President-elect Donald Trump met Monday with former Vice President Al Gore and discussed climate change, as the two men with opposing views of the issue sought common ground.
After the meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mr. Gore gave an upbeat assessment of the powwow.
“I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground,” he told reporters in the lobby.
The high-profile meeting raised eyebrows because President-elect Donald Trump has been an outspoken skeptic of climate change and Mr. Gore is one of the world’s most prominent advocates for battling climate change, receiving a Nobel Prize in 2007 for the effort.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump raised doubts about the climate change issue and once mused that it was a hoax by China to encourage the U.S. to adopt energy restrictions that would harm the economy.
Mr. Trump also has said he will consider pulling the U.S. out of the international agreement on climate change that was struck in Paris in 2015.
Earlier in the day, transition team officials said Mr. Gore would be meeting with Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump. But Mr. Gore said that after a brief meeting with Ms. Trump, he spent the bulk of his time with the president-elect.
“I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and I’m just going to leave it at that,” said Mr. Gore, who was the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee.
