Disappointing article in that lacked fine grained rebuttals to those that say wind/solar etc not enough of a solution or that power storage is inadequate
Thank you for your leadership, President Gore.
Tackling climate change?
The future trend for humanity seems to develop technology, to acquire as much and as clean energy as possible, but at the same time to call for a very much changed in behavior and thought humanity, a vastly restrained humanity, so that we have on one hand a vast increase of energy, and clean energy, but on the other hand increased storage capacity of energy and a humanity which is extremely efficient in consumption and expression of energy.
And this appears the complete opposite of the trend of humanity over the centuries. For centuries the human race has strived to increase its energy production, and with mixed results, but to not care about waste and expression of energy. Think about a pack of buffalo hunters able to bring down entire herds of buffalo but wasting all the meat and then spending their free time drinking and carousing. But what we move toward with greater energy understanding is just as controversial, unappealing to many: We acquire the capacity for attaining greater amounts of energy than ever before, and clean energy, and we get better at storing energy, but our capacity to release all this energy, to express ourselves, to spend as we wish?
What does it mean for humanity to have the capacity for energy as never before but to relentlessly hear that we must never waste energy, that we must direct our energy fruitfully, that we must follow intelligent energy expenditure courses and so on? Clean acquirement/expenditure of energy?
1
Extreme weather events will continue and even get worse for the next several decades even if we do everything we can starting tomorrow. We should start doing everything we can starting tomorrow but the slope up to people whose decisions have far reaching consequences is very steep in our nation. Sober, science based articles and op-ed pieces are needed on a daily basis. The technology for nuclear power plants, for example, is far advanced beyond what was just a decade or so ago. For the sake of our grandchildren we need to hurry our climb up that steep slope cluttered with GOP and corporate downfall.
Many companies, and state governments, have been working on this all along, thank goodness. But, not the majority, in government or business. The efforts of every individual will make a difference. You vote and your individual activity, together with those of all the other climate change believers/activists, will keep us moving forward. I hope it will be fast enough, for now. Government corruption is the reason Al Gore was not our president, and why we are where we are, today.
1
It is still hard to be optimistic.
"... oil, natural gas and coal still make up 81% of our world’s energy consumption. That figure hasn’t changed in 30 years."
https://www.axios.com/climate-change-musical-chairs-ec8a445e-d63b-4469-b301-3d4d6ac0884e.html
3
Thank you so much for this gift of hope. I am not a scientist. However, I came from a family of two scientists.
Nearly 10 years ago I joined the green group at my church, where there are some climate scientists. I learned so much from them.
I also began to do things that would help the work to mnimalize the destruction of climate change. First, I asked my husband for a rain barrel for my birthday. Then we had. Solar panels installed. Later I bought wind energy. We are now almost completely off the old electricity grid. I am now replacing my wonderful 12 year old Prius with a Tesla.
This may not be happening fast enough to counter the rapidity of the climate crisis. However, from all of this I have learned hope.
Our green group plans to undertake a campaign to convince our congregation to take steps now, with a list of varying ways people might do this.
So this article that leads with hope is very encouraging at this very moment. Our green group plans to march one Friday every month. It’s time to make signs and get friends to join us.
No we can't win, Al, the reason being real simple. Our planet Earth runs itself. While it is mildly affected by what humans do, nothing that we do will control what happens when Earth throws an earthquake, a volcano, a hurricane, or decides to pull a continental shift, leaving some of us north when we used to be south. Our only solution is to find planet B and we do that by making contact with others in our Milky Way galaxy as Astronomer Carl Sagan suggested in his book CONTACT. And not to be depressed for there are lots of planet Bs out there.
17
@Jim Dwyer Why do you frame your response, "Our only solution is to find planet B," as an either/or, black and white issue? How about taking all currently actionable possibilities—for example moving to renewable, and cheaper, energy sources, reducing waste, regenerative agriculture practices, etc.—in addition to continued exploration for habitable, life-supporting planets?
Furthermore, what makes you think "contact" from a civilization that has laid waste to its own planet's resources would be welcome guests to the planets of others? Good stewardship will be a desirable trait no matter where we live.
53
@Jim Dwyer Carl Sagan if he were around would not be suggesting it is okay to pollute mother earth as we can find planet B. When Sagan was alive he opposed nuclear proliferation and he reason was that the world has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world 10 times over. He was never unrealistic about finding planet B. I am no astrophysicist but my humble knowledge tells me there is no place in our universe besides earth that is habitable. So accept the reality that we have one life to live and only one planet to make that life possible.
39
@Jim Dwyer Not so, that what we do “mildly affects” our planet. We have done an amazing job at putting out so much carbon dioxide (in a geologically short period of time)that it has warmed the planet. Your mistake is thinking this is a natural process, similar to the last great extinction in the Permian period which was caused by thousands of volcanos. So take heart, we CAN do something to save this beautiful planet!
33
Thank you Al Gore for this inspiring treatise bringing together so many reasons for optimism with the reality of what it will take to turn this (climate justice) ship around. Crucial to that effort is the removal of this cancer on our democracy called Donald Trump. One cannot help but think how different things might have been had the conservative Supreme Court not thwarted the popular vote 20 years ago in Bush v Gore.
10
Al Gore's optimism is laudable and necessary because we must continue to do out utmost to battle against the destruction of our planet.
However I believe that we would need to start to reeducate ourselves and more importantly our children in such a way that respect for the Earth and our environment is instilled in everyone even if it is at the expense of growth and wealth accumulation. This scenario is highly unlikely.
Without a fundamental change in our attitudes and how we view nature it will not be possible to change our present trajectory sufficiently in order to avoid disaster.
Thank you for what you're doing. Keep the pressure on.
1
I can see the slow creep of climate change in my own backyard, so belief in its reality is not my issue. What concerns me, however, is that little is being made of how long any changes to our GHG behaviour will take to affect the climate, assuming that humanity is exclusively responsible for the changes. And how disingenuous the marketing is around some popular 'solutions'. If, for example, GHG production stopped completely (impossible) then how long will it take for conditions at the dawn of the industrial age to return? If the answer is centuries then perhaps just covering the planet with wind farms is not much of an answer -- or any other expensive, disruptive change.
I would argue that helping the folks who are being harmed by rising seas or melting permafrost are the first. Then look at how the rest of our civilization will be affected and start making changes to adapt. And look at our infrastructure and ask how the climate migrations will be accommodated -- Canada and Russia could be big winners here if a transportation infrastructure exists to move people north. Finally, re-engineering our civilization to be less abusive to the planet. It took a long time to develop the stuff we depend on, we kid ourselves if we think going another way will be any easier. And we need to resist the sales pitch from folks selling expensive quick fixes -- they just want our money.
But such rationality seems unlikely given the crass venality of our politicians. Not hopeful.
We have the solution. Carefully policed nuclear power can provide the energy we will need. Population control is a matter of enlightenment. Let's get to work.
Bart Olinger
Los Alamos, NM
Are you looking into the extraordinary promise of graphene? Far better conductor of electricity that will make solar panels economically viable for the first time.
The invisible elephant in the room is advanced nuclear power. There are designs out there that are smaller, and can actually use the "waste" from existing nuclear plants as fuel. Relying entirely on solar and wind to power a modern economy is like trying to run an SUV with rubber bands. There's just not enough there.
Speaking up about nuclear power takes courage. Sure, it's not touchy-feely. But one must look at the numbers - only that shows the reality. Pollution in Germany has increased since they got rid of their nuclear plants. That will happen elsewhere.
All large industrial activities have risks, and most have had fatalities. But only Chernobyl, which was stupid, caused radiation-induced fatalities. TMI and Fukushima had none (the latter was subjected to an earthquake ten times greater than in San Francisco in 1906). Contrast that with chemical plant accidents like Bhopal - 11,000 dead, over 500,000 injured.
Incidentally, James Hansen, who you mention, strongly supports nuclear power. So he is one of those - actually one of many - with the above-mentioned courage.
22
Gore is an imperfect messenger. His "third way" neoliberalism nonsense in the nineties makes the environmentalism he champions seem like a rich man's pastime. When you spend your political career selling out the working class, the working classes are naturally going be skeptical about your concern for the environment.
10
As long as the media chooses to do a hundred times as many stories on things such as a man putting on brown face paint to look like a fictional Disney character, another man calling a woman "a real sweetheart" and Trump's latest wacko tweet than they do about climate change, which affects hundreds of million more people in a much more significant way, I don't have a lot of hope for winning this battle.
14
At this point, any hope is a false hope. Human nature is purely self destructive.
6
While I have always agreed with and supported you (worked phone banks for Clinton-Gore in ‘92), where have you and other progressive leaders been for the last two decades while the GOP conducted and continues its laser-focused, methodical, relentless, well-funded, multi-pronged drive to take over every state, every federal branch of government, install right-wing extremists, and turn this country back to the Dark Ages?
Opinion pieces are worthless while Mitch McConnell packs the courts with extremists who will rule for the next forty years, The Family infiltrates every state and federal branch with its apocalyptic theocratic vision, and Trump overthrows every single environmental policy ever created. Nothing will change, NOTHING, until rich and powerful progressives like you band together, pool your substantial resources, and commit to a similarly laser-focused, decades-long drive to overthrow Republican power and drive planet-hating theocrats back to their caves.
15
Neither bad weather nor immigration is the danger, the real threat is a global nuclear holocaust and the end of 7.7 billion humans on earth.
We have the technology, but do we have the will to change? Will we continue to put short-term profits over long-term benefit for the planet? The answer is no, at least with the current American president and his administration.
So individuals and smaller entities both governmental and private must step in and do what needs to be done.
Stop using coal to make energy but also train coal miners and others for new jobs in the new energy economy. Stop using single-use plastics, but make innovative new products to take their places, perhaps something that is sturdy during use but easily compostable. Use multi-use products such as woven bags for shopping. Make toys out of wood and metal as was once done, not so long ago; my own children played with such toys and loved them. These are just a few examples. We can do it, but we have to decide it's worth the effort and worth changing.
3
@Barbara
Of course you yourself do these obviously sensible things? What do you have in mind for the "easily compostable" substance that will replace plastics?
I wish your message would have been taken as seriously as today, Mr. Gore! To think where the world would have been were it not for a Florida 'miscount'.
At the same time, if we adults want to contribute, we have to live what we preach: those of us who can afford electric vehicles should help get them momentum, add solar to our roofs. There should be no more travels in private jets - or to the arctic etc. I cringe every time someone flies there for a photo-op. I cringe if I get a Nat geo brochure selling 'eco-travel' along with 'private jet around the world' - that contradiction is so blatantly obvious.
1
@msf: The election of 2000 should have rung every alarm in the land about the lowest common denominator of the US: unequal protection of law by states born of liberty to enslave.
4
My sense is that people are not willing to admit the extent to which our lifestyle choices are unsustainable.
Prosperity is founded on population expansion and new building. More and more products, especially electronics we consume ever more of, are not repairable or recyclable, and include more plastic and toxins. Amazon packages a single tube of toothpaste in bubblewrap and a cardboard box and sends a truck. Suburb expansion destroys farmland and habitat. Blueberries and sea bass are flown in from Chile. Coral reefs are ground up to make cement for dams. Our employment and cost models are based on low wage labor, which means population growth in low-skilled immigrants, and on skilled labor immigration because we accept a poor education system and the resulting professional limits for US citizens. Nearly uninhabitably hot and arid landscapes in Arizona host booming metropolises.
Reducing carbon emissions may be the simplest part of the solution.
7
@DC Tech Guy: Humanity bet our profligate future back in 1950, on the expected demonstration of practical controlled nuclear fusion energy technology within the next 20 years.
Our resources are finite, yet the population is growing exponentially. Even if we can satisfy our skyrocketing energy demands (which is dubious long-term), there is still the problem of insufficient clean water, clean air, food, housing, minerals, building materials, and everything else that we need to sustain life. The recent focus on climate change is diverting our attention from the ultimate problem -- the one that underlies all other problems facing humanity. We have to reverse the explosive population growth. In the end, nothing else will matter.
7
Yes, yes Mr. Gore! But what are you doing about it other than making oodles of money traveling around and espewing more of the same platitudes that fall on deaf ears? You didn’t share one example of what you’re personally sacrificing to reduce your own carbon footprint. Way to lead by example! At least I can say I ride my bike to work, recycle, avoid plastics, and am an avid supporter of the World Wildlife Federation - true global stewards of our natural habitat and the wildlife that depends on it.
12
Trump is the greatest short-term threat here. A second term would be truly disastrous on climate change.
Ongoing doubt about the Democratic field raises an intriguing possibility:
He gets it. He’s electable. Why not Gore in 2020?
2
Dear Al thank you for this wonderful and inspiring article. Your comments about the power of people and political will to save our beautiful planet Earth have moved me to do whatever I can to be part of this change with the children and youth leading. Keep speaking the truth. We need your expansive view.
1
Interesting article that closes with the glaring tagline of "Lead, Follow or get out of the way". A new analysis by the National Center for Public Policy Research found that Mr. Gore's Tennessee home "guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years."
In one month, the report found, Mr. Gore's home (10,000 sq. ft) consumed more electricity than the average family uses in 34 months. The climate may well be warming, but other natural factors also contribute to this. The Pleistocene Epoch is typically defined as the time period that began about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago. The earth warmed without any contributions from human activity, so how am I supposed to take you seriously if you don't follow your same logic? Please Mr Gore, lead, follow or get out of the way.
9
@john
Climate is changing 20 times faster than any natural forcing completely independent of what Al Gore does.
The earth warmed due to CO2 changes and Milankovitch cycles over the past few million years. CO2 went from 180 ppm to 280 ppm coming out of the last ice age--warming the planet. The earth surface air temps changed about 5 C over a 10,000 year period. Now we humans with our heat engines changed the earth's surface air temps 1C in the last 100 years...way faster. The rejector camp just does't want to look.
Hate al gore all you want, but global warming is here to stay.
2
I like the first sentence for two reasons; simply because it goes both ways, and it gives us hope. In other words, the damage humans have done to this planet's climate, flora and fauna only in one century*, can (by the same logic) be "undone" in the next century. This is hope. However, I also believe we have gone beyond the "tipping point". In other words, we cannot "fix" everything. There are some things which we can never undo. I am referring to that which has become extinct. There is only one way extinction of anything organic To use the most simple of terms, I am referring to "Mother Nature". For example, I do not mean the "Saber Tooth Tiger" will come back to life (not in the near future, at least). The most recent time they still walked the earth was "only" 11,000 years ago; then they became extinct. What I mean about "Mother Nature" doing what we cannot do, is to bring new species (of flora and fauna) into life on this planet. Although this is not the same, it is similar. One species dies off (or is destroyed); then another one "takes it's place", so to speak. I believe we have the ways and means to do so much good. I also believe we need help from "Mother Nature", as well. Please know when I write "Mother Nature", I do not mean any form of "Divine Providence" or "miracles". This is not going to occur.
1
Thank you Mr. Gore for your continued effort to bring this critical emergency that the Earth is facing to the hearts and minds of people world wide. I have been discouraged lately because of the power that a minority has in this country to dictate and destroy every thing that has been put in place to stop the progression of climate change. That is until this weekend when young children around the world stood up and said that’s enough! We who have grandchildren have to be encouraged that they will be the generation that will finally take this seriously and make change happen. Beware deniers your political time is rapidly becoming extinct.
Worse than climate defeatism or climate denial are former leaders, unversed in thermodynamics or geophysics, playing professor in retirement and misleading the generation of their grandchildren on climate.
"Globally, close to 200 of the world’s largest companies have announced commitments to use 100 percent renewable energy, and several have already reached that goal."
Only companies which rely on good weather and time of day to function could possibly depend on 100 percent renewable energy. Instead, they turn to gas-fired electricity to keep their desktop computers running and their lights on at night, or in cloudy, windless weather. Natural gas (methane) recently replaced coal as the largest source of carbon emissions in US electricity; consumption will continue to grow for decades. Solar panels, which currently provide less than 3% of US electricity, could be free - as long as the Earth keeps turning it won't matter.
The climate crisis is the battle of our time, and we can win. France's 1973 Messmer Plan reduced the country's carbon emissions by 75% in less than fifteen years by replacing oil-fired electricity with electricity generated using carbon-free nuclear energy. In 1994 the U.S. was well on its way to following France's example with a safe, new reactor design when, together with John Kerry, you voted to end funding for nuclear research.
In 2017 even John Kerry admitted he was wrong; here, you only push a solution to climate change further out of reach.
5
Mr. Gore has forgotten to mention the most efficient weapon against global warming: Nuclear Energy!
There are no batteries needed which are unfortunately not so cheap as he thinks they are or will be. A freshly loaded nuclear power station is a tremendous electricity store. It will produce electricity with a very low CO2-pollution-load of only 12 grams per kilowatthour for a full year. And this night and day and also during wind lulls.
5
A man once described to me a machine restart button placed where if one reached for it before the machine had stopped moving the machine would mangle your arm. Nuclear power with fission is the most effect way to make the steam that turns turbines which spin the generators which makes electrical power. Unfortunately, the material is not used up and benign after the fuel use is exhausted. So all of Ned’s to be sequestered from the rest of the world until it’s half life is completed. That is when it produces no more destructively high amounts of radiation. The material we use requires up to 10,000 years to become safe. Use it once then devote one hundred centuries babysitting it. Nuclear power is tempting but it’s impractical in the long run.
2
Thank you for an article that’s not so bleak. I have solar panels on my roof and an EV car (2013 Ford C-Max) in my garage. I am fortunate enough to be able to pay for this technology myself. Most cannot. We need to finance and invest in programs to get solar on more rooftops and make electric vehicles more affordable. Quickly.
3
There seems to be isolated concern about issue in the political sphere. For most people the biggest concern is the most immediate and tangible followed by near term strategic problems and then long term goals. Food on the table, cars that work and jobs first, then retirement, college costs and finally future work, environment and geopolitical realignment. If we must make choices between today's food and the climate in 30 years, it is human nature to act on "leave it to the experts, they'll fix it" or "I like the guy who promises me a job".
I don't know whether hyperbole makes sense. If everyone understands that the climate is serious, it may not be necessary to imagine an unlivable world in a scary short time frame. (unless it is actually true). We live in a world that is marketed with fear, fear you will miss the "sale", fear that you won't get a good job, fear that you need an alarm or an item of health care to keep you or your family safe. Mr. Gore has been persistent and fairly logical about climate change, without being hysterical. But maybe we are so conditioned by our marketing that that is the only way to get people to act. But that is not optimal because it might leave an opening for skepticism based on "common sense".
For everyone coming on here to distract people from the real challenges, please read this article about Al Gore's Carbon Footprint.
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/the-truth-about-al-gores-carbon-footprint
Like all of us, regarding climate change in our daily lives, Al Gore needed to change and he did.
I am starting to agree with many of the other commenters here. Al Gore should run for President. It would be nice to see a person in power who can receive criticism and actually improve from it.
1
I’ve said it before any times, but for the electoral college Al Gore and Hillary Clinton would have been presidents and we would be well on our way to solving the global climate issues. We will make no progress as long as this ancient, white slave-owners policy remains in our constitution. It is long past time to move to the popular vote for our presidential elections like all other political contests in the free world!
Repeal the electoral college now!
3
My dog Jack would never put his kennel in danger. A sparrow treats his nest as a precious thing. We, the humans, are the intelligent ones. We have control over the world. And we are destroying the planet. Fromm would surely have included an analysis of the root causes of this delirium in "Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”. Because that's what we're talking about: destruction and self-destruction.
2
There needs to be a sense of urgency as it relates to this grave issue. Furthermore, we will lose 4 important years if the bottom-dweller, Trump, stays in office dredging up every toxin that exists to disperse around-the-world.....so goes the saying: Toxic Trump.
1
Thanks for this Op Ed.
For legal landmarks that show many times over the past 50 Years we the people - and the media - have failed see https://www.legalreader.com/50-years-of-legal-climate-change/
Early landmark documents in chronological order are at
https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/1970s-polution-control-efforts/
Let's not fail again, please.
2
9 years ago I began a personal crusade to become carbon negative within 5 years. I bought a Leaf, eliminated all gasoline powered tools for landscaping and farming, installed a 5kW photovoltaic array and went to net metering, installed solar hot water and except for $25/month in gasoline purchase for a Prius completely eliminated all direct fossil fuel consumption in our household. The carbon savings from producing much more electricity than we consume exceeds all of our direct and indirect fossil fuel use, including air line travel. It can be done at the individual household level as I've demonstrated.
Now we need industrial scale storage. Here on the island of Hawaii our public power company is contracting for many more megawatts of solar and wind but always with about 4 times daily storage capacity in the contracts.
Al Gore is right, we can do it. I already did it 5 years ago but on a global scale we've yet to see the worst because the melting permafrost is emitting methane at an accelerating rate. We don't have 10 years to reach success in this battle for our planet's viability. We have only about 2 years, if that.
Act now. You can do it.
4
Thank you for doing this.
I just can’t bring myself to pay the ridiculous prices that are asked in the US. These prices are caused by hurdles put in place by the utility and energy lobby, and by high tariffs on imported solar panels.
Installers too quote exorbitant labor prices.
In Belgium I paid $8000 for a 5kWh array with high quality SMA inverter back in 2011. $2,500 for a sun boiler a few years ago after subsidy.
1
Al Gore is the one dude I DO NOT want to hear from, about the climate crisis.
Imagine if, 20 odd years ago, when he branded the issue as a Democratic party talking point with his documentary, "The Uncomfortable Truth", he had instead addressed the subject always with a Republican by his side? That would have created an opening for bipartisan action on a non-partisan issue, instead of turning it into the political football it is today.
Yeah, the GOP’s grotesque behavior over the last thirty years is entirely Al Gore’s fault. That dastard.
2
Thank you for this article Mr. Gore. This IS the battle of our times – it’s the ultimate disaster movie. I have been concerned about our earth since I was a child passenger on an immigrant ship, watching the ship disgorge garbage into its wake. I could not understand how that was allowed, nor did I believe – as was posited then – that the seas were inexhaustible, that mankind could fish all it wanted as there would always be enough fish. Everything is finite. I only had two children as I heeded ZPG, ‘zero population growth’, a political movement of the late 1960’s, with strong links to environmentalism and feminism. We have always composted and recycled and reused, eschewed plastic (wherever possible – it is very hard to avoid) and made sure to not clog pipes with fat. Fast forward 62 years since I was on that ship, and where are we? The environmental Doomsday Clock must surely be at seconds to midnight. The adults in the room are being shown up by children, by adolescents. They only care only about the comfort of their own lives, not of those myriad of lives of the future. I was at the NY city march and while there were adults there – many of those gray-haired – most of them were accompanying the kids. EVERYONE should have shown up, all of NY should have played hooky. We’ve made a mess of this world, especially this past century with our spiralling birth rate, our criminal use of the earth’s resources, and our mindless use of non-degradable manmade materials. WAKE UP PEOPLE!
2
We humans are driven by evolution and inherited two major flaws that work against sustaining our existence. The first is that we think of ourselves first and foremost. It is just a survival mechanism of course, but explains why we can be clobbered over the head literally every month for 30 years with new knowledge on the connection between C02 in atmosphere and the damage it is doing, and take no action on our own. The second flaw is the fear we inherited which is on a continuum. Also needed for survival long ago, we have different amounts and the more you have the further right on the political spectrum to the point where healthy fear begins to resemble symptoms of paranoia. The most common symptom? The sense that everyone is out to get you and government is clearly one of many things out to get conservatives which is why they deny AGW. Since we were born this way, these flaws are unconscious, we aren't even aware they make us think the way we do. As such, only governments can save us from ourselves. Now please rush out to the polls en masse and vote accordingly.
1
So what if it is cheaper...it still will not be nearly enough. Sustainables are fine, but should be seen as simply helping us transition while we launch an internationally supported #GreenManhattanProject so that we can also begin to realistically remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Relying on solar,wind and batteries to replace fossil fuel won't work. Nuclear power must be used also,research into advanced reactors is vital. Small modular reactor systems that could be used to power existing generators currently powered by fossil fuels hold great promise.
Green energy programs proposed seem to be more interested in grand social programs irrelevant to the problem at hand. Beware as some will attempt to use this issue as vehicle for dreamy socialist goals they can't achieve otherwise.
3
Hey Al, do you still fly in private planes? What is the total square footage of your residences and how many do you have? What is the weight of the cars you drive and how many miles do you drive each year? I’m uninterested whether they are electric, because the electricity has to come from somewhere.
Legislating behavior just shifts burdens and profits among groups.
If you want to provide some leadership, lead in living a smaller material life.
6
That was an awkward photo with Thunberg and Obama wasn't it? A sixteen year old is becoming the leader of the ecology movement? What does a sixteen year old know about the world, History, Economics, Science and Technology?
Has the ecology movent become the new Children's Crusade? Have you met many fundamentalists that brainwash their kids into believing the world is going end? What's the difference here?
Do we have the technology? It's technology and price that keeps me from buying an electric car along with charging time and range. Are better batteries on the way? What about the Fusion reactor? Lab grown meat and GMO's to feed 12 billion. Terraform not Mars but Australia. What about all the things we have already done to clean up our mess.
