| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Jen |
Posted - Mar 22 2007 : 11:36:01 AM
Al Gore is going full steam ahead on his global warming campaign. Are you on his bandwagon? I am (better safe than sorry), but I'm all ears when it comes to different perspectives, so weigh in!
The View From My Boots
www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
"The earth is your grandmother and mother, and she is sacred. Every step that is taken upon her should be as a prayer." - Black Elk, Lakota |
| 12 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Jen |
Posted - Dec 19 2007 : 2:42:30 PM
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Al Gore, 12/10/07
SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY
[ Video excerpts: http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Environment ]
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.
I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.
Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention — dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.
Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.
Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken — if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.
Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”
The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures — a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency — a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst — though not all — of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.
However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”
So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.
As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.
We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.
Seven years from now.
In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.
We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.
Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.
But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless — which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented — and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.
We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.
Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: “Mutually assured destruction.”
More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a “nuclear winter.” Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.
Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”
As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”
But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.
We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.
These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.
No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.
Now comes the threat of climate crisis — a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?
Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” — or “truth force.”
In every land, the truth — once known — has the power to set us free.
Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.
There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.
We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”
That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.
This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.
When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”
In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.
My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.
Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.
We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.
Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.
This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 — two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.
Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.
We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.
And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon — with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.
The world needs an alliance — especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.
But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country —- that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.
Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.
These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:
The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.
That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures — each a palpable possibility — and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.
The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”
The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”
Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”
We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.
So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”
http://thinkprogress.org/gore-nobel-speech
Jen
Farmgirl Sisterhood Member #9
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Jen |
Posted - Oct 13 2007 : 09:14:11 AM
Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
More at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/12/2925/1106
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Jen |
Posted - Apr 24 2007 : 07:52:54 AM
I agree that Gore is working for great things. But, just to play devil's advocate (devil's moderator?), here's an email I got yesterday. Maybe it's the republican spin on things, I don't know. It says the info was confirmed at Snopes.com, whatever that really means.
--
The Story of Two Houses - Confirmed at SNOPES.COM
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING
TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH
BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.
HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on
a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In
ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American
household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural
gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we
checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national
average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern
"snow belt," either. It's in the South.
HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this
house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can
provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on
arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house
holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet
into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter
and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or
natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a
conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected
and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers,Sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern.
The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house.
Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville,
Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas.
Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the
President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T
hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the
Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."
---
Hmmm.....
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| catscharm74 |
Posted - Apr 20 2007 : 8:09:08 PM
I am on the whole environment wagon- except I was on it when people used to think I was kooky!! But that is ok, I am glad that it is in the forefront of people's minds now. As far as Mr. Gore, I think it is great he is using his "celebrity" for something really positive and effective in the world.
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| Elizaray |
Posted - Apr 18 2007 : 6:12:57 PM
I was just telling my boyfriend the other day-
What if the government paid for all residential and commerical buildings to have a solar panel installed. Can you imagine how much more electricity would be poured into the power grid?
Elizaray |
| Jen |
Posted - Apr 18 2007 : 12:28:25 PM
Headline: Al Gore Gets Approval To Install Solar Panels at His Tennessee Home
Link: http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12602
The View From My Boots: www.bovesboots.blogspot.com
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| Jen |
Posted - Mar 27 2007 : 09:09:20 AM
I'm gonna have to do my research!
I did support Nader because the current 2-party system needs a swift kick in the...rear, and I'm basically green to the core anyway. I guess, in hindsight, I might have supported Gore if I'd realized just how dedicated is was to the environmental cause. But, I was in Washington state, and he won there anyway to no avail. Sigh...
Jen
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| Ellen |
Posted - Mar 25 2007 : 04:04:08 AM
Pat LaMarche and Rebecca Rotzler are National Party Co-Chairs.
Elaine Brown and Cynthia McKinney have already announced they are seeking the nominations. Anybody have an opinion on them?
Who would you support for prez? Did you support Nader?
I like Nan Garrett the women's chair.
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| Jen |
Posted - Mar 23 2007 : 08:32:02 AM
Indeed. I'm just glad that he's had the passion & commitment to keep up the cause - and that there is someone with political clout that cares enough about the environment to put it first. I wish that would be the case with ANY of the '08 candidates. After all, if the evironment goes to pot, then abortion, prescription drugs, and foreign policy really don't mean a thing.
Does anybody know who's heading the green party now? |
| westernhorse51 |
Posted - Mar 22 2007 : 8:26:09 PM
I am an Al Gore fan & always have been. He is a very intelligent, caring man. |
| Clare |
Posted - Mar 22 2007 : 5:39:01 PM
No question in my mind about the severity of the situation. Al Gore is a good man to pursue this, despite the criticism.
I received an email yesterday, after the actual congressional hearings began, but it was a request for signatures to present to congress. I'll share it here, in part... It was/is interesting:
We are now within striking distance of collecting over 500,000
messages to deliver to Congress and have less than 48 hours to get it
done in time for the hearings.
Ask any friend who wants to end the climate crisis to sign our
message to Congress now by visiting:
http://algore.com/cards.html
When I emailed you last Friday, 294,374 people had signed our message
to Congress demanding immediate action to solve the climate crisis.
In that email, I asked you to help meet the goal of delivering
350,000 messages when I testify at Congressional hearings on
Wednesday.
Your response was amazing. By Saturday morning - because of you - we
exceeded our goal! In fact, as I write this email, our total has
risen to 405,758. Thank you!
What that means is that we are now within striking distance of
collecting over 500,000 messages - and have less than 48 hours to get
it done in time for the Congressional hearings. ...
By the way, maybe this goes without saying, but please reach out to
Republican and Independent, as well as Democratic friends. One of our
goals must be to make this issue one that transcends partisanship.
While many of the solutions to the climate crisis will be found
within the political system, there should be bipartisan and
transpartisan agreement on the basic nature of the crisis and the
sense of urgency that is appropriate for us to solve it.
That point was brought home to me again last week when I visited
London and met with the leaders of the Labour Party and the
Conservative Party. In the UK, both major political parties are
completely committed to taking real action to solve the climate
crisis. They openly acknowledge this is an unprecedented moral issue
and are competing vigorously to see who can propose the most creative
and effective solutions to solve this crisis.
Here at home, our objective must be to create a similar sense of
urgency in both political parties. That is why your activism leading
up to these hearings is so important. We are so close to our new goal
of 500,000 messages to Congress. You can help put us over the top.
Thank you,
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| GaiasRose |
Posted - Mar 22 2007 : 2:57:06 PM
I wouldnbt call it a bandwagon as he has been on the Global Warming front for a few decades now...before it became trendy.
I am personally a big fan of Al Gore, environmentally and politically. I worked on his campaign in Wisconsin while I was in college and voted for him when he was elected president (wink wink.....sigh.)
I jsut wish that more people would listen to him without thinking "oh geez, Al Gore, liberal tree hugger" because that is not what his crusade is about...it is about preserving our home. I think, *I THINK* that has an effect on everyone on the planet, right? |
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