Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Saturday condemned President Donald Trump's "extremely hostile" stance on fighting climate change, but said his administration had "limited" ability to stop the "sustainability revolution."

"I don't want to minimize the difficulties presented by the new administration in the United States that is extremely hostile to anything that would help us solve the climate crisis," Gore told journalists in Paris.

"However, I think that their ability to slow the sustainability revolution is limited," added the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, then gained new fame as an environmentalist with the 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," said he wanted to avoid "what my kids call toxic positivity."

But despite what he called alarming signals from the Trump administration on freedom of speech, scientific research and climate issues, he sounded a largely upbeat note on the bigger picture.

"We are already seeing many of Donald Trump's executive orders overturned by the courts. And to those who worry that he will disobey court orders, I think that is unlikely in the end," Gore said.

"He will give the impression that he disrespects the court and may not obey court orders, but public opinion in the United States among Republicans as well as Democrats ... is strongly in support of the rule of law and the necessity of government officials, including the president, obeying orders from the federal judiciary."

Gore condemned the administration's treatment of universities and student activists, including the recent arrest of a Turkish student at Tufts University who had co-written an article criticizing the college's handling of anger around Israel's war in Gaza.

He also said he was "very concerned" by a recent court ruling against Greenpeace ordering the environmental group to pay more than $660 million in damages for protests against an oil pipeline.

But the tide is turning, Gore said.

"We'll provide voters a chance to say, yay or nay. Do you like what Trump is doing or do you not like what he's doing?" he said.

"And if the polls continue trending in the direction they've been trending recently, this may be an unpleasant experience for Donald Trump."