4
@JoeG Your Question: "Has the ecology movement become the new Children's Crusade?" Well it should be of high importance to children: they are going to inherit the mess we are leaving for them. Your Question: "Do we have the technology?" Isn't this part of what this movement is about. Unless we encourage research and development into a new "green" future, instead of telling people that we want to "bring back coal," how do you expect the technology to develop?
A 16 year old knows the most important thing, one that many of her elders cannot grasp: she will have to live in the future while her more experienced elders will be dead.
1
Please feel free to explore the current, “leader,” of the free world’s massive, deep understanding of history, economics, science and technology.
Shouldn’t take long.
And speaking of knowledge, better batteries are already here with more and better coming, nobody but you called Thunberg the leader of everything, and words like “history,” aren’t capitalized unless they are part of the name of something specific.
The biggest emitter of CO2 is China, as a result of coal burning by many of its industries. The Chinese government ruthlessly pursues economical dominance without regard to the environment. It exploits its poor, who receive low salaries and work with few days off. The key to solving the problem is to a large extent abolishing coal consumption by China. All means are legitimate, including military force, if necessary. The stakes are too high. The second biggest emitter is the USA, where energy consumption per capita is the highest in the world. This splurging must be reduced. Other solutions are merely cosmetic.
1
@AH: In America, we can at least reduce the appeal of SUVs by bringing back station wagons. Some people just need the extra space, not the height or weight. While we're at it, time the lights on all thoroughfares, so that through traffic never has to stop and go unless the road is saturated, as in the morning commute.
That's the low hanging fruit. It will be harder to abolish throwaway packaging and blueberries in December, or moving us into condos and apartments instead of houses. Air travel and the morning commute have to go away as well.
1
Are Americans willing to lead by example? Will they give up SUVs, mansion homes, animal-rich diets, and suburban sprawl?
Will they reject the constant appeals that it is their patriotic duty to shop till they drop? I doubt it.
2
@FilmMD
Not to mention flying everywhere . . .
If we were serious about mitigation, the first thing we would do is seriously tax air travel and use the funds to upgrade and expand rail systems, which are the most energy efficient way to travel, even if it takes longer.
(Maybe we should stop being in such a rush ?)
3
One of the greatest success stories of the United States government has been the National Institutes of Health: peer-reviewed impact research advancing fundamental knowledge and improving health outcomes. We should do the same for environment by starting a National Institute for Environment. Costs should be offset by increasing carbon tax money from fossil fuel use, meat farm methane production and deforestation and then invest massively in science to save our environment. Lessons learned are translatable around the globe while American can first commercialize successful advancements making real progress while building our economy.
Sure we can win, not a problem. Electric cars and (sotto voce) new nuclear power plants (the greenest energy you can find).
Now... the bigger problem: asteroids!
1
I am especially encouraged by and thankful for the photos of the children that accompany this article as they, in their innocence, have become emblematic of truth's urgency as they lead in the crusade against the lies of predatory greed.
The Wall Street Journal recently published an opinion piece that casts doubt on promises that wind turbines, solar panels and massive batteries can rescue us from environmental disaster. It points put that wind turbines, solar panels and batteries are manufactured from nonrenewable materials and that producing the materials in sufficient amount would require “the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen and would produce huge quantities of waste.”
For example, the WSJ essay points out that a single electric-car battery requires excavating, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw material. One wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 ton or non-recyclable plastic. And solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass as well as other metals. They all wear out and must be replace.
It notes that a Dutch-government study found that it s renewable energy plan alone would consume a major portion of global minerals. It concluded that “Exponential growth in [global] renewable energy production capacity is not possible with present-day technologies and annual metal production.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-want-renewable-energy-get-ready-to-dig-11565045328?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
6
@William Case
Thank you for pointing out the dark side of 'sustainable' energy. It's really remarkable that none of this is discussed much, although there are plenty of articles decrying the development of new mineral resources (Pebble Mine in Alaska, the Boundary Waters area, etc.)
Maybe the expectation is that all these metals will simply come from impoverished third world countries with sketchy environmental records, so it won't be happening in Our Backyard ?
3
Oh looky—Mark P. Mills works for a right-wing think tank, and heads a “venture-capitalist energy investment company.”
Let me make a wild guess about where his investments are.
It’s not like us commies don’t know that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Bill. It’s that we wonder why you guys are only interested in externalities and government subsidies among cleaner-energy companies.
Let somebody skip the methane detectors and blow up a buncha miners, or skip the blowout preventers and flood the Gulf with oil, though, and boy, do you guys bawl about how it’s unfair for them to have to cough up a dime. Something to do with commies in government crippling Amurrica’s energy independence, I believe.
1
@Robert
Do you think the Dutch government is a right-wing think tank? It is leading renewable energy proponents, but notes its modest requirements alone would consume a major portion of global minerals.
3
Interesting. Saw Al two years ago and he said we had reached an inflection point on cost and technology such that the crisis point had passed and carbon pollution would begin to recede as new sources of fuel came on line. Milken conference two years ago. Imagine it wasn’t taken welll by Saikat and the Eco Terror crowd
2
I have some advice for the young people leading this revolution. Don't ignore the economy. The free market economy driven by individuals getting wealthy from our current habits can't do the job.
I'm no fan of Soviet-style socialism, but sometimes the needs of the group have to ride roughshod over the rights of individuals. At some point, we have to say "this is a good enough iPhone; now make me one that will last the rest of my life." There will always be a need for a free market, but it must exist within a context of countervailing forces that push back against excess.
As baby boomers, we mainstreamed ecology, ZPG, and sexual self-determination, but we failed to fix the economy. Those of us who spoke up about it were castigated as losers and communists. Not it's up to you to figure out how to fix it so that the economy remains robust without destroying the ecosystem, and to force it on the oligarchs and the lazy.
Good luck with that. When you have children and want to drive them all to the beach on Sunday afternoon, we'll measure the magnitude of your commitment.
1
the bottom line is: *we* have to change, and we don't want to.
"just one more selfie, cheeseburger, jet travel to foreign vacation, please! don't impeach, it's uncharted waters! no, not single payer health care, it's uncharted waters!"
comments such as "i don't think we can avert ecological disaster" indicate more denial: you haven't heard about amazon fires, permafrost melt, european and asian heat waves, disappearing glaciers, species extinctions?
"it's not too late to act" implies the climate is like a thermostat. "OK, now it's too hot, let's turn down the heat!" if we stopped emitting more carbon today, the oceans would continue to rise and the temperatures to increase for another century or more.
"turn on the technology!" you poor dears. will you pay for it with higher taxes? will you put windmills in your backyard? the technology that can really help us is nuclear power. anybody raise their hand for nuclear power?
"politicians need to act!" well, the two most important words politicians can say are "carbon tax." listen carefully -- do you hear them say it?
buddhist monks immolated themselves to stop the vietnam war; students died at Kent State protesting it. nothing similar has happened yet regarding climate change. but as mario savio said: eventually, we will have to lay our bodies on "the gears of the machine."
it's either the day for new taxes, new disruptions, new frugality, and doing fine with less -- or it's the day for one more cheeseburger -- please!
Al Gore has become a billionaire in the last 15 years by selling his services as a specialist in climate change control.
He has changed nothing.
The "climate change crisis" is worse and worse every day.
At least to listen to him.
And here he is again, babbling over our need to control the phenomenon, by great control experts like him.
How wonderful.
2
You can't control China. You won't have a prayer with India when it finally becomes less corrupt enough for manufacturers to move in there.
We are past the tipping point. Buy land in Alberta.
4
Young Swede, Greta T made her trip to NYC on a racing vessel that is essentially a toy for rich people. One of the pilots of the boat was a grandson of Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier (Pierre Rainier Stefano Casiraghi). You know, a royal..that class of people always sensitive to carbon wasting. So Greta sailed into town on a toy of the rich that torched a LOT of carbon in the manufacture of said toy. All the comforts of life that we, middle class and rich people, take for granted, like warmth/cooling, convenient travel by air and car and cheap food are very carbon intensive. The notion that people, en masse, are going to abandon or compromise this life style "to save the planet" is absurd on the face of it.
4
I am surprised to see no mention of nuclear power. Wind and solar require so much real estate and are intermittent. Germany has embraced green solutions and seen its energy costs double while not reducing green house emissions. France on the other hand has embraced nuclear and seen emissions reduced and cost reduced.
The reality is we will never get anywhere on Global Warming until everyone starts to educate themselves on nuclear power. It is the safest form of energy generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZXUR4z2P9w
Sorry Mr Gore, ain’t gonna happen. This fracking boom gave us false hope that fossil fuels would last forever, that we didn’t have to change. Now Americans are showing the world that gas guzzlers are comfortable, safe and acceptable if not imperative. Have we changed our building codes, water efficiency, banned the use of any global warming molecule like sulfur hexafluoride?Have Americans adopted one single regulation to invert the curve? Are we willing to give up one single creature comfort, just one. All these young children that protested for their future, they all went home in mommies SUV with the air on high. I’m not buying the optimism, I hope I’m wrong. We are lemmings running off the proverbial cliff.
2
Welcome back to the front. Your leadership is
sorely needed.
Yes, politicians are a significant part of the problem. But, who elects them? We do. The simple truth is an increasingly larger percentage of the US population is pretty ignorant today and living longer. Not a good combination. Trumps base is a good example. Pretty much all climate deniers. Why is this the case? Republicans used to be environmentalist. That is one of the fundamental precepts of true (not Trump or Moscow Mitch) conservatism. Where are the intelligent republicans? Take back your party and let’s work together on this issue! The other issue people are too timid to talk about is over population. That is a factor no matter how much technology we throw at climate change, especially in less developed countries. But even in the US to some degree.....
Some Gore bashing here. It's not right. He keeps at it and Rome keeps boring. He can only do so much. He's been at it for a long time and deserves our respect. He's not hiding his phone conversations from Congress or as Bush 2 did, showing false information to the UN. He's honorable and he's in the right. Fact.
2
You forgot to add the 2000 election to your list of historical turning points. I like to sometimes imagine the timeline in which you won Gore v. Bush and we were able to turn the path of this climate juggernaut. Maybe I'm fooling myself--as long as there are Republicans there can be no leadership in this matter from the US. The world has woken up to the fact that our government is a fragile, unreliable thing incapable of keeping its word about anything. And without governments taking action, there can be no progress in averting this global catastrophe. The solution would need to include bringing the US and China to heel. You cannot shame the shameless. We are probably doomed along with the thousands of species we are taking with us.
Just came from a day of teachings lead by Sherri Mitchell. She and other Indigenous Peoples are leading a series of Mother Earth healings across this nation. Beginning in the east (where the destruction began), then south , west, and ending in north, she has gathered thousands of traditional healers spiritual and others from around the planet to do healing ceremony. Her first ceremony, held three years ago, brought 900 people together. The gatherings have only grown since.
You might be moved to discount all of this as hooey. But I can assure you, it is powerful, powerful stuff. Yes, we need scientists and technology to heal. Yes political will is critical. But Mitchell and her people are calling forth a kind of power that few western whites have any inkling of. All around us there is a vast web of Indigenous People who are working without ego, without political agenda, but with compassion, respect, dignity, and lovingkindness to re-member our ancient relationships. When you feel things are hopeless, check out what the Indigenous People are doing. It will make you glad. We nearly destroyed them all, but they are the ones who will integral to our rebirth.
2
I thank Mr Gore for keeping us hopeful. The main force behind the scenes, greed, wants us to stay dumb and silent.
Children should not have to fight for their lives. I grieve this fact whenever I see them protesting the inactivity on climate or gun control.
We know these evils well. We haven't stopped them though we have tried. Now we feel powerless to change the trajectory we are on because we are a fractured nation, all sides hating the other, isolated. The uber rich stay in power by using their vast wealth to keep us isolated and hopeless through "public relations", firing up our mutual hatreds as the Russians did in 2016. The 1% couldn't win if we vote together.
I recently talked with a young activist who said maybe when the old die off there will be room for change. Now the rich have a new tool in their divide and conquer rule book-generational hatred. Why wouldn't the young hate and distrust the old? We didn't protect them.
1
Wasn't the climate disaster supposed to be here 20 years ago? Why are Al Gore's predictions so inaccurate?
4
I find that Southern California residents turn a blind eye to the pervasive intrusion of unbreathable air. We never have a day when the air quality is better than moderate. Ozone and particulate matter that is taken into the lungs are things we live with everyday. One week ago, we had a red alert which is one step away from hazardous. Children can not play outdoors, and the enfeebled are forced to remain indoors. If anything can stir us to action, it should be the quality of the air that surrounds our planet Earth. It is our life force.
3
Al Gore is the true king of fear mongering. I am sure he enjoys is money though.
3
OMG, now I remember why I voted for Al Gore (back when Joe Kennedy III was 20 years old). Why not again?
1
Overpopulation is the main cause of Pollution/Climate Change...and the first place to start is to give birth control to poor people who can not feed themselves who have babies they can not feed.
4
Interesting idea. It takes decades for the natural processes to remove carbon gases from the air. Your strategy requires the population to diminish to where the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas is so low that the proportion of carbon gases drops enough to reverse global warming. So how long would all of this take?
"we have the tool"
That would be the UN--would it not Mr. Gore? The fires in Brazil as the modern Holocaust, we have Just War Cause to send in the Marines. China and Russia, otherwise tyrants, can be trusted to likewise turn from bomb making to basket weaving. You will best serve the weather, Mr. Gore, by reducing your jet-print. 1 percenters like Mr. Gore are the world's worst polluters, for you cannot spend such obscene wealth without leaving massive carbon prints. You cannot save the world, Al, having lost your carbon sole. And if this is a crisis, why is it not a campaign issue?
2
When the old geezers are dead, the rest of us will be drowning in hot water.
1
People vote with their consumer behaviors and those trends show huge empty trucks and SUVs that suck gas being favored over highly efficient cars, smaller families living in ever larger houses that have large embodied energy and carbon footprints, and stores full of globalized products that are making things worse by not being localized in production. The very politicians you call upon are not stupid and can see that there is a disconnect between what people say they believe and the conduct of their lives and the forces opposing the Green New Deal will exploit that.
The change will have to come from every level of government. Some states in the grip of Republican governance have actually enacted taxes to raise the costs of solar, wind and other renewables and that trend continues. The same stupidity and wanton ignorance that led Ronald Reagan to remove solar panels from the White House has given us the people working with Trump and the Republicans in the House and Senate to roll back clean/renewable energy rules and impede the function of regulatory agencies. It will take significant time, political capital and effort to reverse the damage done.
Finally, there is the issue of time. It will take a lot of time to allow the planet to heal and reverse course and things will continue to get worse long before things get better. That is baked into the cake. Today’s children will live in a profoundly degraded environment even if we reversed course by magic overnight.
2
In the natural world, populations are self regulating. When they reach of point where sustainability is no longer feasible, the population collapses. Unfortunately modern human culture has been able to circumvent this natural phenomena thorough science and social engineering. We are way past the level of sustainability. We are polluting our surroundings while at the same time destroying the mechanisms that would remove pollutants naturally, such as forests and marine ecosystems.
Can the situation be reversed? Are there enough level headed world leaders who see the handwriting on the wall and are willing to step up and make the necessary sacrifices and social changes to bring about a reversal?
The world faces a threat unlike any in human history. Sure, there may be an asteroid out there with our name on it, or a doomsday volcano waiting to erupt with cataclysmic effects. If some day a doomsday asteroid is found to be headed our way, you can be certain that the nations of the world would rally and find a way to move it.
Climate change is that asteroid. The effects may not be as instantly dramatic, but it may leave the planet unrecognizable in the next century. We are having difficulty feeding the population of the world now, image what it is going to be like when vast areas of the earth are no longer productive or are under water.
By then it will be too late. It may be too late already but we still have to try.
Or perhaps out population is due for a long overdue collapse.
2
Next year's election is a crucial test of the nation's commitment to maintaining an actual democracy. If the outcome is wrong (trump "win") we will have more immediate problems to deal with.
This is a race that we "may" be able to win. The race is between the exponential growth of technology and AI on one side vs. the growth of ignorance and belief in conspiracy theories on the other.
Let's pray that it's the former.
So everyone is trying to prevent something that has happened hundred times on this planet and is part of the natural progress of the planet. It is like people forgot all the history they learned in school. People I think are just scared due to being faced with the fact that things are changing and there is nothing they can do about it. Each stage of the earth has lasted a couple of million years before the planet changes. Guess how long it has been since the last one.
Climate change is gonna happen. Are we helping it? Sure but only by Following the Georgia guide stones will that ever really change. But people dont have the resolve for the correct measures.
2
@Zelendel If you close your eyes to something, that doesn't mean that it has not occurred.
Nobody is mentioning that China, India, and Russia would need to contribute to these policy changes. Should the US and EU-28 radically alter (and potentially destroy) their economies when these other developing countries will not? What I would like to see is a clear, scientific explanation of how a carbon-neutral US would impact climate change given rising fossil fuel use by China, India, and Russia. What does that look like? Does climate change continue?
4
The “sane” world should implement WTO-like tariffs for those nations not complying with Paris Accord commitments. That threat will ensure that the world economies stay committed to the long-term objectives.
1
@Brian We can't put pressure on other countries until we admit the problem exists....and Toxic Trump has no plans on doing this.
Al Gore’s words are both informative and inspiring. We have many deep, structural problems, but you can’t fix the plumbing and the electrical when your house is on fire! Vote to change the system that prioritizes corporate profits for fossil fuel companies over our very survival as a planet, and take advantage of the many cheaper, non-carbon based energy sources that are already out there. When the people lead, the leaders will follow!
1
Good to see a clever, illustrative, and
optimistic attitute and plan asking for a necessary policy on climate change. This and a true Democracy are the keys to harness climate change in case it is still possible. In any case, we have only one way out for survival: to be proactive to avoid a catastrophe.
1
The job of true Democracy in the USA, which of course was shown to be thriving in 2016 with the election of Trump, is to prevent people like Gore and Carlos from dictating to us.
I have always respected Vice President Gore, and the manner in which he canalized public awareness of this issue with An Inconvenient Truth. At this point, however, I find his personal lifestyle inconsistent with the values and changes that he advocates. For this reason, I believe he needs to pass the torch on to a new spokesperson for this vital issue.
3
If only Al Gore hadn't chosen Lieberman for his running mate, then stayed up all night and conceded the election to GW because he was sleep deprived, we might not be in as big of a mess today. At the very least, I would have more respect for him.
2
If only Bill Clinton had kept it in his pants... His selfish indulgences cost us 2000.... and our future.
4
We're in the middle of an anthropocentric delirium. My dog would never endanger his kennel. A sparrow treats its nest as a precious good. We are the intelligent ones. And we are destroying the planet.
1
It’s a matter of money. Who makes it & who does not. Al will make it. You won’t. Any advances we make will be overwhelmed by China & India use. Let’s help them cleanup by giving them free technology that will assist them. Oh no, that takes the profit motive out of it!
3
I certainly hope you're right. Many facts, many opinions. Here's one fact I do know with 100% crystalline accuracy:
We will win nothing unless we register, get yourself and try to get one other person to the polls, but most important vote in your best interests. Give the planet and yourself a little consideration November 3rd, 2020.
1
Al Gore: "All of these efforts together will not be enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently without significant policy changes. And right now, we don’t have the right policies because the wrong policymakers are in charge."
Yeah, well when you were in charge, what did you and Boss Clinton do? You entered office as a climate change activist and had eight years to make an impact. What happened? The Dems are as big a joke as the Republicans.
3
I wonder what political power will stop permafrost thaw.
1
We use to have real issues to focus the youth of the USA, WWII, MAD, the cold war, going to the moon, Vietnam, etc. Now all these poor entitled children have is climate change. What are they going to do when they have to face real adversity?
2
@Lilly
Going to the moon is a real issue?
Kids have more real issues currently than any adult can possibly grasp.
People like you, especially, are one of their "real issues."
Leave the kids alone. They deserve so much better.
1
@Lilly The elevation of Key West is 18 feet. And you deny climate change? Wow.
1
Thank you Al Gore. A much needed infusion of hope and call to action. We CAN do this!
1
@Ajax
This book does a excellent job of addressing the subject of population growth:
Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
By Alan Weisman
1
“...on the day after the 2020 election, the terms of the Paris climate accord will allow the United States to withdraw from it.”
Enough said.
God bless you Al; for speaking the truth to Power.
1
Pete
The underlying cause of climate change is over population.
We are way behind the carrying capacity of the planet.
2
What we really need is a time machine to whisk us back to a time before we started burning all the fossil fuels....
2
This article makes me wonder: "Was the eventual demise of humanity, no... the planet, all due to a hanging chad?".
1
Gore is still out of tune. To bad Clinton kept fooling around and cost him support. The US even if it improved its system completely can't get Asian production led by China to behave. The floods are coming, Have not heard about anything Gore has accomplished in last twenty years . This sounds like a speech at a college graduation. everyone smiles and then societal pollution gets worse .
4
Al Gore. We thank you.
And then we think of Katherine Harris and the counting of the chads. In a couple years after her debut, she was voted O-U-T in Florida anyhow.
But Gore continues with his steadfast plea - we need to never give up. The planet Earth is more important than those chads ever proved to be. Vote Democrat next time, folks.
3
But for a few votes in Florida he could have been our president. I wonder how much better off the planet and the US would have been if he were elected.
Al Gore's movement would be great if he'd not sidetracked himself & followers with solar-power investments.
As FDR said: "D3emocracy depends on education."
Unfortunately, though I once voted for him, Gore's mastery of climate/ocean changes and possible tools to combat them is limited.
The facts have been known for decades. The actions have been stymied by combustion-industry lobbying, and now some 'environmental' groups are so uneducated in the matter that combustion folks can exploit their ignorance -- read one of BP's recent ads, where they breezily explain why they invest in wind/solar for both subsidies and the ability to sell more gas to back up the pitiable energy production characteristic of 'renewables'.
And, our media helps us endanger our descendants even further by failing to educate its editors/writer/hosts beyond what JFK warned: "...too often we choose the comfort of opinion over the discomfort of knowledge."
Yes, even the NY Times is guilty of wasting our future by avoidance of study. Here are some modest alternatives...
http://tinyurl.com/y65belox (open letter)
https://youtu.be/0NUe-pUVEm8 (Caldeira, etc.)
https://tinyurl.com/yxw8fqez ('renewables' 2019)
https://tinyurl.com/yy2puqbz (nuclear accidents/waste)
https://tinyurl.com/y4hmh8nu (Bloomberg's no coal/gas)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA5ezauujYg (Michael Moore's wind/solar expose)
JFK took time to determine what to do even before "global warming": http://tinyurl.com/6xgpkfa
The new iPhone 11 is out! Americans lie to polls. Where have you been, Al? Climate change will kill humans, but as well so will authoritarian leaders. We the people fear autocracy more than climate change, Al. Our lives are short.
2
This is a comment directed more towards the nytimes than this op-ed: I'd recommend that your reporters start discussing global warming in terms of Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. 3 degrees Celsius doesn't sound that bad, but 9 degrees Fahrenheit sure does.
1
This “Al” guy should run for president.
Let's make our haste carefully when prophet Al Gore proclaims. He first proclaimed his invention of the Internet and later was honored by the Nobel Cabal for his proclamations on our causing Global Warming.
PS: As an aside, please recall the Nobel-stirs were the ones who gave Obama a Nobel Prize before he became president and for his good intentions, most of which remained intentions.
Never mind that the world has been warming for quite a few centuries now, long before we 8 billion humans started lighting fires and flipping switches. Hang on. Live long enough and an ice age is coming. Believe it or not! And, if you don't, come spend the winter in Woebegone.
3
Not one word from the former VP about nuclear power.
When it comes to energy, if you want it clean, cheap, abundant and you want it now, nukes are the only game in town.
On this subject, Booker is better informed than Gore.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2019/democrats-climate-town-hall/cory-booker-climate-change
"Nuclear is more than 50 percent of our non-carbon-causing energy. So people who think that we can get there without nuclear being part of the blend just aren’t looking at the facts.”
1
Germany, with its leader Merkel who has a physics PhD, opted to ban nuclear energy.
Renewable energy is ramping up very quickly there.
By the time one nuclear reactor is planned and built, let alone a long term waste storage plan put in place and accepted by some unlucky state (currently waste is just lying next to our reactors), we will have hydrogen solar panels and solid state batteries.
1
Issue a command. That's the takeaway.
Has Gore mentioned all of this to China and India?
2
There are too many people living on this planet. Why in the world should people receive tax deductions for having children? People talk about reproduction as if it's a right. It isn't. You have the right to mutilate your own body if you want. You have the right to believe what you want. But you don't have the right to have baby after baby when we all share the air, the water, and the land. The US should set an example for the rest of the world. Instead, we pretend we can only succeed by outnumbering the competition. It's a stupid argument to justify selfish behavior.
3
Mother Goose requires updating- "Four and twenty red winged blackbirds baked in a pie" The red winged blackbirds are stuffing for a "dainty dish to set before the king (Trump)." The king is in the counting house counting out his money-- and the maid (and the rest of the peasantry) are about to have their noses snipped off once again. Canadians will be building a border wall in the future to keep American's from moving north to where food can be grown. Keep it up Al, but a Marine veteran in the solar energy business just got beat in North Carolina after the republicans called him an America hater who jacked up the cost of power bills and bought solar technology from China, costing American jobs. Less than 40% voted.
