

US climate envoy John Kerry has publicly supported Al Jaber's presidency of the conference several times but chose not to address it in a press conference last week.

The first week of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) ended on Thursday, and countries will now begin negotiating an agreement on the phase-out of fossil fuels — the main driver of climate change — for the first time in annual climate talks. More than 100 countries support some form of phase-out, but some oil-producing countries do not want any mention of reducing oil and gas.

On Sunday, Gore also partially attributed the global mental health crisis to unaddressed threats about climate change.

He said, "The people of our world deserve to have some confidence in the integrity of this process, and we have seen fossil fuel polluters trying to manipulate this process for a long time, and the world's patience is beginning to run out."

Despite pledges made at the conference to reduce pollution, the world remains far from being on track to limit global warming to the critical 1.5-degree threshold, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency published on Sunday. The agency’s statement said the pledges "will be almost certainly insufficient" to achieve what is now required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.

The former vice president also spoke on Sunday about what another Donald Trump presidency might look like, referring to Trump’s comment to Fox’s Sean Hannity during last week’s town hall that he would not be a dictator "except on the first day."

Gore told Jake Tapper of CNN, "You kind of wonder what it will take for people to believe him when he tells us who he is."

The solution to political despair is political action. Gore added, "For those in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and independents who love American democracy and want to preserve our ability to govern ourselves and solve our problems, this is the time to be active."

Trump’s remark to Hannity last week was in response to comments made by former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, a Republican who lost her seat to a Trump-backed primary challenger last year after participating in the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. In a recent interview with CBS, she stated that the nation would "sleepwalk toward dictatorship" if Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Trump described concerns about becoming a threat to democracy in a speech hosted by the Young Republican Club in New York on Saturday as a “hoax.” “We now call it the democracy threat hoax, because that’s the reality."