“How is it possible that the most intellectual creature to ever walk the earth is destroying its only home?
Jane Goodall
2
where is the regional research looking at what types of trees, shrubs, crops and grasses are most effective pulling carbon out of the air?
educating EVERYONE about what each of us can do HELP - empowers humanity to do something.
if individuals feel they are helping, they WILL do more.
1
With the decline of traditional religions, humans in the developed west are struggling mightily to find a replacement - the Church of Climate and Earth is a strong contender - it offer an explanation for everything that affects humans, including existential threats. Al Gore is like Joel Osteen, cashing in on this group hunger for an overarching theory of everything and enforcing a culture and cult of conversion. Seen this story many times before - same deep need, different explanation.
4
Al Gore's lifestyle is an issue that is at once separate from, and connected to, the environmental crisis.
His work on behalf of identifying and combating global warming has been vital and instrumental in this crisis facing the world.
His personal lifestyle represents the dilemma that we all face, comprehending the problem yet denying the necessity of making personal sacrifices.
For those who feel unable to take up a bicycle, turn off the air conditioning and become vegans, try making any change, no matter how small, and it is likely that your capacity to change will increase, along with your sense of empowerment.
5
We all must do what we can.
If you have the means to install solar panels or geothermal, do it now. And get your investments out of oil and gas and agribusiness and air travel.
If you have the means to install LED lightbulbs and ride a bike and take public transportation, do that.
Eat as local and as low on the food chain as possible. Grow a garden, Hang your laundry. Vote the climate deniers out of office. Strike for the climate. Insulate your house. Donate to organizations that educate girls worldwide as girls who are educated chose to have smaller families when they are women.
Donate to organizations such as 350 dot org and the Sunrise Movement. Speak out for climate action and climate justice.
Above all, simplify. Stop consuming so much.
We all must do what we can in this greatest challenge of any generation.
3
Al Gore makes an unexpected appearance. He shares information that is already well known, promoted more often nowadays by others who choose to be more visible to the public.
While "battle of our time" may be accurate, it's not the only battle of our time. The Constitution of the United States is in the process of being subverted and there is indeed a vast right wing conspiracy promoting white supremacy while simultaneously dismantling measures already taken to deal with climate change. This includes a campaign to convince us that it is a hoax. If we are truly committed to dealing with climate change, the most immediate steps we can take is to remove from elected office those who are rolling back the progress we've made so far. We can't win Gore's battle of our time while they stand in the way.
1
Who is "we" and what is "winning"? Neither of these are as clear as one might think o first reflection. Mr. Gore posits the idea that we are on the cusp of a revolution, one ushered in by those forces in whom he has so much faith: silicon valley, venture capital, the global financial system. He is not listening to what the climate strikers are saying. He has always believed that the current structures of production, innovation, finance and power were capable of solving the problems if only they 'knew' the truth. The strikers are rejecting Mr. Gore's techno-optimism. In terms of carbon budget and the likelihood of keeping temperature rise under 2, let along 1.5° C we are nowhere close. They reject Mr. Gore's notion of out crisis as best considered an 'opportunity' for green growth. It is a crisis and needs to be thought of and treated as such. Furthermore, as Vaclav Smil argues, we need to think differently and manage de-growth in the rich world to enable Africa can grow. To do this will require a new politics with a robust, global political movement that embraces new technology but without fetishizing it. We are far from there. Likewise we need new institutions not ecologically born-again global capital markets. Neither Mr. Gore nor the leaders of the EU or Japan get any of this. The new politics and the new political economy are just beginning!
1
Al Gore brings to us the two things most needed at this time: hope and trust. Hope and trust is what motivates people to continue to fight the good fight. It is what motivates people, like Gore himself, to get up every morning and produce answers.
If nothing else, do not buy into the darkness the narcissists and plutocrats would have us believe: that they know better.
Thank you Mr Gore for continuing to act with positive willfulness and continue to inspire.
Naïve. The planet is decades behind the curve on changing over from fossil fuels and the technology today is insufficient to cover the indeterminacy problems of wind/solar or the transportation and heavy infrastructure needs. Projections are for increased fossil fuel use around the planet from the EIA and IEA at a time when fossil fuel use should drop about 1-2 % every year.
Renewables are not renewable and are not cheaper requiring hundreds of times more concrete, steel, copper, cobalt, nickel, neodymium, and other materials when compared to conventional plants. None of them are infinite. Energy storage is very limited and very expensive—the Hoover dam has about 2000 MW capacity and rarely puts that much electricity on the grid—and lake mead is looking a bit sickly in storage. The US has One million MW of installed capacity—there is no storage system that can power the grid for long and batteries will NOT work due to materials limit and energy density. Germany has the highest electricity rates in Europe and essentially no real change to their per capita carbon footprint over the last 20 year…renewables did not lower costs or CO2 output.
We can’t escape our own stupidity. As governments continue on a needed revenue growth path, fossil fuel use will not be curtailed. I don’t see where the hope comes from
3
Al, I love your courage and optimism, but you're hopefulness isn't based on rational analysis.
The simple fact is that every human requires major inputs and creates tons of pollution and biosphere harm...just to stay alive.
Every human born in the course of its lifetime will be fueled, fed, clothed and otherwise sustained by logging, mining, agriculture, energy production, and the entire technoindustrial grid.
Our entire civilization is built by invading native pristine ecosystems, killing most of the native species, plundering what we can, and then moving on to do the same thing somewhere else.
We're the one species that never fits harmlessly into an ecosystems niche.
So unless we can quickly figure out a way to lower human population growth, anthropogenic mass extinction is assured.
We are the most relentless killers, consumers and polluters ever evolved, and will do to the biosphere what cancer cells do to a body.
5
“Things take longer to happen than you think...”
Is that why every single apocalyptic prediction ever made by Gore was not just wrong, but off the charts wrong?
Heck, what does he care. It made him a centi-millionaire, living comfortably on his massive, energy consuming, ocean front estate and flying around on private jets whenever he needs to go anywhere.
Gore’s pompous climate claims are almost as bad as Lizzie’s Native American claims.
4
@Ken
Gore never made any projections...climate scientists have and all have been correct or actually conservative. Sea level rise is on the high end of projections as is ocean temperature increases.
Gore became a centi-millionaire selling his media network and investing in apple he was on the board.
Tu quoque is not a reality based argument...climate is changing about 20 times faster than is does from any natural causes. If you old enough it won't matter, if you have kids or grand kids, they are in trouble.
The mortal sin of Americans is that too many Americans cave in to the endless rabid Republican smears and PROPAGANDA campaigns.
2
Climate crisis is due to sex being very popular.
This is the crisis we face.
4
Mr Gore,
Run for President again. Seriously.
Regards,
Your First Vote
4
AL Gore should run for president.
1
VP Gore please come back to public service and run for president we you more then ever
1
If you didn’t give up and challenged GW Bush we would be in so much better shape environment wise as well as pretty much in everything else! Imagine no Trump! No creeps like Kavanaugh in the SCOTUS!!
1
Wow! All those embellishments. Obviously written by a politician.
2
"trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs"
This kind of absurd hyperbole is not helpful. You mean the atomic bomb that vaporized hundreds of thousands of people in an instant and flattened an entire city? That Hiroshima bomb?
Over the top talk like this helps feed the skepticism you people are all so worried about.
4
Meanwhile, Israel is planting trees everywhere and is one of the only countries in the world that is creating new greenspace.
1
I can take this from lots of people whose intentions are good, Al Gore is not one of them. He is a profiteer from fear who talks out of both sides of his mouth and elsewhere.
3
Thank you, Mr Vice President. They stole the presidency from you but not your heart.
1
Greta Thunberg is our world's Climate Crisis Joan of Arc. Lead on!!!
1
Though many positive developments are taking place to reduce the looming climate catastrophe it is necessary, in final analysis, to develop the political wil for a new global governance system that is geared towards dealing with the climate in crisis.
One of those possible global governance systems is the one proposed in Verhagen 2012"The Tierra Solution: Resolving the Climate Crisis through Monetary Transformation" (www.timeunn.net) where the system is based on a monetary carbon standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person and its associated balance of payments system where both the financial and climate credits and debts are accounted for. The commercial, intellectual, ecological and strategic dimensions are presented there in seminal form, awaiting funding and political support by all stakeholders and supporters of yesterday global climate strikes.
States one outstanding economist and climate specialist about this Tierra global governance system: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
Al Gore, some readers say is a hypocrite, therefore ignore him.
That's like saying ignore your doctors advice to stop smoking because he smokes.
1
Amazing hubris to think we can control the weather, LOL.
2
@AACNY
Exactly. Always enjoy your comments btw. A singular voice of reason in these comments.
1
Thermopylae, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Lexington and Concord, Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Bulge, Midway and Sept. 11? No. It is a potential mass extinction event, an apocalypse. Al documents the threat, but his proposals, seemingly reasonable, never rise to the magnitude of the problem.
Wow. Al has finally thrown down the gauntlet. Good job!
1
Oh boy! Listen to Al Gore lay out the facts, both optimistic and cataclysmic, and then listen to Donald Trump laying on the lies, thick as cream cheese, and in a language that may be English, or some combination of that and Klingon, and your head spins as if possessed by a demon. We need leaders like Gore and kids like Greta Thunberg to LEAD us to sanity. We will look back on this time as the “collective ostrich”; the time when we collectively buried our heads in the sand, or cell phones, if you will. These Leaders need to our heads out , and shove us forward.
Gore needs to look at his own carbon footprint before lecturing the rest of us.
4
Al Gore is a poor spokes person for climate change action. We can do better and must!
2
Lump it all together, and we have one major party in this country which has prevented, blocked, and resisted any action on climate change; mass shootings (not to mention the high overall rate of deaths by guns); an attack on our democracy by Russia; and a corrupt, criminal, mentally unfit, ignorant, traitorous president who is a chronic and pathological liar and who has put his own interests in other countries over those of the country he's supposed to be overseeing, including defending a foreign adversary who attacked us while instead vilifying and going after the FBI and other domestic personal adversaries. Yet this party acts on increasing pollution, increasing carbon output, increasing gun sales, going Taliban on women, dehumanizing entire groups of people (Muslims, black people, gay people, Mexicans/brown immigrants, liberals); working overtime to undo programs that give Americans affordable health insurance; putting perjurious, rabidly partisan men with histories of mistreatment of women on the US Supreme Court, while having blocked a legitimate, census candidate, and seems to be for one thing: tax cuts for very wealthy people and redirecting all income to that group...The GOP has become a party of cynicism, toxicity, destruction, despair. Nothing good.
Let us make Al Gore 46th in 2020 Presidential Election.
The climate fight is taking place in the cities. It is where the kids protest, in Europe it is where Low Emission Zones ban polluting vehicles, it is where the transformation of mobility is taking place in favor of pedestrians, bicycles and electric scooters, etc.
Our major cities are Democratically controlled, including AOC’s NYC, but are going backward (Uber cars everywhere, lack of investment in public transport, ...) instead of forward.
The lack of questioning Democrat’s own efforts is why a political figure like Al Gore or AOC is unsuited as our climate advocate.
1
We have had droughts, famine, floods, hurricanes, warming periods, cold periods all before. But we have never had this many people clustered in places they never were before.
Starvation and disease were killing people when I was growing up 60 years ago. We still cannot fix these long term endemic problems. And the same countries are still starving.
Some day, some where there might be a problem with climate. But for every problem it causes, it helps other people survive.
Al, take your polluting jet, your steak suppers, your cognac and help people still suffering now.
2
I can't wait for my son to wake up and read this. He is 16 years old and won't be able to vote in 2020. I am deeply informed in the science, and understand how nearly impossible it looks to fix the killing trend of temperature change.
But I do believe there is a chance.
And articles like this, and people like Al Gore make me excited for my son.
I am tempted to wake him up to read it....
This week, we installed 70 solar panels ($45,000ish) which will pay for themselves within 15 years. In order to get the tax break, we had to put them in this year instead of buying a new electric car. Some people are concerned about what my neighbors think of the addition to our house. Aesthetics, I guess. As long as we continue to question the wisdom of adopting alternative energy -- right? because some birder environmentalists are dead set against wind turbines -- and don't embrace solutions, Al Gore's efforts will wallow in the hemming and hawing so typical of human nature. Solutions are what we need now -- end of discussion.
If Gore had not had the presidency stolen from him we might have been able to implement the solutions he proposes much sooner. The denial of climate change is just one of the many bad consequences of that Supreme Court decision. Maybe now people will listen to Mr. Gore, and to the millions protesting around the world.
5
For someone who has seen himself at the vanguard for action to address climate change, Mr. Gore's article is regrettably jejune. While one should never surrender hope, there is little reason for optimism.
The difference between the crises he cites in this article and the ones we are facing in climate change is that if we do nothing, then the results are far more existential than the hypothetical consequences from any of the past military analogies he offers.
But more to the point, any effective action we could take requires major changes in the way we consume, fabricate, occupy land, trade, and reproduce: changes we show at no level we are even willing to entertain in any way that matters.
The fastest growing "new" economies have already firmly invested in the worst patterns of western industrial and consumptive development with the environmental devastation to prove it. What evidence is there anywhere that we are ever going to stop the very habits that spur climate change, as new nations enter this destructive arena?
And as we and many western democracies are facing political tides that want to roll back the clock to some imaginary time of glory when mass consumption was even more symbolic of quality of life, preaching austerity or relocation to stem climate change is a non-starter. We have taken the desire to have our cake and eat it, too, to the point of no return.
Arab Spring protestors were young and angry. Many died for the cause. They brought down governments. Yesterday’s protests were benign by comparison. It remains to be seen whether protestors are mustering political strength or just socializing.
There is but one solution to global warming and it is to vote out the Republicans. I say this as a registered Republican. And I hope that one day my party will again regain its' sanity.
8
@Drew The U.S. could drop off the face of the earth and stop emitting carbon, but the effect would be negligible. I am afraid that reducing this to an internal U.S. problem is just incorrect.
6
@Herr Andersson
Every step in the cleaner and saner direction helps.
1
@KA It really doesn't. Lowering the rate of carbon emissions just moves the warming curve out a bit. So instead of California becoming a desert in 2080, it might be 2090 instead. I wouldn't really call that helping the situation.
2
If things continue as usual, there will soon come a time when the conversation must change to "doing something" to "dealing with it" ex post facto.
In that case, it won't just be about planting trees and increasing auto fuel standards (thought that should continue); it will be about population controls, migration and settlement regulations, and unmasking Al Gore's brand of progressivism as an ideological facet of the permanent spectacle of fascism.
What happens when you can't stop or reverse climate change? Nobody talks about that. Figures like Al Gore never discuss what that means for everyday life or politics, except in a apocalyptic way. Most likely, even if all the ice caps melt, and the seas rise tens of meters, human life will persist, but what will it look like? What kind of politics will emerge to manage it, to deny it, to claim it can be "solved"?
While many folks want to conserve an ecological past, far fewer are thinking about failure, except as a final end, when this is not likely to occur. Environmental failure on climate change must be reconceived as a political problem, or failure will be capture by the forces of reaction and defined in their interests with the tools of deception, white supremacism and religion.
It's time to think beyond Al Gore's optimism and to be brutally honest about life after environmental failure.
The article's title is incorrect. We actually do not have the tools to avert climate disaster. We may have the technical tools, but that is not enough.
What is lacking is the global political organization. Each country acts independently, so if even one highly populous country, such as Indonesia, continues emitting carbon, the planet is doomed.
It matters little that the U.S., who comprises a small minority of the problem and population, has lots of debates about this problem. Global demonstration by young people do not change global government, which doesn't exist.
To fix the problem, there has to be a global authority. Otherwise, it is just a lot of strutting and fretting, signifying nothing.
2
If only you had been president over, well, you know.
1
Comment 2 to this article: VP Gore, why don't you jump in and run for president?? We need you.
1
Go Gore, and go forward Planet Earth!
And where is Obama in all of this??
2
Al Gore, it is your time to lead. Take the lead now and your contribution will dwarf that of being US President. I and billions of others will follow. You leadership is legitimate - lead now.
1
is it really, when we have racists on the rise and racism all but brazenly expressed?
The time to measure twice is past. We need the board stretcher.
It would be nice to think we can win this battle. Unfortunately, the votes which propelled you to the Presidency, mine among them, have never even been counted. I hear they are in a locker in Miami somewhere. Trump is an abject idiot. You were cheated out of the Presidency. My hope for the future is severely tainted.
2
dear NYT you still don't get it. Is the story of an american football player really more important than stories - they should be plural - about coordinated actions taken around the world? I'm bilingual, have raised my kids to be the same, nice opinion piece ... but is that really timely, with so many people in so many countries demonstrating for the climate?Is Al Gore the only voice you want or need for an opinion here??
btw 100k was in Hamburg. 270K in Berlin ( official estimate), in Germany alone one in every 78 people on the street. World wide? we wouldn't know from the nyt. There would have been way more u.s. press coverage if it had been a neo- nazi incident, I fear.
why is the climate emergency systematically ignored?
1
We need people to stop praying the gay away. Pray the gay. Full stop.
2
Run for president now!!
3
Young voters and teenagers are changing the dynamic of politics this year and next year. No longer can Trump pretend he has political mindshare when the climate protest is bigger, spanning left right as well as generations. This weekend marked a turning point. No longer can that "crazy uncle" get away with longing to bring back polluted skies and waterways, fossil fuel cars that are more expensive than electrics, or energy that has to be sucked from the ground. The times they are a changin'.
3
dancing around air travel and tourism. we can't even talk about it yet given that everything we do involves GHG emissions... and only a few hundred million of us are counted repeatedly as "passengers", aviation accounts for a whopping 2 per cent of global emissions. only an abeyance on all private and commercial air travel can be the first real baby step on emissions. followed obviously by almost a miracle on making up for any lost aerosol effects.
2
I am a great fan of yours Mr. Gore and I think you've done great work to raise awareness of the existential danger we face but why have you or anyone else not talked about the single most important factor imperiling human existence. In the face of this problem all others e.g. deforestation, fossil fuels, plastic pollution, are meaningless. The problem I am referring to is the exploding human population! If we don't control that, no amount of electric cars or paper straws will do any good. In fact cutting carbon emissions, while laudable, may actually be counterproductive if it lures us into a false sense of progress. Control the global population. That is the fight of our times. Of course, population control is a much harder issue to deal with than carbon emissions or reducing plastics. A thought experiment to put things in perspective: we could reduce human carbon emissions to zero within 80 years or less if everyone stopped reproducing from this moment on.
@M
Population is an important issue but it isn't the primary crisis feeding climate change. If you want to know what is, follow the money.
It is simple: End tax subsidies for coal, gas and petroleum. Institute a carbon tax. The simplest short term fix would be to raise the gasoline tax. Our Republican controlled legislature in Wisconsin fights any increase in the gasoline tax, tooth and nail. This is in spite of crumbling infrastructure.
4
I will begin to see the light when writers on climate change begin to see the connection between population increase and global warming. Who do they think causes global warming. All the new (and good) ecological efficiencies will be overwhelmed by the simple fact that people will consume far more of the worlds resources than these eco items can ever save. Its the elephant in the room.
1
The argument that the U.S. hasn't the got what it takes to reverse what Reagan did to Jimmy Carter's energy initiatives is laughable. The U.S.has the capability to drop down from the sky and build a city on any part of the planet in a matter of days.
The lies of what we can and cannot do are merely confusion stacked up by the likes of Reagan, Cheney and Trump.
2
@Guy Walker. Actually our carbon footprint is below 1992 levels, so exactly what lies are you talking about? It’s fairly obvious Obama did nothing - oh, wait, we propped up Solyndra.
So if "Climate is the battle of our time" and China and India are by far the biggest generators of green house gasses, why don't we declare war against them? I'm old enough to have lived through all the media-driven apocalypses that haven't happened since I was a kid: nuclear war, the new ice age, overpopulation leading to famine, acid rain, nuclear winter, the death of amphibians around the world, global warming, climate change, and now climate crisis. If President Obama feels OK with spending $15M on an ocean front estate on Martha's Vineyard, I think the world's going to be just fine over the newt few decades. Just sayin".
2
@writerinbh
The USA is the second largest contributor of CO2, larger than India. The USA is also one of only three countries in the entire world (including Syria and Nicaragua) that pulled out of the Paris Agreement. Put your own house in order before you start declaring war on other countries.
Thank you for this piece. It does seem that almost overnight, people have come together and been willing to act on climate change. My husband and I have always tried to be caring of the environment, but just over the past month, we became vegetarians and are shopping for an electric car. Somehow we were moved from action to ACTION. The energy and commitment are out there. The only thing we can do is keep on fighting and who knows? Maybe the result will be better than we thought. Maybe scientists will find a way to extract carbon dioxide from the air.
2
"A farmer-led regenerative agriculture revolution that is also underway avoids plowing and focuses on building soil health by sequestering carbon dioxide in the ground, making the land more fertile."
Apparently Al Gore doesn't realize that CO2 is absorbed by LEAVES through small openings, called stomata. The stomata open to absorb the carbon dioxide needed to perform photosynthesis. If we ignore the fact that CO2 is a gas that can't be sequestered in the ground, implementing Al Gore's "regenerative agriculture revolution" would insure that all plant life on this earth would cease to exist.
2
@tim k
Learn about perma-culture farming. Yes, plants can and do sequester carbon back into the soil.
@Al M
Learn about the carbon cycle. Plants don't sequester CO2.
The USA is one of three countries in the world not in the Paris agreement, along with Syria and Nicaragua. (The USA is the second largest CO2 emitter.)
This is Trump's doing. He doesn't want regulation. He doesn't have any interest in innovation (at this point.)
Vote wisely.
2
@KA
China emits nearly twice as much CO2 as the US (27.2% vs 14.6%). India emits 6.8%, Russia 4.7%, Japan 3.3%... all of whom have signed the Paris accord. While their CO2 emissions continue to rise, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has affirmed that reduced energy-related carbon emissions have been reduced 14 percent since 2005, noting that these reductions are “mainly” attributable to increased natural gas use for electricity generation.
The Paris Accord is toothless and only a fool would believe that countries like China and India will even attempt to meet its goals.
1
Mr. Gore is articulate on the relatively simple matter of achieving energy sustainability and totally silent about the need to build a new world and a new economy in the bargain. This is the adaptation of the same old same old to a saner energy use. That won't wash and it is a disservice to all to suggest that this an answer.
3
Gore made a film about climate change while living in an enormous, energy-guzzling home. There’s the problem in a nutshell. Unless the entire world unites, right this second, and agrees to fundamentally transform every aspect of modern life to mitigate (never mind stop) climate change, we are doomed. That means an end to human greed and selfishness. As if that’s going to happen.
2
It is disappointing to see those who would lead us address the symptoms and avoid the real cause of global environmental deterioration: world overpopulation. Many contributors have brought forth this idea. Indeed, it is a tough political issue. Imagine a politician speaking for less constituents!
Climate change, species extinction, habitat decimation, over fishing, worldwide migrations fleeing genocides.
There are too many people. Mr. Gore: what are you proposing to do about this!
2
Really?
Mr. Gore, by virtue of his tireless research, writing, and speaking on the climate crisis, has been and continues to be a vital source of information to millions of people, which is, it should go without saying, an enormously valuable contribution to peoples’ awareness of the climate crisis and its causes - without awareness there would be no action. Mr. Gore is one of a number of prominent writers, scientists and other public figures who make use of their stature to keep the climate crisis on the op-Ed page, in the nightly news, on talk shows, in books, magazines and websites.
2
All the positive actions mentioned here: Treating the symptoms while the disease worsens, unchecked.
All the issues cited in this article are the direct result of one root cause: Too many people.
The world population is about 7.6 billion, double what it was in the 1970's, and still growing, today, at 80 million more each year. Unless that can be halted: Go ahead, conserve, convert, do without -- and those are feel-good actions. So long as population growth continues, we -- including all animal life on Earth -- are doomed.
Enforced birth control -- as in each birth is followed, by law, by tying the mother's fallopian tubes -- is the only action that may save mankind. The chance of such laws being enacted and enforced are nil.
Say goodbye.
How about tyingoff the seminal vesicles after a man creates a child?
"The accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases — some of which will envelop the planet for hundreds and possibly thousands of years — is now trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs would release every 24 hours.This is the crisis we face." And, it indicates that, as experts have said, we need to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere if we're to reduce global warming and control climate change. To do this will require more than trees, but a Manhattan Project to develop effective carbon-capture technology. If the U.S. could muster the talent to build an atomic bomb in a few years, it can do this. But, it will take leadership that is currently lacking.
4
It's not a matter of can, but must. But what winning looks like remains to be seen.
We have been unfortunate in my adult lifetime, since 1975, to have had world leaders who are more interested in short-term power for the few than long term prosperity for the many.
We have more in common than not, and live in a time of relative plenty compared with what is to come, and come soon. Should the power of the many be harnessed for the good of all then we stand a chance at averting complete disaster. But if the few continue to beggar their neighbors then we will reap the whirlwind.
2
New Yorkers should be proud that the state and city of New York have passed stringent environmental laws this year -- the goal for NYC is reduction of carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, and by again as much by 2050 -- an 80% reduction over current output.
Here is a policy change that could actually accomplish something. It is interesting to hear people complain and say it is too complicated -- sometimes the same folks who spend extra $$ for "green" laundry detergent....and who are raising young children.
The fact is that we are faced with a massive problem that has been accumulating for more than a century -- and we are at a breaking point. The cost for a meaningful response to climate change is STEEP, and it is time for people to face up and do it.
In New York, that means understanding the new laws and complying with them -- without whining. I hope we do.
1
Al Gore penned the article. So, he should know better when, putting things in perspective and given the decades he's already spent advocating for this very cause in front of large audiences all over the world, today in 2019 it's nonetheless left for all to see that, the net result brought to bear by this brand of ideologic proselytism today exposes us to a situation that, by and large, and despite the almost upbeat tone and cheerful optimism shining through his report, in reality, things have gotten globally so far worse than, say 50 years ago.
And there, the media may be in part complicit in pulling the wool over people's eyes while greenwashing their audiences with examples of small scale laudable actions perpetrated by single individuals or small groups whereas behind the screen a full-blown and largely underreported plundering of Earth's riches has been underway for much too long.
Driven by the greed of nameless lobbyists, business corporations too often backed by governments, in an all coercing effort to bleed the planet white if that's needed to boost the economy regardless of the terrible impact onto the environment. Those should be more overtly denounced by the press.
So, for that reason and given today's stakes, this is the kind of article, I might have been more excited to read say, 30 years ago. because it's getting hard to think that we are, indeed, making any substantial progress.
1
@jeanfrancois
In 1970 people started "Earth Day" -- and that was the start, I think, of large-scale media attention. I agree that "greenwashing" people into thinking that small gestures are more significant than they really are.
But we are at a point where there are laws coming online that will regulate carbon emissions, and enforce the use of sustainable energy sources.
It's too bad this didn't happen in 1970, or in 1990, or in 2010. But it's happening now, in spite of the greedy and corrupt team in Washington. We have to work with what we've got -- New York and California have new laws, Europe has laws, China has laws -- people are trying. What harm is there in encouraging a hopeful trend? If there are good laws and widespread compliance, we may see substantial progress -- whether it will be enough is for us to find out.
2
@Rinwood
And I agree,
I guess, what I wanted to get across is that despite all the emphasis placed on good intentions, consequences today are disastrous overall.
In other words, there is a pervading sense of too little, too late.
Which isn't said to belittle the likes of Al Gore or G.Thunberg and the message they carry. However, like it or not, in 2019 either to take to the streets to protest Climate Change, or late-in-the-game law amendments calling for drastic cuts in carbon emission, etc still appear to be no match with what, in scale, is happening right now before our eyes and furthermore tomorrow, which is even harder to imagine.
There shouldn't be, just one Earth Day but 365 of such all year round.
That said, indeed there are also reasons to remain somewhat hopeful.
The Global Climate Change Train has left the station. You can't catch up and you can't stop it. If Man left the planet, the momentum of climate change would continue on as a new normal, morphing in ways we could not know.
Reduce population growth, move away from flood plains, forest fires and fault lines. Stop deforestation. Continue replacing carbon producing vehicles and power plants with so-called clean tech and move towards a plant based diet.
Did I miss anything we don't already know?
2
You might remind Apple board member Al Gore that the globalized supply chain of their physical products has a huge carbon footprint. Offsets are shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic- we need big companies to re-localize production where possible.
2
@RonRich
Say it again! and keep repeating it!
1
The problem is overshoot. Population, technology, and extreme wealth concentration create the conditions for environmental collapse and extinction.
A sustainable human population would be in the 10-50 million range, living in pre-industrial conditions, with near-perfect egalitarianism.
Sounds good? Well, we could get there in a post-apocalyptic scenario, but extinction is much more likely.
I am trying to be hopeful but I am not sure coordinated policy among various nations can throttle population growth, capitalist exploitation of natural resources and/or engage in meaningful exchanges to promote the welfare of the planet- over and above all else
2
Let’s all please remember climate change's nasty little brother, the physical manifestation of carbon dioxide, plastic. We are saturating the planet with plastic. We all ingest the equivalent of a credit card per week right NOW, while plastic production is steadily increasing! This is an urgent matter.
3
I'm just here to say thank you President (!) Gore, I've met you and have heard you speak and have always been impressed. You are the true meaning of a leader, and I often wonder where our world/our country would be today had the Supreme Court not stolen the presidency from you. Sandra Day O'Connor even admitted later that she'd wanted to retire and wanted a Republican in the White House, turning our country into a democracy of one. Thank you for your ongoing leadership in this much broader issue.
4
Check the EPA website.
The US CO2 emissions for 2018 are about what they were 25 years ago despite an increase in industrial production. They peaked around 2007 and have been declining since then.
So that’s hopeful.
I think the only big countries not on board to reduce greenhouse gases are Russia and Brazil.
Russia expects to profit from a melting Arctic. And Brazil from cutting down trees.
2
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now. Mr. Gore was our tree 20 years ago, and he did win the majority of the ballots. We know how that ended. Let’s not miss our chances to plant trees today.
4
I have never gotten over the 2000 election. We had a chance to elect someone who saw what scientists like James Hansen had been saying for years: that global warming was a huge threat to civilization. Mr. Gore has definitely suffered the curse of Cassandra. Spurned by the god Apollo, who had given her the gift to see the future, his curse was that she would keep this gift but no one would believe her. If this tragedy of his not going to the White House still upsets me, how does he feel about it?
And how does Mr. Gore feel about Ralph Nader, who clearly cost him a win in Florida, and therefore the presidency? I cannot get over that either: the irony of the Green Party supporting someone – great as he is – whose candidacy blocked what would have been a huge step toward dealing with this environmental crisis.
8
@M. Sherman
Its not too late for Mr. Gore to announce his candidacy for 2020. He was the best choice for 2000, but an even better choice now. His bona fides goes way beyond environmental issues. An all around statesman/politician for this or any time.
We can do this if we are all pulling on the oars. Unfortunately, half the country is pulling hard in the opposite direction.
2
We must replant our lost forests, but even more, we must stop cutting old-growth forests immediately. Mature trees sequester far more carbon than a field of saplings. They also create and support an ecosystem that exponentially magnifies their carbon capture, and dies with them when they are cut. There’s a wisdom in an old forest that we may never fully understand.
2
Very little old growth forest remains in North America. Carbon sequestration in an even aged mature forest ( different from an old growth forest ) has pretty much, by definition, leveled off. While an acre of seedlings and sapplings may not maximize sequestration, the next couple of size classes do. If you desire pole timber and small sawlogs you need to start with seedlings and sapplings which do, by the way, support an equally valid ecosystem. Forest management designed to maximize sequestration is similar to the forest management designed to maximize production of forest products we all use. Forest products are not just A sutaimably produced raw material, they are THE ONLY sustainably produced raw material.
"More damage and losses are inevitable, no matter what we do, because carbon dioxide remains for so long in the atmosphere."
All that carbon in the carbon dioxide was sequestered in the lithosphere in the form of complex hydrocarbons until we dug up and burned it, converting it into heat and carbon dioxide.
Some of it will get temporarily converted back into plant material in the biosphere, but that is temporary. Plants die and burn or decompose, releasing it back into the atmosphere. It will take geological millennia to get it back into the lithosphere.
Stopping, or even slowing it down will take an all hands on deck movement. In the developed world, we need to develop a high-quality, low impact lifestyle, and sell it or force it on everyone. Then we need to convince the third world that they can live that way too, and we need to help them implement it.
The daily commute, throw away packaging, and aviation have to go. The economy has to be redesigned so that it can stay robust without expanding, with a shrinking workforce and the gray wave that is the inevitable result of population reduction. The economy as it is now is inextricably linked with population growth, energy use, and the throwaway culture.
I deeply appreciate all that Mr. Gore has done and continues to do regarding climate change, but I'm compelled to point out that while green tech advancements are critical, we do not "have the technology". And while a political overhaul must take place and economic injustice must be addressed, that won't get us there- and here's why:
Nobody- not Mr. Gore and not AOC - are calling for us to evaluate our expectations as consumers. They are not questioning the sustainability of a growth based, market economy. There is no data showing that greener energy and other advances in soil and ocean management will decouple the curve of the material throughput associated with a culture that Avoids the question of population growth and continues to measure national well-being through GDP. So Mr. Gore's "ferocious attack on complacency" needs not only to be waged on our elected leaders, it needs to be waged on ourselves.
Mr.Gore and AOC's efforts and activism are hugely important and laudable. But as long as (noble) efforts like The Green New Deal assume the continuation of market capitalism and the implication that we can keep living the way we have if we just install a few LED lights, stop using plastic, and vote out those lousy politicians- we will not get to where we need to be- not even close.
The revolution we need is with our own unwillingness to accept the imperitive for a massive paradigm shift in how we define the life well-lived, and so far- nobody is answering the bell.
3
@Claytronica: "nobody is answering the bell."
Some of us are, but nobody in the mainstream is listening. I call it a low-impact, high-quality lifestyle, and we need it yesterday.
Aviation, the daily commute, SUVs, throwaway packaging, and blueberries in December all have to go. The economy will have to be redesigned so that it can stay healthy as it and the population shrink.
Your point is well taken, but I am more hopeful. First, many do get it, especially millennials and younger. And, many of them do alter their lifestyles compared to older adults that don’t very much. second, as an engineer who has worked at solving environmental issues for a very major US company, I can tell you most of the issues could have been avoided with common sense and if business management had listened to their tech management people. It always went like this.....Engineers would recommend the solution to avoid a future issue. Upper management would ask how much more it would cost. Then they would ask whether it had to be done by law or merely should be done? Most future looking issues lag legislation. So, we would have to admit it did not have to be done, but should be done. Should hardly ever won. But when it had to be done eventually there was always newer technology available that made the conversion at least reasonable. Some we developed ourselves. American engineers are without parallel when given a challenge. One of our projects was to convert from using ozone hole depleting substances. Could have been done way before the US gov signed on to the treaty to phase them out. But when we had to do it, after all the handwringing, we all found ways to do it. And guess what? The hole in the ozone layer is closing at a substantial rate. Sure, it took over a decade, but nature is resilient once humans stop a bad practice. As the slogan goes, just do it.....
2
If and when China and India are part of the solution real progress can be attained. Until then stand-by!
Furthermore, if substantial reduction in CO2 is required in fewer than 50 years nuclear must be adopted as the core baseload technology.
2
@clarity007
The USA has double the amount of CO2 output than India. If everyone used the logic you are using, pointing at other countries and saying, stubbornly and childishly, I won't change until they do it, then we are truly in trouble.
I hope and pray you're right, Mr Gore, but I fear not. My reading of weather now [as a scientist from a different but related field] is that we've systematically underestimated the rate at which change is occurring. We've done this for explicable reasons - to have done otherwise in IPCC assessments would've inflamed further controversy - but nature cares nothing for our politics. Now we need to take carbon out of the air: a project of unknown risk and complexity. I'm not even sure you're right on the politics, but that's a field I can't even begin to understand.
1
Al, your solutions to this greatest of problems remain delusional after all these years. Just because the “cost” of solar and wind are becoming competitive with gas does not mean we can power an energy hungry planet of going-on 10 billion people with it. Who is advising you? Your figures omit the cost of completely remaking national electric grids throughout the world and you fail to consider that electricity is just one slice of our carbon emissions. Intermittency? Not addressed.
Germany is the one country in the world that has put into practice what you propose - national mobilization to switch to wind and solar. The results? Increasing C02 emissions (way off their Paris Climate Accord targets) and among of the most costly electric rates in the world. They’re still building coal plants! How does this jibe with your assertion that betting the future of human civilization on wind and solar is the way to go?
Open your mind to this: 10,000 mass produced advanced nuclear reactors rolling off assembly lines (like we do jet airliners). They fit seamlessly into the existing electric infrastructure around the world. They can even be inserted into existing coal plants, leaving everything but the coal burner intact. We have an inexhaustible supply of fuel from recycling existing nuclear waste and even extracting uranium from seawater (true!). The reactors can be used to produce industrial heat, unlike wind and solar. And it could be done in a single generation
1
@Robert S
Spot on Robert. Until there is consensus by kindergartners and leading climate change scientists that nuclear must be the baseload technology of choice meaningful reductions are a pipe dream.
It is vital that we focus on this primary existential issue. We must however realize that it is a twofold crisis. The juggernaut of catastrophic climate change and biological devastation cannot be separated from the undue influence of polluting corporations over public policy, nor can it be effectively addressed without also addressing this issue. Unless we separate the power of private wealth and corporate interests from our political and legislative system, we cannot do what is necessary to mitigate the climate catastrophe.
If climate change were an emergency, we would be building nuclear plants. Unlike solar and wind, nuclear is reliable - not dependent on weather. Certainly we need much more wind and solar than we have now, but 100% is not realistic. So far there have been no breakthroughs in electric storage at utility scale.
I am very pessimistic. We live in a corrupt country where the fossil fuel industry (possibly, just the Koch brothers) tells what passes for a president to rollback fuel efficiency when the car makers are arguing to for high mileage cars.
3
Vote thoughtfully. Vote with your dollar.
Support businesses that are innovative and lay out their plans on combatting climate change. Believe economics and a conscience about climate change can go together.
Lastly, question any religious leader who stands at a pulpit and preaches against birth control. Things have changed in the past 2000 years and religions need to change as well.
1
I (a Democrat) would go along with the Republican agenda on immigration and taxation of the wealthy if the Republicans would take climate change as seriously as Jay Inslee. And would take prompt actions along the lines suggested by VP Gore. That’s how important I regard this issue. But I have a feeling it won’t happen anytime soon.
I also blame in large part, the electoral vote.
We would be living in a climate pro-action country if you had been President Mr. Gore. And Hillary Clinton who won the popular vote, would have been President. How do we move forward if we vote for a President who will protect and fight for our basic rights, and that person isn't confirmed into office over and over again?
It would be useful if Mr. Gore listed the actions that he has personally taken to combat climate change. I have yet to see any of the top tier political climate activists take that step.
5
Vice President Gore, AOC, and other climate zealots need to walk the walk on this important topic. They should be setting the example by traveling via train or bicycle only, living in small energy efficient housing, and adopting a vegan diet. Without this, they come across like television preachers living like rock stars.
6
This is the price we pay for letting corporations run our country, buy our politicians, and escape regulations, and the law. If we push the corporatists and Republicans out of Congress, and our state legislatures, we will be able to move faster, and more effectively, to save ourselves and our world. We can divert funds from defense, and oil subsidies, and end tax breaks for them and the rich, to pay for the effort to clean up the environment, and find sustainable ways to do everything we need to do. We can, once again, join with our traditional allies to coordinate this effort for mutual benefit and protection, as well as peace around the world. Far right governments will never do any of this, and we know it. All they care about is their own money and profit, not the survival of humanity.
5
Now that Corporations are people, one way to solve this is by
countries suing corporations ( and other countries ) for the damage done to their communities . The only way some countries (ie.USA, etc) will learn is if it costs them.
4
The earth is warming and the idea that this will be limited to 2 degrees C should be dispelled.
The Last Glacial Maximum 20,000 years ago hit -2 degrees C and then went further to somewhere between -3.5 and 5. People went south.
Seems quite likely to me that this heating up will go far beyond the 2 degrees and may exceed the extreme range of +3.5 to + 5.
People will move north.
We MAY be able to keep the absolute worse from happening, but I suspect this is going to be a much greater disaster for the world than is being widely reported.
5
TWO THINGS WE HAVE TO DO. 1. change our transportation systems into non-burning fossil fuel systems using Earth's magnetic core, present-day technology and recycling of current transportation materials. 2. have dialogue about human overpopulation and give incentives to have fewer children. Planting trees is great, but monoculture will not save the world, and no amount of trees we plant will work if we continue to over populate.
2
An Inconvenient Truth - 2006
I cannot recall another documentary that made its case so well at the time and has proven so amazingly accurate afterward. That convinces me as well that we shall not overcome.
As I tourist I have traveled to Alaska about fifteen times over the last twenty years. The recession of the ice fields that I have seen myself has been major. The park service facility south of Anchorage showed a documentary about glaciers and then opened a great curtain revealing the facing glacier. The show continues and now reveals exposed rock and a patch of ice.
6
@stewart bolinger: Fifteen trips to Alaska? I hope you didn't fly there. In the sustainable future, you'll have to take fewer trips, and you will have to get there by sea or by train.
There is hope but not from the current cast of politcal leaders. Two of the major problems today.....global climate change and specifically to the US, guns, are being pushed by High School students. And they're making more sense than the hired politcal reps we have today.
3
It’s a scientific fact that solar and wind cannot scale nearly quickly enough to decarbonize our economy. The only way we have a chance of meeting greenhouse gas targets is to rapidly expand nuclear power. This scientific denialism is as bad as the scientific denialism that global warming is not caused my man. You can’t argue that climate change is an existential threat and at the same time take carbon free energy options off the table.
5
This comment is completely unsupported by the facts. PV and wind are far easier to scale, are already being deployed in massive amounts, and avoid the needless risks of nuclear.
A simple example, the most “modern” commercial reactor in the world is under construction in Georgia. The expansion of this existing nuclear plant with 2 new reactors of a modest 1GW each has been under construction since 2013 and is estimated to cost over $25 billion if it ever actually gets completed.
According to SEIA, there are presently about 110 GW of solar projects currently in development in the US, many of which can be built in 1-2 years. About 40 GW of wind projects are currently under development here as well with similar build times.
Costs for renewable energy are also much lower than nuclear. Lazard is a company that specializes in evaluating the lifetime cost of different energy sources including construction and fuel usage. Their 2018 report lists costs for nuclear plants of $112-$189 per megawatt hour, while solar and wind cost between $29-$56 (which is also slightly lower than the cost of new gas power plants). And costs for renewables continue to plummet.
Things are changing very rapidly. For us to be good citizens and stewards, we need to try to keep up with the changing facts and not just repeat outdated and inaccurate tropes.
Greta will be in Montreal this Friday. A lot of schools and colleges have decided to suspend activities so that students can attend the march.
Our federal government has introduced a carbon tax and some oil producing provinces have opted out. The Conservative Party of Canada has pledged to abolish the tax if they win the next election in October. They are campaigning for more pipelines to get more oil out of the ground.
So, good old Gore is right, it’s all about politics.
3
I was reading Gladwell's tipping point where he made a point (in the context of the Kitty Geovese story) that when asked to help one on one we would as humans rise to the occasion but if asked as a group we would be less likely to do so. Something about relying on the next person to show up.
With this crisis requiring all of us to participate and its resolution being far from immediate, it is likely that the above behavior controls our actions somewhat and until it is overcome the likelihood of avoiding disaster is slim.
Gore owns a house in Nashville, TN; according to reliable sources, it consumes more energy than most other homes in the area. Gore claims that his huge energy footprint is the result of energy credits. As far as I am concerned Gore is one of the biggest phonies in the history of America politics. Although I was not a fan of GWB and did not vote for him, I voted for Nader, I am glad W defeated Gore in 2000. Thank goodness for hanging chads. It would have been very embarrassing to have had a president superficially consumed with the Macarena and obsessed with earth-tone shirts. Thank you.
6
@Southern Boy: When I met Gore, I hit him with my pet peeve. He just gobbled when I told him that Congress legislating "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance brainwashed the US to be too infantile to thrive.
1
@Southern Boy - The south lost the war. Some South Forever's still live in the woods, waiting for Quatrill and Lee to arise again.
1
@Clearwater,
Your reply has nothing to do with my comment. I find that when someone can't reply logically they resort to an ad hominem attack like this. Yes, the South lost the Civil War, but my use of CSA has nothing to do with that but the fact that most Americans who live outside of the South and, unfortunately, some within, still look upon Southerners as if we have not progressed since the antebellum days. My use of CSA reflects that reality. And besides two of my ancestors fought and died for the CSA at Antietam, a fact for which I am extremely proud. Thank you.
1
Looks as if the 'young' are on board now but our world wide leadership are dragging their feet. The politics will shift soon though and we may see a shift to reason and real concern across the board.
The US needs to participate, again, in the Paris Climate Accord though. Trump's withdrawal from this agreement and other actions that work against any solution are delaying action at the request of the fossil fuel proponents.
2
For many of us, we refuse to admit there is a problem until we are proverbially slapped in the face with consequences. Is an increase in the number and severity of extreme heat in the south enough? How about the consistent annual destruction of Carribean islands from Category 4 and 5 hurricanes? I like Al Gore's optimism with all that we see towards the development of alternative and clean energy. But he stated: Yet for all this promise, here is another hard truth: All of these efforts together will not be enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently without significant policy change.
Therein lies the problem. Maybe we could alter JFKs famous quote to read: "Ask not what your planet can do for you, but what you can do for your planet". Go ahead, call me a globalist. I'm ok with that.
4
The first step - and most likely the most difficult - would be to convince celebrities to tone down THEIR lifestyle, as an example to the rest of us.
The second step would be the requirement that Government also tone down its energy consumption. No more vehicles above 4 cylinders (unless it's a police or military vehicle). No offices larger than 150 square feet. No office temps above a mandated level, during the winter. No office temps below a mandated level during the summer. And, most importantly, no government works exceeding the number needed for their tasks (e.g. MTA would be a great place to start).
Then, faced with these fine examples, the rest of us will be easily convinced to follow.
2
It’s incredible that Al Gore still gets air time to rant about Climate Change without using reliable facts - especially given that his credibility was ruined when it became evident much of the information in his Inconvenient Truth was proven to be erroneous or wrong. He has been brilliant in one area though - he has made a personal fortune selling his scare-mongering theories to the world.
6
Al Gore is not the 'leader' we need.
Youth will lead and we old men AND women must follow.
53 years ago I decided not to have my own children for the very reasons many young people are are now choosing to be childless.
4
@Lost In America Would we have the youth lead us in other endeavors? 10 year old generals and admirals? 14 year old CEO's? Probably not. It sounds great on paper but when it comes down to actual knowledge we should let the scientists lead.
4
As long as two of the world's major powers fail to act on the knowledge set out here once again by Mr Gore, there can be little real progress. And in places like Brazil or Indonesia forests are destroyed and replaced by palm-oil plantations. Yes, we have the knowledge, but when we are not just sitting on our hands they are tied by the facts of world politics.
3
I am an environmental professional who has been in this business for more that 40 years. When I first got in it for altruistic reasons, I thought that all the problems would be resolved in about ten years and I would have to find something else to do. Boy was I wrong! We have made tremendous progress in addressing water pollution, air pollution, hazardous/toxic wastes, land conservation and recycling/reuse. However, these challenges pale before the climate change challenge, the magnitude of which comes into clearer focus with each passing decade. The nations of the world have demonstrated their ability to come together and avoid environmental catastrophe through the Montreal Protocol, which banned CFC’s and reversed the destruction of the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere in 1991 under George H. W. Bush! We must resurrect that international coalition to drive the transition to carbon-free energy sources and leave coal, oil and gas in the ground.
5
The world has far too many people. Africa alone will add 2.4 billion people to its current 1.1b over the balance of the century.
How much more sensible than anything else would be a one- or two-child policy for the entire globe. And how much cheaper it would be.
Unlike Mr. Gore I foresee efforts that amount to very little. Poor people abroad will need to burn much more carbon to escape poverty. Who really thinks they can be or will be denied?
10
@dixon pinfold Could we please not blame the poor and developing nations for climate chanhe, they did not contribute to creating this disaster. Secondly I find it to be useful when addressing problems to first think of all the things we can do (and not use those things that seem too difficult as an excuse for non action).
4
Too much blame is put on leaders, and not enough responsibility is put on the voters who simply put, have not done enough to pressure politicians for change. Young people, who have the most to gain, are especially to blame. One march changes nothing. Where is the continued activism? Where are the political volunteers for change.
We are late to the challenge of stemming environmental degardation. The questions are why don't we care enough, and what will it take to finally mobilize the population of the world to force the politicians to make the meaningful challenges necessary.
2
Thank you for your positive energy Mr. Gore, you show us what real leadership looks like... I admire your tireless, selfless dedication to educate and effect public policy on climate change. I can only imagine how much further ahead we'd be on fighting climate change (and how much better off we might be in general) if the 2000 presidential election had been decided differently and you had become president. To say that we now have the wrong leadership is your only understatement. Please America, VOTE the naysayers and rollback supporters OUT...we need to roll forward with the likes of Mr. Gore.
18
The solution to climate change is to incentivize the oil and gas industry to achieve zero emissions by massive investment in carbon capture and storage. This solution has the benefit of being bipartisan, which is to say, realistic and fast. The opposite partisan approach, of demonizing this industry, has the reverse benefits: unrealistic and slow.
7
Irrational fear of NUCLEAR energy will make even the mitigation of global warming processes and consequences virtually impossible. Not a single reference to this carbon free energy technology that we continue to reject. Solar, wind, hydro, and NUCLEAR must all be a part of the solution.
4
@rab
The Big 4 should become the "moonshot" challenge of 2021. At a scale that makes the Apollo mission look like child's play.
1
Put a plant next to you, by the way that messy disposal issue can be placed in your backyard
I'm not a huge Al Gore fan, but at least he has the presence of mind to argue logically rather than emotionally, and to see that success remains possible rather than “it's too late, it's all over,” etc. It may be that you need both kinds, the Al Gores and the Greta Thunberg's, to achieve success. But surely you need more of the former.
4
Alternatively, the solution to global warming could entail an order of magnitude fewer people living in a sustainable fashion. The West has largely brought its population bomb under control, so from where are the additional hordes of people coming since the end of WWII? Primarily places that are already not very nice places to live or are spawning grounds for radical religions intent on overthrowing Western political and social norms. So yes, it would be lovely for the U.S. and Europe to further curb our carbon emissions per currency unit of GDP but not if that means merely marching in place while other countries double their populations without seeming to care in the very least.
7
Here in the US we could reduce our emissions to zero and it wouldn't move the needle compared to the greenhouse gases that China and India are pumping into the atmosphere. It will take some sort of action by these developing countries and it doesn't appear they are willing to play by those rules.
10
I am optimistic. There has been a groundswell of concern regarding global warming in just the past month. If this continues, it certainly can drive Trump and his compatriots out of office in 2020. A change to leadership with an understanding the science of climate change should be voter's number one priority. My children and grand children deserve a future.
And let us not forget to "walk the walk" ourselves, e.g., trains and buses instead of planes, products that are not wrapped in plastic, etc. We all need to recognize the big changes that this will take.
3
We must start planting trees on every unused open space. We must stop burning off natural gas produced as a result of fracking - heck, slow the fracking down once we have eliminated foreign oil sources and have replaced use where we can (you cannot yet fly a plane or run a locomotive on solar or wind power folks). Stop generating massive plastic waste in every household - switch to reusable everything and in minimum quantities. My generation is just learning how to do this (all solar at our home) but our kids are already expert at it. I worry about the water though - there doesn't seem to be any political will to fix water pipes here - my brother lives up in Toronto and they are rigorously changing the water mains and pipes to houses all over the city - makes me wonder why nothing is happening where I live - same vintage house....
3
Quite right. As Churchill observed, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing...After they’ve tried all of the alternatives.” In a short piece like this, it’s hard to detail all of the possible solutions available. For instance, Gore makes no mention of geothermal energy, essentially taking heat from under mountain ranges and turning it to electricity. There are already public companies doing this all over the world. Solar, Wind and Batteries might become also-rans in this derby. Finally, attention has to be paid to removing carbon from the air. Forests are a nice idea but stimulating plankton growth in the oceans will both remove carbon, save the oceans and create an abundant food supply. We seem to still be at the starting line in much of this discussion.
5
It will take politicians who will fight the status quo, and not accept false defeats.
3
Gore puts his finger on the fundamental truth of the climate crisis, that it was originally caused by over-reliance on polluting 19th Century fossil energy technology and can be addressed by movement to non-polluting 21st Century green energy tech.
This should be a natural process, particularly now that green tech is more cost-effective than fossil. How many other 19th Century technologies are still around?
Unfortunately, billionaires whose wealth depends on continued use of Earth's atmosphere as a free dump for unlimited amounts of their industrial waste greenhouse gasses have determined that a disinformation campaign and purchase of politicians to impede the marketplace's natural evolution are productive investments for them.
It was they who turned the climate crisis into a political issue. At this point, our grandchildren and their grandchildren will be consigned to blighted lives on a despoiled planet unless the big money interests behind obsolete energy sources are defeated by purging their puppet politicians and rolling back the legislative rigging they put in place over many decades.
12
Once again, quietly, climate control advocates are admitting that their solution to climate change includes the building of hundreds of nuclear reactors around the United States. Figure the average of 5 to 10 new small nuclear reactors in every state. The more people in the United States, the more nuclear reactors we need to build. We should be reducing migration and focusing on storing wind and solar energy. Advocates of the Green New Deal should be more honest. It is time for them to stop lying.
6
People around the world are beginning to lose patience with world leaders on climate change. The people in the streets are the tip of the iceberg. The longer inaction goes on, the more dangerous it gets. I do hope that effective climate action will bring needed change expeditiously. If not, there are many reasons to worry about social and political upheaval. People will not take inaction on climate change lying down....
4
Thank you Mr. Gore for this optimistic article and for all you have done to help save the Earth. Thanks for leading, you've had many obstacles to overcome but have continued on in the face of overwhelming challenges. As seen in many of these comments here we are on an uphill battle, cynics and climate deniers are everywhere. I am glad to see you have not given up.
I too am heartened by the young people who are taking to the streets, demanding change. I am also very excited to think in terms of how things can change 'faster than I thought'!
We make changes large and small everyday, and it is good to remember the changes each individual make do help. For example I recently discovered reusable bags for the vegetables I buy at the local farm store. I buy locally grown food as much as possible and it is way easier than I thought it would be to do so when I first set out to buy only locally grown foods.
Sharing ideas and discoveries of how to make changes is not bragging or 'virtue signalling' (as one reader complained), it is simply a way to inspire others and share helpful information. Perhaps the deniers are 'hopeless signalling' or signalling their own cynicism out of fear. But
I love hearing how changes can and do happen and are happening now. Hearing what others are doing to help mitigate and overcome the impact of climate change brings hope that is sorely needed right now.
5
Would the "climate change" activists be willing to live their lives NOW in total avoidance of the benefits the fossil fuels provide? That they have not demonstrated so far.
15
@Eduard C Hanganu
This is supreme negativism, and I am sure it allows you to discount any efforts people and governments make as a drop in the bucket, and therefore not worth it. No intelligent person says we can go back to times before all the human caused damage, and no one denies that (or maybe a few do...) the earth will still offer up volcanos, the weather will offer up hurricanes, etc., but we can try to limit our contribution to these events. Since it is absolutely certain that the fossil fuel business will not disappear NOW, why not help to dismantle our dependence as much and as quickly as we are able - together?
1
Two solutions that are rarely discussed: reduce consumption and control human population.
35
@Concerned Citizen
I agree that the population explosion is occurring among the "poor brown peoples of the world" in the resource-starved less-developed countries of the world. But I disagree with your rationale. Have you thought about why almost no politicians, academicians, media ever talk about controlling population growth in the last 20-25 years? It's because the world's major corporations want cheaper labor and more consumers for their profits to grow. The greater the number of people in the world, the cheaper the labor and, of course, more consumers for the stuff that they push on us. Another factor: the highest population growth rates are in countries that have a dominant Muslim population, because of their views on birth control.
1
I get climate change, but the only answer I hear from the activist world is reduction of human activity. Nowhere do I hear the need for a moon shot, Marshall Plan scale effort of remediation - global reforestation, for instance. Only an anti oil, anti consumption screed (and oddly, not a pro nuclear voice to be heard). If the issue is so dire, and it appears to be, should there not be an all out push to find ways to capture carbon, now, AND still work to reduce carbon emissions?
12
I look at the daily human onslaught into our natural world and all I see is degradation. Insect populations plummeting, bird populations disappearing, rain forests being cut down for ever amount of grazing or farming land, glaciers melting in the blink of an eye, plastics clogging up out oceans, and the list could go on and on. Mr Gore might still be an optimist but I feel we are well past the tipping point and the only real solution is a few billion less humans consuming the earth's resources. At 71 I'm kinda glad I won't be around to see how this all unfolds...
10
I am moved and inspired and made hopeful by so many people, young people in particular, marching for the planet and for the basic common sense of taking science seriously.
That said, what moves people is not facts and figures or even coughing every day because of foul air. What moves them is money. We all need to vore with our pocketbook: Eat less meat, insist our buildings be solar-powered, never get on an airplane for a trip of less than a month, cycle and so forth.
When the revenue streams of human behavior lead to a healthier planet the powers that be will follow along.
Telling politicians that yes, 2+2 does equal 4, is noble but will not help us much, since it is not a problem they know how to solve.
1
Reducing Population Growth is the only way to slow down the increasing temperature on the planet. The more people the more buildings and concrete to hold the heat of the sun. Why doesn’t Al Gore address address this issue? Why don’t others do the same! Pretty obvious-it carries political repercussions.
14
@clayton Eliminate millions (billions?) of people to save the rest? Maybe Sarah Palin was right, death panels are coming.
I fly commercial instead of by private jet! Is that not enough sacrifice?
14
No. Take a train instead - preferably electric.
I tried to volunteer with Al’s group about 4 yers ago. I have a Ph.D. No response. No way to get through. Very disappointed Al.
12
Is Al willing to reduce his carbon footprint to that of the average American? How about the average Chinese? Or the average Ethiopian?
Why would anyone listen to a word this guy has to say when he doesn't practice what he preaches.
Further, he makes stuff up. Wasn't Miami supposed to be underwater now? How about that hockey stick graph? He keeps up the misrepresentations in this piece. There aren't more cat 5 hurricanes. Forest fires aren't due to climate change. Etc.
As for his information on wind and solar -- really? Are you counting all the costs including land costs, mining costs, transmission costs, maintenance, etc.? And solar installer growth? The study cited is a projection from 2018-2028. And when you have a job with a small number in the occupation, it's easy to attain a faster than avg growth rate. And who is paying those solar installer salaries -- we the tax payers as solar is heavily subsidized by government.
And a 450% increase in electric cars -- again, the law of small numbers.
Electric buses -- mostly in China and of course, what powers the power plants in China. Coal.
And then citing AOC on any issue just shows desperation.
This is simply another partisan editorial urging people to vote democrat. Climate change is the great bludgeon dems have attempted to use for political purposes since the 1990's. Their devotion to alarmism is nothing more than an attempt to gain political power.
17
The years 2016 through 2019 are the longest sequence of consecutive years which all featured at least one Category 5 hurricane each.
Denial is the reason we’re in this mess.
12
@Jeffrey Levy
Cherry-picked data. If you look at the period 2008 - 2019, you get an entirely different perspective and set of statistics.
3
Ummm....Chinese buses can’t run on coal- the extension cords don’t run that run far.
It is your “facts” that are in error, not Gore’s.
I guess the rest of us will have to wait until old confused people like you die off- I just hope it’s not too late for the rest of us.
The Paris climate agreement? That thing? The piece of paper that every country in the world signed because it required them to do nothing?
At least Donald Trump is honest in saying what we will be doing, which is responding appropriately to one of many problems our country faces.
13
That ‘honest’ President Trump will make sure more coal is burned and more gas is consumed by cars as he reduces mpg requirements. Attempting to use 1950s thinking is not the way to approach this climate crisis.
12
Al Gore has advocated for addressing the process of global warming for decades. He is now seeing the effects and he’s offering hope about reversing it. He is one of the good guys.
The demonstrators are bringing their concerns and appeals to all others about this issue. They are the good guys, too.
Realistically, no matter what, we are in the process of climate change due to global warming triggered by man’s technological life style upon which all of our lives depend. It is built upon fossil fuel energy systems. Replacing this and all the other man made sources of excessive carbon gases being emitted into the air are going to require decades once we all agree to do it. The costs are going to be astronomical, and the means have yet to be created.
Thinking that this can be a quick fix is wrong headed. It is going to require a total commitment and we have mostly only means fueled by fossil fuels to do it.
1
I am only one person, but here is what I am doing to mitigate climate change:
Despite my strong desire to see other cities & other countries, I am not flying, because of the huge environmental impact.
Despite my love for dairy products, I am becoming a vegan, because of the environmental costs of meat and meat products.
Despite its convenience, I am avoiding the use of plastic as much as possible, because it is made from petroleum.
Despite living in a culture of consumption, I am trying to buy only what I absolutely need.
Despite the convenience of taking a car/taxi, I am walking or taking a bus/subway or a train whenever possible.
I have changed the source of my home electricity, so that I am electricity derived from solar/wind.
I am spending as much time possible participating in climate change activism.
There are other small things that I am doing, but I will not list them here. I realize that I could do more, and that some of the things that I do are largely symbolic.
Think of things that you could change. Could you have an audio/visual conference instead of flying? Could you change your electricity source to wind/solar?
It is easy to give up on mitigating climate change, but if as many people as possible would do what they can, cumulatively we will make a difference. We owe this to future generations, who will live with whatever we do or don’t do to mitigate climate change. They deserve the best that we can leave for them.
17
Madeleine, unfortunately all you are doing is "virtue signaling", which means that you say things to show how virtuous you are without doing anything that means anything. Al Gore is a master at that. Virtue signaling doesn't help -- it hurts.
13
I am so tired of people being put off by the efforts of other people. I, for one, am thankful for those reducing their footprint, showing others it can be done and happy that I'm not the only one! I think the people who put down people explaining their efforts are jealous. I can't think of any other reason. Everyone can help as much as they can at this time.
11
@ John Smithson
It’s not easy to be in the minority because it’s so easy for others to ridicule their actions. I would suggest to you that Madeleine is an “early adopter” of ideas that will be common in a few decades. People like her are leaders.
8
The fundamental life supporting process is photosynthesis, the conversion of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into glucose and oxygen by green plant life on land and in water.
Forest regrowth would be an excellent way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The planting of trees is a good strategy. But currently, the great forests are being reduced by fires from global warming and further efforts by people to eliminate forests for other uses.
5
Casual Observer, the great forests in England and much of continental Europe were destroyed centuries ago. We humans have bred too much to leave much of the earth to nature. Global warming has nothing to do with that.
8
@Casual Observer the fires aren't from global warming. The alarmists can keep repeating falsehoods all they want, but we've always had forest fires and any uptick in acreage burned is due to 1) population growth, 2) people wanting to live near nature, 3) bad forest mgmt practices, 4) people burning forest to convert to farmland
12
In California, 14 of the 20 largest wildfires on record have occurred over the past 15 years. At the same time, the western US has experienced some of its warmest temperatures on record, with 10 of the past 15 years among the 15 warmest years on record, based on temperature records from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
According to data from the NIFC, there has been a clear trend in increased area burned by wildfires in the US since the 1980s, when reliable US-wide estimates based on fire situation reports from federal and state agencies became available.
Today, wildfires are burning more than twice the area than in the 1980s and 1990s. These figures include all wildland fires in both forested and non-forested areas. Most of the area burned today is in the western US, where dryer conditions tend to allow for large, quickly-spreading wildfires.
For some, denial is just another river in Egypt.
4
The thing about nature is that it never really can be changed, so the problems are not going to end as long as the conditions which are causing them persist. The damage to our way of life is going to increase until it’s just impossible to have it anymore. So it’s it’s not a matter of trading our planet for money, that’s a misguided assertion. At some point we are going to see the whole system collapse. We simply will not generate enough new wealth to keep it going. All the grand specialized systems that produce and distribute goods and services will become unworkable. Our vast communications systems will simply stop working. The governments and corporations will just cease to operate as they have. We all will have to deal with living at the local level and person to person.
So make the tough choices now or live with a lot fewer choices in the future.
2
Permiculture has answers for us on how to grow our food differently. The more I know about Permiculture the more I believe we can do this! We can change and adapt. There are solutions to clean and restore the earth, water and air.
1
Hello Mr. Gore I am a long time admirer of your work. I have a few unconnected thoughts about this article:
1. I started it late last night but decided to put it aside and come back to it this morning. But I had to hunt for it. Finally found it in the Opinion section but it's not in the Climate and Environment section, inexplicably. @NYT who makes these kinds of decisions?
2. Regarding Dornbusch's Law, it seems to fit with another pattern, perhaps they are the same phenomenon. We've learned that what we perceive as a flash of insight or inspiration is not that at all, it's typically the culmination of a long period of percolation under the surface of consciousness. It only appears to us as a sudden realization. I mention this because in both cases if we become aware of the epistemological process, we have a better chance of dealing with it proactively.
3. What I see lately is encouraging. If we move the culture far ahead on what one could also call the pollution crisis, in the long run governmentt and business will have no choice but to follow.
How can I help?
2
"We have the technology we need." No we don't. This really stands out here and Al Gore needs to be called out on it. This problem is far from having the technology to "solve" or win this battle to use his previous analogies.
6
I don't know how true it is to say that we can "win" the challenge of climate change. What does it mean to "win" something like that? But I do know that climate change is real, and irrespective of whether or not it's possible to actually win the battle with it, however that would be defined, it's clear that doing nothing at all would be an ever-increasing catastrophe. So, even though it's not clear that we'd ever be able to beat climate change altogether, we owe it to future generations to try like hell to stop it, and now is the time to start. Doing nothing, as the Republicans want, is not an option, unless they can find their own planet to go live on.
1
I am not optimistic that the human race can avert ecological disaster. We have a built in self-destructive biological need to reproduce. As long as there is no attempt to control population growth there can be no hope.
181
@Nick
The largely unspoken reasoning behind global organizations which seek to broaden educational opportunities for women, and young girls, is to slow down global population growth.
If not for violent fanaticism, this reasoning wouldn’t have to be obfuscated to the degree that it is. I’ve been assured that God has a plan, though.
22
Billions of years ago a cell developed in some part of the ocean and spilt into two identical cells. Through reproduction all life on the Earth developed by a continuous process of reproduction. The biosphere is a billions years old organism that persists because of reproduction and would cease and leave a dead planet if it stopped.
2
@Nick
1. There is no scientific evidence at all proving that human beings would have a "need" to reproduce. It's not that year after year, female humans (like many other mammals) are having babies, remember ... ?
2. Population growth has NOTHING to do with the "need to reproduce", and everything with poverty.
Studies show that subsistence economies need large families, because working on your own land is the only way to stay alive (and "subsistence" refers to the fact that those families don't make any money, they basically produce their own food).
Once the economy of a country starts developing, the number of children per family typically goes down, whereas in fully developed economies, population growth is stable or negative.
And as all of the world's economies are developed or developing, today, the world population is expected to start stagnating at about 11 billion, by the end of this century.
3. Studies also show that there is NO problem to feed 11 billion people, in itself. Even already today, hunger is largely the effect of unequal distribution, not scarcity of resources.
4. As Al Gore reminds here, we already HAVE the technology to become carbon-free.
Conclusion: no, the fact that some poor African countries still have large families is NOT a valid excuse for us Westerners, who are responsible for climate change in the first place, and continue to have the highest per capita carbon emissions, to do nothing at all and give in to despair. That would be immoral
38
Yes, folks this is THAT Al Gore Jr., still careless with facts and long on cutting down our economy and lifestyle to fit the worlds where everyone lined on farms or the smallest hamlets.
For ACTUAL info on hurricanes you might try -
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/hurrarchive.asp
The worst salesman for fire equipment would be the man who was convicted of arson ten times, right?
Al Gore has about the carbon footprint the average small town accumulates. We'll get our advice from people actually trying to adopt these ideas in their own lives, if you don't mind.
10
It’s too bad we didn’t listen to Jimmy Carter. He knew what we needed to do. Instead we went with greed is good Ronnie Reagan.
11
President Gore: You are a hero for. our era
5
One simple comment. Run for President Mr Gore, the US and the world needs your intellect, character and leadership.
4
Gore is a class act.
8
The US got the wrong man in the 2000 Presidential election.
19
And the expected response by our ignorant, science denying Fake President to this stirring climate “call to arms” by Vice President Gore? “Wind turbines kill lots of birds.” Good grief!
3
Al, I wish the election had not been stolen from you by Chickenhawk George. What a different world we'd have today!
That said, you lost any right to criticize "the complacency, complicity, duplicity and mendacity of those in Congress" regarding our environment when you built your bloated, obscene, over-consumptive McMansion. You destroyed the credibility you had on this topic. You cannot have it both ways - The People recognize hypocrisy when it's shoved in our faces.
You'd be better off working behind the scenes, rather than authoring long-winded (tho' accurate) op-eds that ring as hollow as an empty barrel of petroleum. And I say this as an uber-greenie w/ a tiny Carbon Footprint.
4
We all know that there would be no talk of global warming IF Al Gore had not lost to W.
Al needed to win a battle even if it was a fake one.
1
"It's not too late" indeed!
Al Gore for President in 2020!
4
When will we stop kidding ourselves?
Let's stop being hypocrites. We keep saying: "Listen to the science."
The science says it's too late.
It's all over folks.
2
Mr. Gore really needs to just, go away and be quiet.
His arm waving false narratives are just absurd.
The dominant driving force of temperature shifts is the sun, not man.
The current warming cycle began more than 10,000 years ago, and will continue whether man ceases all activity entirely - or not.
There is no evidence that suggests that warming is worse than cooling and those are the only two options.
5
@Objectivist
According to the elliptical variations in the Earth’s orbit (a set of cycles with overall cycle times of hundreds of thousands of years) the Earth should be in a slow cooling pattern. According to the other two Milankovitch Cycles (Axial Tilt and Precession, with cycle times of 41,000 and 22,000 years) the Earth should also be slowly cooling because we were heading into the next glaciation, and until about a hundred years ago this was the prevailing pattern.
For the six thousand years leading up to the Industrial Revolution the pattern was slow cooling at an average rate of about 0.2 degrees C per millennium. There were ups and downs due to changes in ocean currents and solar output, but at most those changes were around 0.1 degree C per century and after five or six hundred years the average global temps returned to the cooling trend. (Graph of the last 20,000 years of global temperature) http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png
In the last hundred years we have seen global temperatures climb just over a full degree C with the majority of that increase in the last forty years. Solar out put has actually been declining slightly during those last forty years.
So what was that alternative theory that explained the observed facts supporting AGW again?
7
@Erik Frederiksen
Baloney.
Whatever cooling you think you see in the past 6000 years is a noise level blip and not indicative of long term trends.
See:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/temperature-change
for refutation of your assertion; we are in warm period ascension.
And, btw, the eccentricities you refer to, by themselves, have no effect on climate.
It is the changing distance from the sun, that accompanies these shifts, that has climatic impact.
Which is in accord with what I stated, and in fact, is the basis for my statement.
Man, burning fossil fuel, is also, a blip.
p.s. Would you prefer an earlier descent into the next ice age ?
1
Al Gore: You are wrong.
Climate Crisis = Technology * Lifestyle * Population
The problem humanity faces is a simple equation. Do we have the technical ability to solve it? Yes.
The Second two parts of the equation however are a lot more tough. People on the earth want what we call in the USA call the Middle Class Life Style or something close to it.
Do you really think that people are going to live a lifestyle that radically different than they are now?
What has to happen is that the planet needs to ask the the following question: At that approximate American Middle Class Lifestyle, with the most likely technology that we have to address the problem...what is the planets carrying capacity for population?
Then we have to reduce the population to that. Do you really think that people will stand for being told that they cannot have kids? The Chinese tried that and it did not work in an agrarian dictatorial state.
No Al Gore, your cannot solve the problem unless and until everyone realizes that the Climate Crisis = Technology * Lifestyle * Population.
My wife and I sleep well at night. We put ourselves into a city that is 65F all year around, that we have lived driving less than 3000 miles a year combined, and we did not have children. We did what we could without self flagellation to address each part of the equation. Have you?
3
This man simply is not in any way qualified to speak about climate science. He possesses no formal science higher education. Given his failures in both divinity & law school, it is a stretch to even give him the benefit of academic doubt. His hypocrisy, including the sale of Current TV to oil-backed Al-Jazeera and his lavish carbon-emitting lifestyle, belies his climate demagoguery. People who lap up his prognostications are merely dupes who are too lazy and uninformed to learn the truth for themselves.
7
@Once From Rome
Please link to peer reviewed science indicating that Al Gore isn't basing his observations on the science.
3
Thanks Al, but it's to late ! If the world had listened to you when the first warnings came out, we would have a chance. But the evil and uncaring element in humanity didn't and still won't believe it, so future generations are cursed to reside in a hellish, dying world...
I would like to see Greta Thunberg call for a joint resolution in Congress which offers Al Gore a nationwide apology for ignoring his timely warning.
1
America and the West are experiencing a religious revival- the type of 19th c revival where sin and repentance dominated the camp meetings - gatherings that often lasted for days and attracted thousands of shrieking, sobbing, fainting converts. The message was simple: Repent and you will be saved!
Today’s revival is also attracting thousand of sobbing and shrieking converts who hope to save the entire planet. Just like the earlier revivalists, they confess their ecological sins, while crying out: repent! be virtuous! Save the earth!
Oh, the gullibility of such people. Oh, the hubris!
4
Carbon sequestration. Research it. Support it.
1
While I appreciate Al Gore in writing that we can still avoid the most catastrophic changes, I fear he is optimistic.
In 2014 two independent teams of scientists reported that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has likely already begun an irreversible retreat.
Perhaps within a few decades it will collapse, dumping 3.3 meters of sea level rise equivalent of ice into the ocean in decadal time scales or less, according to the most respected glaciologist in the US, Richard Alley.
Greenland's ice sheet is near or past a tipping point leading to its demise as extreme melt years like 2012 and 2019 become the norm. And the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet is waking up.
NASA's former lead climate scientist James Hansen warned in 2016 of the potential for multi-meter sea level rise in around 50-60 years and noted that it would likely make the planet ungovernable.
That's without all the other impacts from drought, flood, heat waves and famine driving migrations orders of magnitude larger than the recent ones driving right wing politics around the world.
4
It’s reassuring to read this and to think that things will right themselves – that cooler heads of logic will prevail and, someday, may be in charge. It was reassuring yesterday to be amid the 250,000 marchers in NYC and singing “This Land is My Land” with elementary school kids. I was expecting a tenor of anger; instead it was more hopeful, and you could feel the contact high.
It was less reassuring to come home and see the line of idle cars, engines running, waiting to pick up their kids from sports as the near empty bus passed by, and to smell the cow flesh sizzling on my politically progressive neighbor’s grill.
There is really no carbon cost today – anyone with the means can fly to New Zealand for fun, receive 1,000 page Restoration Hardware catalogues in the mail, heat their pools they use five times a year, and join in the snailing traffic along the Saw Mill River Parkway each morning, heading to more or less the same place.
We need incentive, encouragement, motivation, models, and a sense of progress – but let’s not confuse talk with action. Our four-year election cycle -- so dependent on promises for me, tax cuts, and game-show giveaways -- makes it a hard sell, but we need to learn how to live more with less. It’s not a model of growth, but one of taking care of what we have. Who can translate this message into votes?
Tell me: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
16
Gee, what we need is a lecture from someone with a humongous carbon footprint lecturing the rest of us on climate change.
And someone, as with the hockey stick graph, presents simply wrongheaded information.
First, there aren't more Category 5 hurricanes.
Second, these global fires are the result of land management issues and populations spreading into fire prone areas. Plus an enlarging population.
Third, we don't have enough long term data on most of the issues you mention. And tropical diseases spreading to higher latitudes is likely due to greater travel.
And I hope Al recognizes that US emissions are flat with 1990. It's the rest of the world, primarily emerging economies, that are the problem. So hectoring the Times readership isn't going to do much except get your name in print.
Finally, the evidence of abnormal warming from 1880 to now is based on a very problematic data base that is composed greater parts estimates and adjustments than actual raw data. I wouldn't trust the global data temp data base on a bet.
But keep at it Al. Keep your multi thousand square foot house(s), your private jets, etc. We're behind you.
6
@Ralphie
As predicted the Earth is warming rapidly, ice is melting and sea level rise is accelerating.
If anything https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/
4
Thanks Al Gore. Some of these statistics are a little questionable. A 450% increase in electric cars doesn't mean much for instance. If you started with 5 electric cars and you now have 28, you've witnessed a 450% increase. You still only have 28 electric cars. However, I appreciate the sunny optimism.
I have a question to ask though Mr. Gore. While Republicans are overtly regressive on climate change, why is Democratic leadership so reluctant to embrace the issue? As noted, we need sweeping and aggressive policy reform now in order to mitigate a climate crisis. However, top Democratic figures, yourself excluded, still advocate incrementalism and patience. You didn't mention names but I'll provide Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein as examples. The Democratic front runner, Joe Biden, also makes the list.
I understand this issue isn't solved overnight. However, I'm sick and tired of hearing the House Speaker telling me that meaningful action is not a path forward. Can you please explain why these Democrats are still in office? Can you please explain why they still hold positions of power and influence? In my estimation, the Democratic Party some serious house cleaning to do.
Thank you kindly,
Andy
4
I have grave doubts whether we can win, but it is the moral imperative of our time to pull out all the stops trying.
8
We can all make a difference by sharing this excellent piece with others, lift out Gore's key talking points for one-on-one conversations, and ask others what they think can be done.
1
@Peter What if others don't think anything needs to be done. But if you are going to ask someone what can be done, ask someone in China, India or Africa -- those are the areas of the globe where emissions are increasing. US emissions are flat with 1990 levels, while total global emissions have grown by 70% since then.
This is just virtue signalling. The only thing the US can do -- if there is a problem -- is develop technologies to mitigate and adapt. The US reducing emissions won't have much of an impact on total global emissions -- nothing meaningful -- so destroying our economy to switch to renewables isn't going to help GLOBAL emissions.
3
For a long time the national network news shows seem to have a rule against talking about the relation between climate and the extreme weather events. They now seem to of dropped this rule. In this past week both NBC and CBS had segments talking about the dangers of climate change.
1
Al Gore is worried about the end of the world, I doubt he knows it it but most of us are worried about the end of the month. Not knowing this is why you lost against Bush. Do you worry about your electric bills? How much are you worth Al now? How much of that Green is because of the Green?
Here's a dilemma for you. There's tens of thousands school busses on the road spewing CO2. Wouldn't it be Green to replace them with electric buses. But what if those buses cost twice as much as their gas guzzling counterparts. Do you spend money on the students or electric buses? Both? I would love to see the money spent on the kids first. It's just the money for education goes to wealthier neighborhoods and they're not going accept to cuts in their kids education for those less fortunate.
What I can't understand Al, you lost because of the Green Party, not chards. Then you didn't come put swinging against them, you joined them. I suppose it was the Green money but maybe you lost because you weren't much of a fighter. Unless you can make a buck off it, that is.
3
Thank you, Mr. Vice President for continuing to fight this war. Democrats and young people love you and respect you for the courage and tenacity of your efforts. 93% of Democrats want dramatic action to address climate change.
You need to do one more thing, which is unapologetically dive in to the urgent and crucial political fight the nation is facing. If we lose that political battle, it is not hyperbole to say that we may lose the planet. Trump being re-elected is a disaster the planet cannot afford, needless to say. But, we need you, sir, to talk about the other side of the ballot. Bernie Sanders is the candidate, by far, whose policy proposals display the urgency and courage you have been calling for. Young people need you to say that. Elizabeth Warren, to a lesser extent, does also. Joe Biden, the favorite Democrat of corporate America, The New York Times and the mainstream news media as a whole, does not. If he wins the nomination, you and the millions who protested yesterday will not truly have been listened to. If Biden becomes President, nothing significant will change which will also be a disaster for the planet. You need to say that.
Thank you Al. You are leading. We are following. And the laggards will get out of the way. Those of us who are trying, have to believe we can win this. Believing we can win is as important as trying to win. There have been setbacks, and there will be more. There are always the deniers and the greedy who try to defeat us. We must not let them. We must fight as though our lives depended on it, because they do.
3
Mr. Gore, I've appreciated your efforts since I read Earth in the Balance in 1992. But when are you going to start highlighting the #1 destroyer of our atmosphere: emissions from livestock agriculture? When are you going to put "end Industrial Agriculture subsidies" front and center in your arguments? I campaigned for you, I still mourn the loss of your presidency, and I admire your leadership on this. But please sound the call for an end to breeding and eating animals.
I don't find this argument to be politically compelling at all.
The bottom line for pushing forward policy is to provide a plan that accounts for the economics of the least wealthy people.
So instead of talking about how inevitable economic shifts make EVs more eocnomical, he should be helping to create a plan to ensure that the shift doesn't bankrupt our already struggling working class. This must include a plan for buybacks or free conversions of fossile fuel-powerd vehicles as the shift takes place.
I hope that Warren does not make Al Gore a symbol of her climate plan. He's not a good frontman. There's a good reason he lost his election.
1
Climate crisis today is the result of the growth of automobile industry and bigger and bigger gas guzzlers over the past 100 years. It is hypocritical that people who are the cause of excessive pollution are not recognizing that they are the problem. Cheap fuel and explosive growth of mega cities is the problem that fueled the lack of development of the public transportation system like rail in North America.
As one reporter who echoes Gore said yesterday all these protests are about political power and have nothing to do with the environment. Governments cannot make a difference if there is no commitment from the people and the parents of those who were protesting. Congress has been passing a ton of laws that have made little difference because EPA has failed to enforce the laws. There is a momentum on the climate change issue and if it is to succeed with the urgency of now there are has to be volunteer force to police the polluters and punish those who contribute to pollution and carbon emissions.How many of the kids protesting yesterday are ready to tell their parents that they walk or bike to their closest school and will never step into a gas guzzler?
3
How about Al Gore for President!!!
7
I really wish that Gore, et al...would try some new tactics and drill down to the local level to pull more people into the fold that Climate Change is a thing.
Lets face it, the planet is polluted because we've spent centuries polluting our local environments, most of which floated in the air, or water or was carried (by humans) to distant places. The toxins spewed from smokestacks over in are A, made their way to area Z. The stuff dumped up river made it downriver and eventually out into the oceans. The stuff dumped in a collection bin on Avenue B, was shipped to another state, over seas, or dumped offshore.
We didn't wake up one day and suddenly plastics were in the digestive tracts of birds on remote islands, or now flowing in once pristine, mountain streams.
The planet suffers because of whats done locally. And we've never stopped polluting our local environments, not in real ways. Sure there are local recycling programs, but surprise (not)...those turned out not to be real. Instead we shipped our refuse to other states, or even countries. We relocated it, we didn't deal with it as a thing to be dealt with. We hid it. Sure there are "scrubbers" on/in factories now...but there are more of them, and the scrubbing tech is not as advanced as it should be - because the legislation didn't keep up! Its passe!
Local clean-up begets Global clean-up. If politics is local, the same applies here. If human concerns are local, and they are - the same applies to this problem.
4
This isn’t anything like war, and these tired metaphors which seek to unify the species through binary reasoning aren’t doing anything to help.
Our planet is a biome. It may not be possessed of ‘consciousness’, in any manner which satisfies our primitive navel-gazing, but it is a profoundly complex, self-regulating entity.
While we can dramatically shift our collective behaviors to potentially alleviate the toll in human life caused by an ever-increasing amount of global catastrophes, what we can’t do is stop the problem.
And for as long as this problem stays politicized, we won’t see any governmental policies which convey just how urgent it is for coastal residents to begin considering their egress to a higher elevation.
4
I think the world has the technical, industrial, and financial capability to accomplish the goal Mr Gore has spelled out. Sort of like building the Interstate Highway system , but with incredibly superior computation power, and more advanced tool and machine production.
A little less tangible, and maybe more important, is the need for the rich and powerful nations to have a united egalitarian attitude towards the billions of weak and poor who can't cope on their own with the powerful global warming destructive forces.
I'd say that, at present, there is a substantial egalitarian deficit.
146
@sherm
Very well said!
3
No, we don’t. That is not optimism but magical thinking. The industrial highly technical world cannot be switched from one using fossil fuels because it is the result of using fossil fuels. So far green technologies can be applied well for a remarkably great but still minority of needs but the crucial ones just cannot yet operate without burning hydrocarbons. We have not a good solution to this problem, yet. We need to find that before we can end the problem with man’s effects upon the atmosphere.
4
@Casual Observer
No. No more inaction waiting for some magic moment. It's unacceptable.
7
cool. will you stop flying private, mr. gore?
3
Maybe the New York Times should reconsider its opposition to Chinese tariffs; as readers pointed out, they don't need any more polyester clothes.
The New York Times gets apoplectic about the possibility of global consumerism slow down.
4
Mr. Gore,
It is so good to read something by you again. You have been silent for too long. Please do us a favor and increase your drumbeat for the next year. We need you.....
1
In 2020, do NOT elect any candidate who does not support drastic steps to address climate change! There are a lot of important issues, but every one of them pales in comparison to this existential threat. If we don't address it, globally, none of the rest of it matters. We'll be doomed.
4
With the wonderfully rapid economic rise of Asia & Africa, a enormous amount of new power is going to be needed in the coming decades. So the key component in addressing the global warming crisis - much more than conservation - is facilitating the development & expansion of cheap, abundant, non-carbon power sources. Renewables will certainly play a significant role, but the time-frame is going to be a lot longer than 10 years and the intermittency issues will remain fundamental. Any serious plan needs to include an aggressive expansion of nuclear power.
2
For many, it seems easier to be a defeatist than to "rage against the dying of the light." Sure, our biosphere has been and will continue to be damaged for decades and even centuries by what already has occurred.
But, as Al Gore has pointed out, and from what I have learned from my readings of major national and international climate studies, we can prevent the truly horrendous consequences by taking recommended transformative changes, many of which are already available. For the benefit of our future generations, inaction is not an option.
4
Odd that Al Gore didn't mention the out of control world population. Beyond his article, we are consuming more fish than the ocean can produce (Bluefin tuna population at just 3.3 percent of its unfished level). Birds have died by the billions. We are running out of clean water. On and on and on. There are too many people on the planet already and with another 2 billion over the next 30 years we are heading towards catastrophe. We need a worldwide birth control plan and we need it now.
5
I often wonder what progress on climate change we would have made had Al Gore not been robbed of his presidency back in 2000.
Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College due to the interference of the GOP controlled Supreme Court concerning Florida.
We got Bush Jr.- one of the worst presidents of all time. ( Of course, compared to Trump, Bush looks good).
Bush did nothing on climate change and now Trump is dismantling environmental protections like the madman he is.
People were in denial about climate change and decided to put their head in the sand because it was an "inconvenient truth".
We wasted 20 years in which not much was able to be done concerning climate change due to the GOP refusal to do anything that would upset the Koch brothers.
People are finally starting to wake up. I hope it is not too late.
8
Thank you, Al Gore. I voted for you! Thank you for all you've said and done to help us avert catastrophe, and I'm sorry your (and the scientists') message has been denied and derided for so long by the Republican party, to our collective peril. Now, perhaps, like you say, the technology and the political will are finally coming together to save us from ourselves. Let's hope a resounding blue/green wave at the polls in 2020 will finally force the Republican party to close the partisan gap on this issue and work with Democrats to get this done!
Cue the nay-sayers and no-wayers who will come on here and call you out for having a house, car, cell phone, etc., for daring to even eat food and take a breath, as if doing these things negate the inconvenient truth of what you say. I'm sure you've learned to ignore these willful ignoramuses by now, but I echo your message to them: Lead, follow or get out of the way.
2
The technology that we need is birth control. Malthus was correct.
4
Birth control would have been helpful a century, ago. The failure to address our technologically generated problems may result in population reduction by the four horses of the Apocalypse.
It seems to me that, when we are posting on the NYT web site, we are talking to like-minded folks, i.e., other NYT readers.
Do we think we are influencing the masses with our points or simply getting something "off our chests?"
I am growing weary.
The folks I want to influence do not read NYT.
To influence my local folks, I would need to spend more time debating in local bars and encouraging my neighbors to turn off FOX news.
That would be hugely difficult.
That would be a tough row to hoe.
2
You had your time to be courageous. Let the kids handle it.
If Carbon is Plutonium, then business-as-usual economics, over fishing, mining salmon spawning grounds, cutting down forests, and paving over nature is the nuke explosive Uranium-235. Nasty stuff.
We got two problems, not one. Business-As-uDsual economics, BAD, will continue the extinction of half the worlds animal and plant species.
Lovely, speech. But it doesn't play well in Asia. No where does he mention birth control. The ELEPHANT in the room? (Globe)
1
@Eyes Wide Open Eat less, stay healthy and walk .
Every immigrant in the US uses 10 times as much energy as they did when they were in their home country.
2
A few votes in Florida in November 2000 and our present and future may have been very different ...
1
Gore IS, as usual, too late. Humans are just a terrible accident in the history of planet earth. We will be gone soon, dragging with us many other species into oblivion. No garbage separating or wind energy can stop our fate. Maybe better and more intelligent creatures will emerge, long after us.
1
Climate change can't be defeated by using war metaphors for socioeconomic political solutions. Nor can it be addressed by any one nation.
The basic problem with trying to ameliorate and limit the human impact of climate change is how ignorant, illiterate and stupid a majority of Americans are about the nature and methods of science.
And the secondary problem is how callous, corrupt, cruel, cynical, hypocrisy and selfish human beings can be in making any altruistic long or short term sacrifices for strangers. Humans talk but don't live and practice the Golden Rule.
Regardless of the initial cause or causes all of the last five major mass extinctions made their impact by evolutionary fit natural life selection responses to climate change. The birds and the bony fishes were the vertebrate winners of the last mass extinction.
Are humans as 'smart' as the birds and bony fishes?
2
"A farmer-led regenerative agriculture revolution that is also underway avoids plowing and focuses on building soil health by sequestering carbon dioxide in the ground, making the land more fertile. The farmers are using rotational grazing and planting trees and diverse cover crops to enrich soil and protect against erosion.
And so far, the best available technology for pulling carbon dioxide from the air is something called a tree".
Yes! exactly! It's called photosynthesis. Plants miraculously take CO2 from the air and together with the sun and the water keep the carbon in the soil where it belongs. All plants sequester carbon, the more plants the more carbon they store in the earth and with less CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature will begin to come down. This is the 'green' in the New Deal and it is actually the most urgent part. We must lower the temperature fast and farmers know how to do it. It is time.
1
On these pages today it is reported that Biden wants to forgive all medical debt and Mayor Pete has a 2.5 trillion housing proposal. Yet, both say they believe that climate change is a big deal. There are Medicare for all proposals, reparations proposals, student debt forgiveness proposals, etc. if this really is the issue of our time, then, act like it. All of these other things should be tabled until we price out and enact the appropriate environmental policies. If there is money left over, then, consideration can be given to these other things. By pushing for all of these massive spending initiatives, it minimizes the importance of the environmental issues.
3
A powerful technological discovery needs to be introduced into this debate. It is a substance called graphene, and it's isolation by two Scottish scientists got them the Nobel Prize in just 5 years. It is an astonishing substance, 200 times stronger than steel. But regarding climate change, it has an amazing property--it is a far better conductor of electricity than copper or silver. What this means is that solar panels can at last become commercially viable, amortizing the cost much more quickly. It means that the world could convert to solar power much faster. But there are technical problems with producing it in commercial quantities. Several companies, including IBM, are working on the problem but no one knows who will come up with the final solution. Government needs to become involved in pushing this technology forward, for it would truly be a revolution in energy production--and the end of coal, oil, and gas.
2
Mr. Gore loses a far more controversial presidential election in 2000 than HRC did in 2016. Instead of crying the blues and provide excuses he dedicates himself to a cause that he passionately believes in and probably has had more influence on than if he was elected president. Whatever progress has been made or will be made will be largely attributed to Mr. Gore;s dedication and his ability to look beyond personal disappointment and achieve the greater good.
4
Thanks, A.G., for this piece. Gives me a smidgen of hope, whereas before reading it I had absolutely none. Just a smidgen, though.
3
People have remarked, that if 100% of these young marchers of voting age (and the rest of our youth of any age) went to the polls, they'd toss these deniers out of office so fast, it'd make their heads spin.
WELL?
To the youth of America: Don't you realize by not voting, you are ceding power to the GOP?
WELL?
Don't want to listen to me? Ok. Why don't you learn from history? Specifically, look at how prohibition came to the fore. The prohibitionists targeted our elected officials, one by one, two by two, three by three, and removed them from office.
It's one thing to march in the street. It's quite another to do something about it.
WELL?
It's your world you will inherit. My generation has been complicit in the planet's destruction. It's your turn now, so lead!
2
Al Gore writes: "Things take longer to happen than you think they will, but then they happen much faster than you thought they could." Seriously, Mr Gore! As cliches go this one rates right up there with the worst. Maybe you were even thinking of adding the classic: "Everything happens for a reason." The changes you describe are true but our problems will only be solved if we radically change our lifestyles. Your op-ed would have been more powerful if you had told us how you have personally changed your lifestyle. How many houses do you own? How often do you walk to the store to buy your own food? Do you grow any of your own food? What is the gas-mileage of the cars you drive and how many cars are there in your in your security detail? How many miles/year do you fly. Please walk the walk!
4
So long as the money behind the biggest exploiters of fossil fuel (Koch et al) and the biggest producers of waste (Amazon, e.g.) are legally permitted to bribe our politicians and publish lies, there will be no Green New Deal. Without progressive, mass action, we're doomed. The marches today were great, but more radical action will be necessary and, hopefully, coming.
Since the Dawn of humanity, there has never been a common threat where all of humanity has cooperated, even if it was for the collective good. Global warming would require all of humanity to cooperate for the common good. That's never going to happen. This newspaper reports on a daily basis why that is so.
2
Thank you Mr. Gore for fighting the good fight. However, I can’t recycle in my municipality. This is crazy. Taking our refuse and putting it somewhere on the surface of the earth for it to lie for eternity has to be the definition of stupid. The price of a good reflects its cost of production but does not take into account the cost of its destruction. Altering the way we think about economics goes hand on hand with combating climate change. Recycling systems are a good example of that challenge. What’s to be done?
1
Even if carbon dioxide emissions weren't the problem, people should be concerned enough to want to limit carbon emissions just because of the pollution aspect.
The change starts with people. Ask yourself what you'e done to make change. Have you supported clean energy by installing solar or buying an electric car. Do you turn up the thermostate a couple of degrees and open the windows. Are you even aware of what efforts your local electricity supplier is taking to provide greener energy.
Despite being really depressed about how things are moving along with this administration on climate crisis I couldn’t help but get even more upset when I saw an opinion piece by Al Gore. I couldn’t get myself to finish it the piece. Al Gore is a hypocrite that gets me more upset about climate change than Trump. I will never take anything Al Gore says seriously as long as he lives in an energy sucking mega mansion. He should stop preaching what he doesn’t do. New York Times should stop giving hypocrites a platform to preach others. Shame on Al Gore, the hypocrite!!!
2
I just read an opinion piece about Roy Cohn; "Where is my Roy Cohn?" as it reviews his ruthless tactics to get what he politically wanted or to assist those who wanted his help, ethics and morality be damned.
So as I read this piece about Al Gore and the global warming crisis we are presently experiencing, I feel hopeful, especially because of our young people on the planet who will inherit this earth and have the power to vote out those who are recklessly and purposefully ignoring this crisis.
We need the political will and smart compassion to vote in policy makers who will help our country heal this hot wound. So when you are voting ask, Where is my Al Gore?
Applause for Mr. Gore's powerful voice in trumpeting this alarm once again and rallying Americans to vote for politicians who will stand up for systemic change in environmental policies. When push comes to shove, will short-term economic gain for a few stranglehold the rest of the world? Even with sound policies in place, it's a challenging road to mitigate climate change. Let's get on with it.
One of the signs of a fading empire is when deforestation begins in earnest. The US under it's current leadership is well on the way as is Brazil. Greece is a good example.
2
Al - well done, and well said. As another hero of mine said, "It is too late to be pessimistic." It is time to act. And young people everywhere are now acting.
3
this is not about scoring a win against politicans; this is about the collective inaction of legislative bodies worldwide who will sell OUR souls for a fossil fuel buck rather than create a healthy life sustaining worldwide environment. China is doing more and far more quickly than America who has failed to act on OUR behalf since the 1970s when the first electric car was introduced and immediatly "killed off" by what has become a polluting life endangering relic industry, oil.
No one will survive an earth that can no longer sustain life. If we don't radically change what we expect of ourselves, our economies and our politicians then we will die off as a species. There is no bargaining to be done; the earth sustains life or it doesn't. Right now given the ongoing fight to do whatever it takes to continue with our familiar lifestyles, earth will no longer be able to sustain us - our demise will be brought on by our foolish ways.
1
Slow will become fast, when the distributed profits from Net Zero building and farming and resource recovery overwhelm the concentrated profits of burning fossil fuels. Slow will become fast, when a 2nd Blue Wave leads to a 2nd American Revolution, and the overthrow of King Oil, King Corn, and King Gun. Slow will become fast, when a 4th R - for Reversing Pollution - joins the 3Rs of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle to help Return blue skies and blue water to our earthly home. Slow will become fast, just in the nick of time, or..... we’re toast.
2
A Pessimist, I certainly am! Tipping point already passed. An admirable, but negligible part of the world population is aware of the dire situation. Yes, duly separating garbage while duly making children. (so cute, those little new earthlings)World population is growing faster than ever before.
Climate deniers rule the world.
I heard Gore never turns off the many lights at his 30 rooms mansion.
29% of the bird population died out in the past 50(!) years.
This pessimist thinks were are gone in less than 200 years.
1
Al, I love you, you should have been president! You are an optimist and I am not. I hope you are right!
1
Ah, another Op-Ed from the Global Warmist Al Gore.
Yes, we have this strange contrast between:
(A) The Warmists, led by Al Gore, James Hansen, Ph.D.,(Physics), Katherine Hayhoe, Ph.D.(Atmospheric Science), Heidi Cullen, Ph.D., (Climatology), Andrew Lacis, Ph.D. (Physics), Thomas Stocker, Ph.D.(Natural Sciences), Gary Russell, Ph.D.(Math), Kate Marvel, Ph.D.(Math & Physics), Ralph Keeling, Ph.D.(Applied Physics), Matthew Huber, Ph.D.(Earth Sciences), Tal Ezer, Ph.D. (Oceanography), Pieter Tans, Ph.D. (Earth Sciences). I could go on and on.
And then there is the "B" Team of Deniers, such as:
My Friend Sean Hannity, along with Marc Morano, Rush Limbaugh, and others on Fox Noise.
And the "A" team gets beat in the Court of Public Opinion by my friend Sean Hannity, by Hannity saying recently, that Global Warming is not true because some Scientists predicted that, back in the 1970s we were heading into an Ice Age that never happened!
Don't misunderstand me: I know how much work goes into a Ph.D., even though I don't have those letters after my name.
But it would see that the Climate PhDs would be able to explain the word "RATE" much better. When Deniers say: "Oh, but the Climate ALWAYS changes", it could be pointed out that the RATE of change projected for the 21st Century is equal to, or more than that of the previous 100 Centuries.
Part of the reason for the present Crisis is that Deniers do not seem to have the word "RATE" in their Vocabularies. "SAD"
2
I email and resist bot my representatives on a variety of issues a few times a week, including climate change. And you should too. Our representatives in Washington and in the state houses across the country need to know this issue of climate change is of the greatest urgency. So if you think you can't do anything, you are wrong. Make a call, send an email, write a letter but do something to let your representatives know. And vote. Like your life depended on it. It does.
Preaching to the choir again. Still not helpful.
1
Al, you suffer from what I call the New York Times only two words problem.
The two words are solar and wind.
Beautiful words but there are a few others that exist in my Swedish vocabulary but are missing in yours and in the New York Times - except for a 70 year old exception.
Try these:
Solid-waste incineration.
Bio-waste (food and human waste) conversion
Heat pumps of several different kinds. I name an especially important one in the next line.
Ground source geothermal heat pump.
All those are extremely important in Sweden, but with only these exceptions are they never mentioned in the Times.
1953 an article in the Times said that heat pumps would become the primary technology in my New England. Not so.
Solid waste incineration-Governor of NY State nixes - Never in my state! Times has an article in International Edition about the most advanced system in the world - Linköping SE - but the author who visited the city completely misunderstood what the system is used for.
Al, in my New England, they are laying a natural gas pipeline infrastructure that guarantees fossil fuel forever.
Would be interesting to know how many Vermont marchers (Burlington my home away from home) would support replacing natural gas 100% percent in the "Brave Little State"
My guess, all too few.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
Gore talks the talk but does not walk the walk.
He continues to use an energy wasting private jet and air conditioning for his mansion.
Talk is cheap.
4
Without the Senate, "we" aren't going to build diddley. There's a chance that Putin could sway enough electoral votes to ensure another Trump win. The judiciary is weakening, so I don't see any basis for optimism there. Trump is our criminal President and budding dictator. I see Big Brother and re-education camps. Sorry, but nothing is being done in U.S. government against flagrant lawlessness by Mr. Trump, so I don't see a rosy future at all.
1
So "this is our generation's ... Agincourt"?
The former VP has a knack for making claims of dubious accuracy and questionable meaning. Perhaps he should leave the rhetoric to less tainted sources.
2
Suppose Mr. Gore is right (not proven, but imagine it for the purpose of argument): the world needs to emit less greenhouse gas than it does today. Who should cut back:
1. The Chinese peasant heating his hut with coal, and hoping to get coal-powered electricity so his children can do homework at night?
2. The middle-class American heating his house with natural gas and driving or flying to a vacation once a year?
3. Mr. Gore, flying a private jet and using 20 times the average American's electricity consumption?
Until Mr. Gore reduces his climate impact to that of the average American, neither the average American nor the Chinese peasant should be asked to cut back.
Oh, he's special, and so long as he pays what the private jet costs he's entitled to do whatever he wants. And everyone else is entitled to ignore his hypocritical hectoring.
5
What sacrifices are alarmists willing to make; especially the young people?
Al, you’re heart was in the right place. But, in our divided nation climate change has been boiled downed to DEM v. GOP. Your advocacy may have been the nexus of this sorry, political reality. Step aside and support another voice, not associated with the DEMS, in this battle.
sorry, but all this is wishful thinking. the fact is that the US, and the developed countries, have prospered on the backs of the rest of the world. capitalist greed has turned out citizenry into obese sick people who waste energy water and food and consume natural resources at ever increasing rates. this will mean disaster for poorer nations. environmental Justice will be obtained only when the destruction obliterates the developed world. fortunately this is well under way and nothing will come on the way of our collective greed and lack of common sense. the race to the bottom will end at the bottom.
4
We have to stall China's economy.
1
We owe Al Gore a lot. Some day we will regret the culture that belittled him. See my http://earthpeoplemedia.com/why-cant-we-leave-al-gore-alone/. His good news is very welcome and certainly part of the story. He even included positives about business usually left out, as it wasn't part of the narrative at the Climate Strike I attended yesterday. However it isn't perfect or complete. He criticizes those who now talking about "despair" as advocating "surrender" and implies they are "cowards." These are inaccurate. They are raising something on a growing number of minds and at the early stages of catalyzing important discussions. They might be right, or not--as the secret is no one can prove it, either way. That discussion has merit and might prove useful down the road--although we can certainly hope and try much harder to make them wrong. And more attention to adaptation wouldn't be a bad idea. From a comprehensive viewpoint, and while welcome in other ways, the "We have the technology," "These are the 'enemies," and "The kids will lead us" messages miss things too. (Al Gore is not a "kid." He set the stage for the kids.) These miss that in both noted and other ways, we are all part of the problem. And part of that is the very way we think, the many problematic mindsets we hold, even by those who care. I listed 60 in http://greeneconomynj.org/2019/01/03/new-jersey-now-gets-climate-change-what-we-are-still-missing-why-were-not-talking-about-what-were-not-talking-about-part-4/.
2
The "climate crisis" is just one symptom of an ever-expanding human population . Exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite system,
3
Ronald Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev : Tear down that wall." Sovereign children of the world: "Mr. Reagan: You've torn up our future." They know full well as do we rational adults that we could have had 100% clean, renewable energy by now if Reagan hadn't ripped the President Carter installed solar panels off the White House roof in 1980.
"Macho, Macho, Macho Man" Reagan effectively defined saving the planet as "feminine" enterprise. Hopefully, said female will persist and finally be elected President.
3
Mr. Gore is absolutely right in his summary of the catastrophic impact and ultimate outcome that climate change will have on our planet and the human race. We may go the way of other uninhabitable planets. While there is awareness of this by many on our planet there is no sense of urgency...the "burning platform" that is necessary to start the change process. Sure there are more large hurricanes, the polar icecaps are melting, the sea is rising, people can no longer live in areas where temperatures are rising, vast species of animals are becoming extinct...sounds bad to me, but still we are moving in the wrong direction. Why? We have politicized this in such a way that many can deny this "Inconvenient Truth" to support there own selfish economic, financial, and political agendas. I am not optimistic and sad that we may have already reached the tipping point and may not be able to halt the inevitable climate journey we are on.
Mr. Gore, while I admire your vision and perseverance, you are no longer able to affect meaningful change. Your fate and perhaps that of the human race was determined by a "hanging chad" back in 2000.
3
Why have the mainstream US protestant churches been so quiet about climate change? Are we really to believe Genesis 1:26-28 has served us well and what God intended? " And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
The church seems especially well equipped to help us deal with a situation that some would seems as hopeless and fraught with the dangers of human weakness.
3
@JeffB. This has nothing to do with religion.
A missing component of Gore's equation for success in addressing climate change is humanity. Let me explain. The three pillars of the problem are 1) consumerism as enabled by globalism, science, and technology using a lot of resources, electricity in particular; 2) evolving technology enabling some of the problems in 1 to be addressed: such things as solar, wind, and nuclear power replacing coal and gas; 3) unmentioned is the driving force of one and renders 2 likely ineffective; that is poor humanity driving instinctual controls to acquire mass quantities of goods and wealth: fear guides and controls.
The equation becomes impossible to solve as long as we insist that lack of cognitive control -- the use of advertizing and non-cognitive inducements to consumerism remains in place and is effective. Mindless consumerism must be curtailed and replaced with cognitive control of it; you buy what you need and can be sustained per a calculation, not an instinct, an impulse, fear.
The consequent problem of a sagging economy can be addressed with a deeper humanity. Then it works. A deep socialism is needed to get the resource need malleable to change in order to meet reasonable energy requirements: 1 to equal 2. We become nuns and monks that live and spend by a code of reason, not just pleasure.
You can see this by a quick extrapolation: all the developing countries in the world can't become like the United States. We consume way too much.
Yes, wind power and solar and conservation have to be a big part of the solution but are insufficient. Nuclear Power is the only currently available option which can do the heavy lifting to get us out of this mess. I am talking about literally hundreds of large nuclear power plants. Until people and politicians start recognizing this, everything else is peanuts.
Also, quit trying to convince people that climate change is real and serious - we are past that - most thinking people believe it - let's focus entirely on the fix.
As a challenge, I would extend the following to anyone who believes this can all be done without nuclear power. Starting from the massive power required by the US annually, draw a hypothetical map and spreadsheet using specific renewal power locations and realistic technology and demonstrate/ calculate how the conversion to wind and solar power will occur. Emphasis on "realistic".
I have never seen this done without resorting to fairy-tale wishful thinking, gross generalities, and factual distortion; such as using max capacity output values as opposed to average output (which is 1/3 max capacity at best) and worse.
Good luck
3
This 'sentient' species is doomed.
I hold you in high regard. You have largely been spot on for decades, You ceaseless effort and recommendations are logical and valid.
That said:
The earth is in the midst of a population explosion which drives virtually every looming environmental disaster (7.7 billion, growing annually by 80 million). Every 4 years we add the equivalent of the population of the USA (320 million) to this planet. We are already way past the carrying capacity of this planet.
We have to reduce the footprint of each and every person by 1% each and every year to offset the 1% annual growth in population just to stay 'flat'. As for lifestyle 'adjustments', it will eventually take teepees. tofu, and bicycles for everyone.
Numerous environmental disasters are already on a roll, ramping up over time, and baked in for decades to come.
It no longer matters what any individual or entity believes or how it acts.
3
Mr. Gore - What kind of motor vehicle do you drive around in? A big SUV or a compact, hybrid or electric. How big is your home? Do you limit the use of AC in the summer? In addition to your pious preaching, shouldn’t you lead by example? And, because this is such a critical issue, can we hear more from you regarding population growth. It is reasonable to expect that all those new people in countries where this growth is the most rapid are going to want all the energy heavy conveniences that we have here. And Mr. Gore – consider this. If all those people (or even you or I) protesting climate change (this is an important issue) were never brought into this world, there would be less energy demand. Less people = less energy needs. Climate change has followed uncontrolled population growth and that just might be our biggest problem.
1
A glimmer of hope from one who has suffered politically for his wise leadership in the past. Recall Florida, goons and the Supreme Court miscarriage.
Would that we had listened sooner. Perhaps we'll listen now.
We must arise as the people of the world, while we still have a little time, and make a strident demand that the powers that be in all relevant sectors worldwide, make this their highest priority. Acting effectively now will minimize the damage and prevent the worst effects manifesting in our future.
Meanwhile. prepare for far more serious effects than we have now, they are surely coming.
2
We as a planet wide species are so far behind the curve on this that it's futile now to even begin, yet we should try, if we want our species to survive a few hundred more years. I think even that is optimistic. I've traveled 'a bit' and now live in Asia, and I don't see any efforts approaching the scale needed to turn around the devastation to air, soil, water, and oceans. Humans have overrun and poisoned this planet and we're taking most of the other existing species with us. It's sheer arrogance to assume we'll somehow all or most grow a conscience, soul, whatever you want to call it, and develop a sustainable way of life. That means purposely limiting population growth (religions won't allow that), developing systems that don't poison or profit, and respecting other species' right to exist. In other words, it just isn't going to happen. It's against our nature, there's too much damage already done, and people are incapable of changing quickly enough. The best we can do now, IMHO, is stave off global anarchy as long as possible. We as humans are going to pass into the mists of the past, in the not too distant future. There's nothing 'good' or 'bad' about it, it just is. We had our shot and we blew it. Have a good day.
2
As long as the business model of the right wing outrage infotainment machine is financially viable progress will be painfully slow as we continually take two steps forward then a step back. And what if after Brexit the right wing parties of the Rupert Murdoch countries of the US, Britain and Australia form an illiberal alliance of intransigence?
1
This piece is presented to a "bubble" of generally intelligent and educated people. Try selling the same message to an American who cannot find his home town on a map or an Australian tradesman who cannot find an affordable - let alone adequate - electric vehicle. Try to even get this piece onto 'Fox News'.
Politicians, even those who understand, are wedged by the demand for jobs. Jobs for people stuck in old trades and professions, who cannot afford to retrain. Add in blatant misinformation and outright bribes.
Additionally, the aging infrastructure in countries such as Australia and , probably, America cannot handle the extra loads required to deal with large-scale electric vehicle use. Nor cater for long-distance travel; where it may be 400 to 500 miles between settlements.
There needs to be some added dimension to renewables to cater for this; such as hydrogen - either direct combustion, or fuel-cell mediated.
The elephant (herd) in the room is population and nobody wants(dares) to touch that. Without a significant reduction in global population none of the measures described here are much better than "bandaids".
4
A 10 kilometre deep lined and capped water well can convert all power stations to clean energy, a cut of 30% in CO2 emissions. A 20% cut would come from electrification of all vehicles. 41% would come from coating all buildings in Starlite. Aircraft and Ships could halve emissions by using fuel mixed with water using an ultrasonic dibber. Aircraft account for 6% of CO2, while shipping accounts for 4.5%, so another 5.25% can be saved. The total savings would then be 96.25%. Improving soil using biochar would then cut CO2 in the atmosphere by locking it in the ground. Cement based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative.
It can all be paid for by eliminating mental illness using the Kadir-Buxton Method.
Alas, Mr. Gore, if we had a political system in which the majority rule (or if Nader voters had realized what would be the consequences of their vote), you would have become president in January 2001, and maybe the U.S. would have led the world in slowing climate change, abandoning fossil fuels, and creating a green economy. Although 9-11 may have still occurred, surely you wouldn't have ordered the U.S. to invade Iraq, thus destabilizing the Middle East. And you or your successor might well have gotten us to universal healthcare by now.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda, as they say.
But except for the brief hope we had when our racist country elected Obama as president (the Nobel Prize was really for those of us who voted for him, but they had to give out just one award), and he and the Democrat-controlled Congress created the ACA, and SCOTUS made gay marriage legal (thus advancing us closer to our Constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law), it's been a pretty depressing 20 years.
Just look at all the harm Bush, Cheney, the Koch brothers, McConnell, and now Trump (and the Republican party as a whole) have done not only to America, but to the world. It's all so sad because it didn't have to be.
But 2018 gave me a spark of hope that enough American voters may be coming to realize what needs to be done to even have a chance at saving our country and saving the world: vote the Republicans (and especially Trump and McConnell) out of office.
Otherwise, it's Doomsday.
13
How different, how much better, our present and future lives might have been had the Supreme Court (well, OK, five of them) not decided to directly interfere in the political process and hand the presidency to George W. Bush. Al Gore is not without flaws but on the critical issues involving the environment, the now truly life-and-death issues for human civilization, he has been clear-sighted for decades in a way unmatched by any other politician in this or any other country.
8
A very hopeful and inspiring piece. Al Gore would have made an outstanding President, had the election not been decided by the Supreme Court. It is never too late to run for President, Mr. Gore. Gore 2020!
15
There are actually two axioms associated with global warming (whether empirically measured or analytically modeled): 1) human use of fossil fuels is the root cause of global warming; 2) climate engineering is not to be allowed. The first point is ubiquitous in discourse, and the second is never stated, unless one reads technical papers on climate.
I find this interesting: under the "the science is settled" rubric, human (de-facto) engineering made a climate catastrophe, yet human engineering may not be used to remediate the problem. This strange paradox leads me to think of our climate problem as somewhat more political than technical: everyone must reduce their carbon footprint, yet the possible uses of technology to artificially cool the planet are off limits.
I don't see how climate scientists and activists can have it both ways: 1) we are CERTAIN about our causality claim; 2) no, you can't use technology to change the climate artificially -- you must stop using fossil fuels. Why?
Several technical communities are exploring engineering solutions to cool the earth. See, for example, the "Glitter Belt" studies at Georgia Tech: "High Altitude Aerodynamic Reflectors To Counter Climate Change". These approaches might cool the earth for 1 cent on the dollar in comparison to wholesale fossil fuel retirement, yet the climate authorities are nearly universally opposed.
So: political issue (carbon footprint) or technical issue (cool the planet now)?
2
Fill the air with sulfur dioxide which will deflect sunlight but also create acid rain. Every action has consequences besides the intended ones. Use methods nature has worked out through evolution or by restoring favorable natural equilibriums—plant trees and reduce use of fossil fuels and of burning down forests to raise beef or soybeans.
4
@Joel sanders, you dont understand the complexities of the entire picture. Here is one example: artificial cooling will not reduce the growing acidification of the oceans as they absorb CO2.
I will add that all the technologies being applied, or contemplated, are all forms geoengineering. And this includes the technology Gore mentioned with the planting of trees!
Your truer meaning regarding geoengineering should not be altogether dismissed as a moderated piece that might address the otherwise unavoidable edges of extremes but it is no substitute for the "mainstream" directions now or soon to be underway.
2
@Joel Sanders Technology will certainly play a crucial role in any solution or mitigation of this crisis.
More efficient renewable energy technologies, carbon sequestration, greener manufacturing methods, to name a few.
And atmospheric engineering technologies might play a role as well, once they're much more thoroughly researched, tested and de-risked.
But such massive interventions are inherently risky and unpredictable when dealing with highly nonlinear systems.
An analogy may serve here. Consider personal health and fitness: I could eat sensibly and exercise to avoid obesity and heart disease. OR I could opt for bariatric and cardiac surgery and untested new drugs every few years. Which path is more likely to produce good outcomes?
1
Thank you, Mr Vice President. It hurts to think of how different life could be were it not for a few hanging chads and a lot of nepotism.
And thank you, Na Kim - outstanding artwork.
8
Our Earth needs us to do more than strike. Striking and protesting are well intended and do help raise awareness but we’ve been aware of climate change for decades.
Technological solutions may not be what save us from the increasingly inhospitable biosphere that anthropogenic climate change has unleashed. Currently there is no game-changing technological solution that is likely to be deployed at scale in our immediate future.
The WMD in the room is that consumption and globalization are significant deterrents to reversing the accumulation of carbon in our atmosphere. Cheap fossil-based fuels enable supply chains to move products from the low labor cost countries to markets around the world without regard to externalities, such as carbon emissions, just so we can have more stuff.
So, right now CO2 reduction is in our hands.
A technological solution will come someday but unless we change our consumption behavior and capitalism model that someday may be too late.
climatedonor.org
3
Thank you Nobel Laureate Gore for this positive article and your dedication to the message that "this is our generation’s life-or-death challenge". Your urgent message that "growing migrations of climate refugees are destabilizing nations. A sixth great extinction could extinguish half the species on earth" is profound.
Clearly, the World must be mobilized, and the U.S. can be the source of inspiration that the battle can be won.
Using the development of internet technology as a model, an international research effort can develop technologies for providing cheap electricity, so cheap, that the market will replace fossil fuels in much faster than ever anticipated.
If we lead the "mobilization", much like we did in forming the U.N., the I.M.F., and the World Bank at the close of WWII, we can speed the market adaptation for improving the quality of life and life expectancy of our species.
Dr. James Powell, the inventor of superconducting Maglev and I have described, in "Silent Earth", a Maglev,launch system that can place 24/7 solar generators in geosynchronous orbit to beam unlimited cheap energy to receiving fields to virtually any place on Earth for grid distribution.
This source could be implemented at the scale required to provide a projected 11 Billion World population with the required energy for a decent quality of life.
With cheap electricity we can desal billions of gallons of water, capture atmospheric carbon dioxide, and make jet fuel from air and water.
1
The only vestige left in the world still denying the science of climate change is U.S. Republicans. The denial is understandable since U.S. power and wealth have not only derived from the financial sector but also from oil and gas and, as we speak, the U.S. is the biggest producer and exporter of oil and gas in the world.
But like addicts in denial, the U.S. Republicans need a huge intervention. The truth of the science has a chance of mitigating climate change, while the lies of denial perpetuate the addiction. The time for treatment is now.
5
Natural gas, petroleum oil , and coal have limited supplies anyway. Oil was formed from the layers of carbonization of decomposed living matter that died, even in the deep water ocean floor where once dinosaurs roamed eons ago according to the Museum of Natural History. It was not there when the earth was first created, unlike water and air . Natural gas in the form of methane is produced from compost emissions as is done in recycled dumps like in Croton on the Hudson. By creating electricity from new sources it serves as an equalizer of political power between those nations with less "natural resources" which was never really natural.
1
Thank-you Mr Gore, but also thank-you to all those teachers who took up the mantle and taught the science in our schools.
2
Not that I disagree with any of the factuals here...
But, I do ask, what do we "win" - a carbon-neutral planet so crowded with people that every natural thing is overrun with footsteps and selfie-takers? A new permission slip to stretch the limits of the planet in a new, blind stumble toward 15, 20 or more billion people?
Sweet victory, indeed.
5
A number of commentators have criticized Gore for advocating carbon reduction while he has a large carbon footprint (big house, air travel, etc.). I agree there is a certain hypocrisy ... but Gore's carbon footprint has little to do with his message, which is about *political change* not *individual change*. Of course it would help if everyone in the developed world lived in a small space and used bicycles and never flew anywhere ... but a) that is not going to happen, and b) it would not be enough because residents of the developing world already live in small spaces, use bicycles and never fly anywhere ... and their demands for energy are growing, not shrinking. To make a difference, governments must be involved, and governments must find a way to change the way that corporations use energy and the way that energy is generated. Many localities in the EU and a few in the US are already doing that: substituting renewables and storage for coal, oil and natural gas for the production of electricity. Only political change will make that widespread, or even near-universal.
7
Green energy is also a proven way to save money. It also reduces air, water and noise pollution. Eating less animal protein will reduce medical costs. Change can mean improvements. Anyway, with climate change there would be no status quo.
Buying homeowners insurance will be prohibitive, like an eighty year old trying to purchase a long term care policy.
There are no more good old days, but we can have a modern future.
1
A number of commentators have criticized Gore for advocating carbon reduction while he has a large carbon footprint (big house, air travel, etc.). I agree there is a certain hypocrisy ... but Gore's carbon footprint has little to do with his message, which is about *political change* not *individual change*. Of course it would help if everyone in the developed world lived in a small space and used bicycles and never flew anywhere ... but a) that is not going to happen, and b) it would not be enough because residents of the developing world already live in small spaces, use bicycles and never fly anywhere ... and their demands for energy are growing, not shrinking. To make a difference, governments must be involved, and governments must find a way to change the way that corporations use energy and the way that energy is generated. Many localities in the EU and a few in the US are already doing that: substituting renewables and storage for coal, oil and natural gas for the production of electricity. Only political change will make that widespread, or even near-universal.
There's one thing we could do immediately to go after carbon: look at transportation. Specifically, trains.
If we electrify our current rail corridors and power them with wind and solar power, we don't have to wait for everyone to switch to an electric car to start getting carbon out of moving people and goods around.
We have to invest in infrastructure anyway just to adapt to changing climate impacts, so while we're electrifying those rail corridors, we can also upgrade them for higher speeds. We don't have to wait for High Speed Rail either; this can be done while we're waiting for new HSR corridors to be built.
Boosting freight speeds to 80 mph, and passenger rail to 120 in the rail corridors we already have will get us immediate pay back and reach more places. It will tie in with High Speed Rail corridors where HSR makes sense. It will revitalize the towns that have been left behind.
But wait - there's more. We can also use those same rail corridors for power transmission corridors, connecting that clean solar and wind power to the rest of the country. Win-WIn: clean transportation and clean power.
There's a short video explaining how what we're calling Solutionary Rail works here: www.solutionaryrail.org/video
3
A number of commentators have criticized Gore for advocating carbon reduction while he has a large carbon footprint (big house, air travel, etc.). I agree there is a certain hypocrisy ... but Gore's carbon footprint has little to do with his message, which is about *political change* not *individual change*. Of course it would help if everyone in the developed world lived in a small space and used bicycles and never flew anywhere ... but a) that is not going to happen, and b) it would not be enough because residents of the developing world already live in small spaces, use bicycles and never fly anywhere ... and their demands for energy are growing, not shrinking. To make a difference, governments must be involved, and governments must find a way to change the way that corporations use energy and the way that energy is generated. Many localities in the EU and a few in the US are already doing that: substituting renewables and storage for coal, oil and natural gas for the production of electricity. Only political change will make that widespread, or even near-universal.
I don't understand why meat's contribution to greenhouse gases isn't getting more attention. Shouldn't attention to a problem be proportional to its contribution? Why are people afraid to say it?
Ditto for overpopulation and not making copies of ourselves.
Do people not understand clearing of land is a huge reason why the Amazon and other forests are being set on fire? As long as there is demand, lands rich with diversity and life will be destroyed. Stop the demand.
Do we really not think poisons and pesticides that kill so many, even non-targets, don't affect us? Because we aren't made of the same same protein, nerves, etc.?
What is it with humans claiming to be heroes for "saving" and making small dents in massive problems they created in the first place?
Instead of going on and on about planting trees, fishing plastic out of the ocean, growing coral in labs, and "saving" things, how about not destroying everything we touch in the first place? Not as glamorous or ego-satisfying as saving, but more effective.
Jonas Salk: "If all of the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." I find it unbearably and profanely unfair that we are likely going to take so many innocent creatures with us first, though.
Narcissism is a hot topic these days, but our entire species is the most narcissistic one that has ever existed.
10
Yes Mr Gore, perhaps it is not too late. We can still wrestle science back from political hustlers. You genuinely inspired me. It is a battle that we must join urgently, and we must win. If we do not, our children will live in the world of permanent Trumpism and Goreism. Self serving manipulators, trying to rule the world through fear.
Can California’s carbon tax be copied by other states? I hope that the suggestion by Mr. Gore to pass a carbon tax is adopted. What would it look like if New York or Florida tried a carbon tax?
3
Thank you VP Gore for an excellent thoughtful piece. I recently reread The Handmaid's Tale in advance of Margaret Atwood's new book. It is fascinating to see how what seemed like fantasy on environmental issues is coming true. As the parent of millennials and Gen Z children, I have hope in the future. I believe they can see beyond party politics to work to at least mitigate the coming disaster. Let's hope it is not too late.
3
Regenerative agriculture and afforestation and soil building are definitely very important to drawing down CO2 emissions, but Mr. Gore's example reveals that he is out of touch with the brutal math of climate change. He should explain where he is going to find the land for 1 trillion trees.
The U.S. currently has only about 750 million acres of forest. An average acre of U.S. forest can sequester around 1 metric ton of CO2 per year. (source: EPA greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator). That's owing to age, rainfall, forest type, and other limiting factors. Perennial grasses are more effective, tropical forests even better, but there is the problem of getting them to grow here.
Do the math. To sequester U.S. CO2 emissions, about 6 Billion tons a year, would require an additional 6 billion acres of new forest to be planted. That's an area equivalent to all of North America including Mexico, Central America, Canada, and Greenland. I would like to hear more about the 1 trillion tree project. Are we planning to take over the world or pay other countries to perform that task?
I place my bet on biofuels, solar. and wind power instead, but we must--according to virtually all climate models--rely on carbon capture and other processes to take CO2 directly out of the air as soon as possible. There are schemes, costly but perhaps scalable, just about feasible for doing just that, so there is a reason to be hopeful if we can muster the political will and budget to do it.
2
And when we take as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as possible, plants will continue photosynthesis exactly how?
1
@Once From Rome
“As much as possible” is still not good enough to reduce atmospheric co2 and plants will do just fine.
1
@chuck
The quoted study said that we have room to plant 1 to 1.5 trillion trees WORLDWIDE. Where do your numbers come from? Trees can include fruit, nut and forage species; and often crops can be grown under the canopy. Plus young trees grow fast and sequester more carbon than old trees. So harvesting old trees to build structures, and replanting more young trees sequesters even more. Use as much of the tree as possible for manufactured wood products, and turn what's left into biofuels or biochar.
1
The fight against climate change is definitely worth it - hey, we have a pretty good deal here on earth. We should put off the inevitable as long as possible but, ultimately, the future of mankind is self-destruction.
1
This is an inspiring article on a day when the challenges of climate change are seeming overwhelming.
Don't forget about our seagrass - they provide habitats for wildlife that need our help and can store carbon too!
3
The magnitude of the climate crisis has grown exponentially each decade we have dilly dallied and our efforts in the future must match that or exceed the growth of the problem. How will we replace our rain forests or clean up the acid that is destroying our coral? We need every person working toward heading off total disaster. As you say we need trillions of new trees which means every man woman and child would need to plant almost a thousand trees.
Things are not hopeless and the trends are favorable, but a change to our planet and climate is almost certain to occur and we are in denial about planning for that change as well as continuing to fight the rise of planet heating gases on an emergency basis. Can we do both? Is the human race capable of the twin tasks? Will we learn from what is now and what is to come?
1
He could have been our President addressing this issue 19 years ago but the far left was tricked into voting for a third party. We we dealt the same bad deal when the far left sabotaged Hillary. Hillary would have been much better at the environmental issues than Trump is.
22
Agree that Nader was a stubborn, shortsighted spoiler but I see no parallel in 2016. The nomination was handed to Clinton as the heir apparent to a Wall Street funded neoliberal legacy. Followed by a poorly run campaign that took Obama’s supporters for granted.
Dem’s middling around while chasing the center are doomed to fail. Voter engagement and mobilization is what’s needed to win. This issue can provide the catalyst necessary to turn the tide.
8
The far left did not sabotage Hillary. She did that pretty much by herself. With some help from the old-guard democrats.
@ Joe Burnett
Hard left you’re blaming that travesty on. What about stopping a recount by a 5/4 Republican Supremes happening in the same state where W’s brother just happened to be governor. I love how you Republicans rewrite history when it’s proven how stupid the outcome was. Yeah, blame the far left but never the rabid republicans. Goes a long way with what is wrong with politics.
Much talk (but no action) has centered around our failing infrastructure in recent years. What we need, though, is vastly improved mass transit, not better highways for individuals in cars (even energy efficient ones). Train service in much of Europe is fast, easy to use, and efficient while Amtrak is a mess. Transit within their cities is also often far superior to the noisy, dirty, in-efficient lines which serve our cities (and I regularly ride the CTA, nonetheless). We can do so very much better, but it takes political will and the willingness to spend funds on projects which will encourage folks to switch from individual cars.
8
@Anne-Marie Hislop
Yeah, until you see how new mass transit is not used where communities were built around the automobile. Then planners want to jam people into densely packed communities so that the mass transit lines are useful.
If you want to live with space in which to live and distance enough from neighbor not to be in each others way, then mass transit is a bust, it will not work. You would be better with energy effect autos.
5
@Casual Observer
I think we can and should do both. The majority of Americans already live in urban areas where mass transit could be improved, expanded, and made more energy efficient.
Rail lines between urban areas, but also serving less population dense areas, could also improve things. I lived in Davenport, Iowa for a number of years. Folks there have been trying for ages to get better train service to both Chicago to the east (about a 3 hour drive) and Iowa City (1 hour by car) and Des Moines (3 hours by car) to the west. Many would love not to have to drive into Chicago, but the other choices are limited - and cities like Chicago certainly don't need any congestion on expressways and city streets.
4
To me addressing the climate change crisis is the number one issue at hand.
This is then followed by gun control and then healthcare costs and student loan debt.
I care that our children and grandchildren will have a bright future to look forward to and a livable planet.
It is bad enough that their youth is filled with fear of gun violence, but then when they are old enough to understand, they are also faced with a future filled with the perils of a changing climate, a future that is uncertain.
This is terrible.
As children, they can't do anything about this. so we must.
It will take all of our attention and resources, since time is limited. It needs to be our number one focus.
This is one of the reasons I support the more moderate candidates approach to health care reform, because we will need to be able to raise significant revenue to address a whole host of issues, with climate change being front and center. It will take a significant investment and should be our number one priority.
Klobuchar supported the Green New Deal and I applaud her for that. She has a great voting report card with the league of conservation voters. However, there are many wonderful candidates to choose from. We are lucky in that respect.
1
I do believe that we should and can address climate change with as much commitment as we can and still carry on to live our lives and to sustain the efforts. I fear that Gore is misusing statistics and giving an impression that the changes can come like described by Dornbusch’s Law to encourage but not to inform.
If one takes a million dollars to build a prototype energy system and $750,000 for the second, then the costs drop by 25%, but the the costs for succeeding ones will not likely drop by 25% with each iteration. We have to understand the numbers we are considering and the overall targets we must meet. Just reporting the proportional improvements of innovations is not enough to understand the scope.
They are not really related to Dornbusch’s Law because technological change is unlike monetary activities. Money represents wealth created in the course of commercial activities, not the actual development of technological change.
1
I attended a climate rally in Denver today and witnessed passionate young people convey the gravity and urgency of this situation with eloquence. Why can an eight or sixteen year old plainly state what many politicians seem to struggle with so much?
VP Gore, thank you for your detailed assessment of the state of the art in renewables and outlining other actions that are being employed right now, worldwide. All is not lost.
The green new deal offers an opportunity to reimagine antiquated systems and remake them in a way that benefits many, not just a powerful few.
Like past global crises the United States needs to take a leadership role and respond with innovative policies and real solutions because that’s what we do best. All the while, restoring the trust and respect this country earned over many generations.
I’m hopeful that the youth movement we’ve seen in action today will provide the political will needed in a crisis of this magnitude. Politicians should ‘grow a spine’ and bring this issue to the forefront and stop dancing around it. Perhaps they need to hire some eight to sixteen year-olds as consultants.
6
@Ron Bennett
I was also at your rally.
Yes to the sixteen year-olds.
I say, give our military, the third largest consumer of fossil fuels, the mission to mine CO2 from the atmosphere using renewable energy energy sources, and use that carbon to produce their own fuel and petrochemical feedstocks. This will help jumpstart the biofuel sector of our economy.
There is adequate windpower on Antarctica, but present windmills will not survive there. Since airplanes can survive even higher windspeeds, we must assume that these technological problems are solvable. CO2 can be separated from air by refrigeration and deposition as snow. Google that. The energy cost is 1/10th that of chemical process.
Allam cycle power plants produce only CO2 and water as waste products. Google that.
Virtually all of the climate models require wide scale use of carbon capture or process to capture CO2 directly from the air to draw down atmospheric CO2 to a safe level. We need to make that happen. It will be expensive, at least at first. Scientists are already at work to use captured carbon to produce useful products to offset those costs. The rest of the cost should be borne for the most part by consumers of fossil fuels.
The science on climate change is settled, but the politics isn't. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny the science, but let's be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc. are politically dead in the water. They're not happening. American voters (as well as people in other nations) simply don't want to pay more for energy. Bottom line. We & (the world) will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future no matter what happens. Maybe less but still in massive amounts. It's baked into our energy grid. It can't & won't be eliminated overnight. That will take decades at best. Even though our governments now subsidize clean-power sources, efficient cars, buildings, we continue to rip as much oil, coal & gas out of the ground as possible. And if our green policies mean there isn't a market for these fuels at home, then no matter: they will be exported instead. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. For years we've tried to simultaneously reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. More efficient engines enable more people to drive more cars over greater distances, triggering more road building, more trade & indeed more big suburban houses that take more energy to heat. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels, power, convenient goods & services? We all know the answer is no.
4
The day Mr. Gore 100% stops flying around the world in private jets and instead either takes trains or walks, then I'll consider he must seriously believe what he's saying.
Until then, I'll continue to enjoy the warmer weather with the knowledge that the planet has been MUCH warmer than it is now, and MUCH cooler. In fact, it has been warmer and cooler many, many times.
So while he advocates for taxes that will take more money out of the little guy's pocket, while doing nothing personally to prevent the globe from warming, I'll sit back and stare up at the skies, wondering when another of Mr. Gore's private flights will zip by.
6
@JOHNNY CANUCK That's 'celebrity culture': taking your cues from celebrities. Why do you need Gore to not be a hypocrite to take this issue seriously? Who is he to you? 125 years ago, Arrhenius spent a winter and hand-calculated that doubling CO2 would raise global temperature 2 to 6 C. This is the same Arrhenius that later won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for other work. Today, the same supercomputers used to model nuclear explosions estimate that doubling CO2 would raise Earth's temperature by 2 to 5 C. That is what Science looks like when it 'treads water' for 125 years. Look, if you have some other estimate for what happens when we double CO2, show your work. But don't prove that you're an 'independent thinker' because you turn Left every time Gore tells us to turn Right. Because that is not actually independent thinking. It's reactionary thinking.
@JOHNNY CANUCK
That is a pretty lousy excuse to do nothing.
“I will hurt my kids because I don’t like Gore”.
One of the real inconvenient truths is that they are too many people on earth. Another inconvenient truth is that we are unlikely to get to zero use of fossil fuel without using nuclear power. If you calculate the amount of land that it would take to generate the necessary power for the US making reasonable estimates and using the recommended wind turbine spacing, it is about twice the area of Wyoming.
5
Nuclear isn’t scary. It’s the only way. But the fossil fuel industry and scaremongering activists have worked together to convince the public it’s the most dangerous thing on earth, while in the interim we’ve sacrificed literally millions, with millions more to come to death from emissions, combustion, pollution, and climate change disasters.
7
neo-malthusian
The city where I live, here in flyover country, is growing so fast that it needed to build a new power plant to ensure the availability of elecricity. The city (citizens) owns the electric company. After holding all kinds of public hearings the city decided not to build the power plant.
The city purchased an old, abandoned, weed infested, golf course and turned it into a solar collection farm. It came on line at the beginning of this summer and my highest light bill this summer was $129. In past summers my light bill normally about $250 a month. That is for a regular sized stand alone house with central air. When we turn off the airconditioning this fall the light company may just start sending us money back. Who knows!
Solar! yea!
52
Al Gore is the president we need right now. I can think of no other leader with his experience and diplomacy who could change our direction and the direction of the world.
13
All these plans are way too late to stop rapidle developing climate change crises now accumulating jauggernaut momentum.
It's quite likely that mitigation of damages will sap us of sp much energy and resources so that we might well be unable to fund the progressive notions set forth here.
Still we must do all we can as soon as we can.
I praise the young people fighting for their future and lament my heedless consumer generation for laying waste to our beautiful planet.
3
While studying Environmental Engineering in the late 1970s and early 1980s, ( “Go Solar, It’s Hot!) an emphasis on population control in the largest greenhouse gas emitting nation (the USA) to replacement value (2.1 children per couple) was predicted to reduce the likelihood of any deleterious effects of increased greenhouse gases, because, so the thinking went, we would advance the then current solar technologies (photovoltaic cells, passive solar construction, solar water collectors, drip irrigation, and others) while limiting the emissions via limiting population growth. (This was before emerging markets emerged).
Environmental engineering was a direct result of the Arab Oil
Embargo (President Carter installed solar cells on the White House roof), energy prices went through the roof, there was gasoline rationing, speed limits were reduced to save fuel, and the GDP took a big hit. Then Ronald Regan was elected president, partly due to sky high interest rates and high unemployment, and soon after, oil started flowing (the bottom fell out the the energy market). Gas was cheap, and 1983 was the last year and Environment Engineering degree was offered at my Polytechnic University.
4
@casual observer
And we’ve been held hostage by the saudis ever since, not to mention 9/11.
From the editor's introduction from the recent special Climate Issue of Time magazine:
"Notably, what you will not find in the issue are climate-change skeptics. The science on global warming is settled. There isn't another side, and there isn't another moment."
22
Good luck, I hope it were so. But it seems to me we have already lost quite a bit and it will get worse before it gets better if it ever does. Is over the top optimism the better alternative to salvaging what we can?
Al Gore is one the causes of Climate skepticism. He would help the cause if he were QUIET!
He has made millions off the industry and made a movie so full of worst case, unlikely predictions that he may be one of the top reasons people have stopped listening to REAL SCIENCE.
Early hype and over prodictions have created a CRY WOLF response, so even if the WOLF is real now, who made people distrust the science.
Also political SCAMS like the Paris Accords with no enforcment created so politicians could go home and say they did something also hurt the cause.
Climate is Changing.
How much can we affect that change is an open question?
Plans with no enforcment, that give a pass to the largest poluters for decades are WORSE than doing nothing, because they trick people into complacency vs action.
6
@K Edwards
Gore has done more to raise awareness about global warming than just about any individual on earth. His early predictions (not really his, but cites of scientists) were actually conservative--it's happening way faster than was thought 20 years ago. How is Gore to blame for the Paris Accords not including enforcement? Your anger is misplaced
2
"Last year, solar and wind represented 88 percent of the new electricity capacity installed in the 28 nations of the European Union, 65 percent in India, 53 percent in China and 49 percent in the United States."
One might notice how the US is dead last in this area. Sad!
8
This article misses certain main points, which everyone can implement globally such as
1) Making use of vehicles only when necessary.
2) Doing away with temptation of going for new and fancy polluting vehicles.
3) Managing with bare minimum vehicles.
4) Reducing the use of plastic to the extent possible.
5) Replacement of yellow filament lamps by LEDs.
6) Reducing usage and wastage of electricity to the extent possible.
6) Reducing use of Air Conditioners to the extent possible.
Governments concerned should go in a big way to provide efficient public transportation throughout the country. Governments concerned must strictly levy huge penalties on all kinds of polluters including noise and light pollution.
10
Today a news headline today, courtesy of Democracy Now, reported that bird polulations in the US and Canada have dropped by nearly 3 billion since 1970. Yesterday a headline reported that in Indonesia, massive forest fires have spread toxic haze over the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, sending residents to hospitals, shutting down airports and closing schools as far away as Singapore and Malaysia. Indonesian officials estimate about 80% of the fires were deliberately set in order to clear land for palm oil plantations. In Texas, 40 inches of rain were dumped in the Houston area. Parts of the Bahamas was completely obliterated by Hurricane Dorian. These are the kinds of daily news reports that we are have become accustomed to. So while it’s encouraging that young people have recognized the severity of the issues around climate change, they need to get more serious about tackling and understanding the underlying causes and the interconnecting factors on a global and local level. Slamming "adults" for "not doing enough" is just not going to cut it. They need to take meaningful action on a personal level and hold government leaders accountable. While the youth climate protests are going on, Trump & Company are quietly dismantling major environmental protection regulations. Bolsonaro is carrying out his promise to “transform Brazil” by destroying the Amazonian rainforest while calling any protests “nonsense." They are leading the way to a climate catastrophe.
3
I skipped school on the first Earth Day in April 1970 to attend a rally in Chicago, and before graduating that year led teams to clean up the refuse around the natural landmarks in the small Illinois river town I lived in.
What can this current younger generation look forward to if none of our legislators 'listen and understand' the need to act now?
In 1970 it was restoring clean air and water, with the President on board.
In 2020 it's arresting climate destruction with a President scoffing at us.
3
Please endorse HR763 The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. It’s in Committee and has 60 sponsors.
We are working hard to get conservatives to consider it. There is great interest, but they are afraid to go against Trump.
Today at our strike protest, over a hundred students brought incredible enthusiasm and passion to our little town. Every young person I talked to wanted to work to support this bill. Some of them will go to Congress Member Doug LaMalfa’s office to deliver close to 400 letters from adults asking for his support.
Thank you Vice President Gore, for your strong leadership. Please keep leading us, giving us your strength. We are working hard and we need support!
5
Thanks for focusing on hope, Mr. Vice President. I'm so burned out with the new trend of climate change solution pessimism. If there is one way to lose this fight, it's giving up before it's over.
6
I, too, believe we CAN win the battle/war. But do I believe we WILL win? No, I do not. But that doesn’t stop my efforts. To win this fight we must believe pessimistically but act optimistically (to paraphrase a Rice University professor whose name I cannot recall). I.e., if you’re optimistic about our prospects, then you don’t understand the problem. But pessimism must not lead to hopelessness; if it does, then we have no chance.
3
Thank you, Mr. Gore, for this powerful article. When I think of the progress that could have been made with you as president, and the wars that could have been avoided ...
I'm thrilled to hear of the leaps made in renewable energy in spite of the fuel industry machinations. As it becomes cheaper to produce, renewable energy will be quickly accepted. Everyone wants to breathe clean air and drink clean water. We need wise, honest leaders with integrity. Please keep speaking out.
3
If Mr. Gore actually read what he wrote, he would realize that a "Green New Deal" is not needed. As he correctly noted, generation of electricity by wind (at least land based wind) is now cheaper than using coal and, at least in come cases, gas. Since power companies are not interested in losing customers and money, they will naturally switch to renewables. Likewise the situation with cars. As EVs come down in price, the switch will occur without government intervention.
In 10-25 years, renewables will the source of energy for both electricity and ground based transportation just based on the free market. If the government tries to step in, it will almost certainly take much longer since it will become a political fight.
3
Thank you Al Gore, for giving us a ray of hope by talking about some of the progress the world has made ( in spite of the deniers) to combat the climate crisis. While fear can be a motivator, hopelessness leads to inaction both on a personal and on a global scale. Seeing a way past the mess we have created of our planet to a brighter future is essential. A “we can do it” attitude is absolutely necessary.
I am impressed that way back in the year 2017, on Sunday March 5, 2017 to be precise, more than 50% of the energy in the 14 State South West Power Pool was briefly supplied by wind. I am impressed by the number of solar panel installations and by the number of electric refueling stations and cars that I see as I travel. I am thrilled by the number of municipalities and businesses which are reducing their footprints.
As for leadership, I was thrilled by Governor Jay Inslee’s focus on climate change in the primary and wish he was still in the race. To be sure there is loads more that needs to be done, much of it outlined by Mr. Gore in this column and by Governor Inslee in his campaign. But the point is we can do it. We need to move faster no doubt. Many more people, countries and politicians need to get on board. But some of the progress so far makes me hopeful for my children and grandchildren. Yes we can do it.
2
The attacks on the Saudi oil refineries (temporarily) took out 'about 5% of the world's daily oil production'. That 5% amounted to 5 Million barrels of oil. Do the math, 100% of the world's daily oil production is 100 Million barrels of oil. Daily.
And that's not counting coal. We are very far past 'winning' the climate crisis. At best, we will be able to mitigate and adapt. But the level of adaptation will be far in excess of most people's ability to even imagine.
5
Another example of the false premise that we can predict the future outcome of our actions. In others word more of mankind's self worship of themselves as deities.
There's no doubt that mankind's activities have been detrimental for Earth's ecosystem. Been going on for decades.
Even if true drastic measures are taken two things will happen. The social and economic disruptions will be so great that it's guaranteed that we'll armed conflicts over resources all over the place. Second is that the impact of decades of pollution will continue for decades more. And it's not just climate. Threats to the food chain continue to grow unabated.
4
Acidification of oceans and unpredictable changes in deep water currents are too very large and uncontrollable factors that will destabilize both weather and food supplies in very powerful ways that will be very difficult, if not impossible, to work around. What is not clear is whether there will be any modifications in the rate of ocean water warming or acidification due to the addition of a fair amount of fairly cold melted glacier water.
Does anyone know if this has been studied?
The article does not address the financing of fossil fuel extraction and combustion. Lots of money has been invested
in the companies that do this work. A significant drawdown in the available funds would be helpful in keeping the stuff in the
ground where it belongs.
But how does society convince
dyed in the wool profit opportunity seekers to act in
their long term interests and not their quarterly profit
goals?
This is as difficult as getting the denialist funded obstructionists out of power. There is no answer to this as yet since it is very unclear if climate change has become the single issue for enough suburban swing state voters upon which their choice of candidate is made.
This Hobbesian world that awaits should see a significant slowdown in population growth, economic behavior, and therefore in emissions. Societies will be incapable of growth with all the imminent stresses. The slowdown is a type
of built in brake to continued business as usual.
even if we manage to salvage livable conditions for humans, the loss of our wildlife, birds, sea life, natural ecosystems and glorious open space will be a cost too great to bear. we humans are tied to the natural systems. for this discussion to focus on humans only is to miss the point.
4
@John davidson Unfortunately, many (most) of our species only value other species insofar as they benefit us. Non-human animals have no inherent value. Except for our dogs and cats, of course. That’s different! Except it isn’t.
Absolutely! It’s not always just about people!
I pledge always to live in a smaller home than Mr. Gore, to take fewer private plane flights, and to have a lighter overall carbon footprint.
15
@O'Brien And yet you will not accomplish even a 10th of what Gore has done. But nice joke-- for a 12 year-old.
Western society has come to resemble a bad religion
I define a bad religion as a worldview that cannot be questioned is promoted through hysterical claims about future doom and the shunning and shaming of all heretics and unbelievers.
I respect science and I believe we must be good stewards of the earth but when the climate crisis literature when you dig down ultimately advocates for a return to subsistence farming and promotes the mass extinction of humanity I no longer think the science community is being consulted.
3
Mr. Gore is a hero. He has endured so much abuse to speak truth to power. This article is necessary reading.
7
A young man named Al Gore long ago brought this issue to public attention, and despite setbacks and a few mistakes he is still working to address climate change. Thank you, Mr. Gore.
15
I am less optimistic than Mr. Gore on this issue. First let us look at the energy consumption market in the US. Half of the total energy consumption occurs in the industrial/commercial sector, with 21% in the residential sector and 28% for transportation. The latter is dominated by the light truck/SUV/car subsector at 55% and 24% for commercial and freight trucks. This translates to about 15% of total US energy consumption for light trucks/cars. When this added to the residential sector, gives 36% of total US energy consumption attributable to the private citizens and 64% to the industrial/commercial/commercial transportation sector. Yet the private sector is viewed as the main target for a reduction in energy consumption and by extension a lower carbon print. We are asked to drive more fuel efficient cars, keep the thermostat down, insulate our homes and take public transportation. These are all noble undertakings worth doing, but to really make a dent into lower greenhouse gas emissions the onus lies with the commercial sector. I have yet to see a major initiative in this sector.
6
@Rudy Ludeke
You are aware that the business sector is what produces the food we consume, etc, etc. That's why it's so much higher.
3
Every discussion of climate change should emphasize the economic opportunities.
"Isn't it amazing that the renewable energy, building and technology solutions to this urgent problem are EXACTLY what will take us into the next economic revolution - a massive creation of jobs and wealth worldwide?"
This is the next phase in human development and human financial security.
This isn't a problem.
This is a gift.
An opportunity.
This is about wealth created for the masses.
Everyone will get a taste.
All while we preserve our mother Earth.
Frame it that way at every turn.
13
@Paul King One of the best comments here!
Years ago I read a book (I wish I could cite it, but my memory fails me). Very loosely, the author(s) showed parallels between energy expertise and the pre-eminant economy of the world at various times in history. In the 17th century, the Dutch used their expertise in wind power to became the most powerful economy in the world. They were succeeded by Britain which developed coal power. The Brits lost their economic supremacy when the US shot ahead in developing ways to harness fossil fuels. Each nation that was superceded lost their position in the world economy because they were too married to the technology that they had developed (we have all this exsisting industry we need to support!) to embrace the change on the horizon.
It seemed like a very strong theory to me at the time, and even more so now as I watch the rest of the world shoot ahead of the US in embracing non-fossil fuel energy.
Hi,
i'm 68 years old, and have bee following the climate debate and science findings sing about 1974.
what I've read and heard, especially in the last 4 years tells me
that it IS too late for the majority or the sum of humanity.
This has been speculated about in fiction as the "paradox", in which with all the possible places to hose life in the galaxy, why haven't we found signs or been contacted. The answer is always that intelligent life almost always snuffs itself out thru war or ecologic disaster. We are as close to this end as you can get, with any slim hope of drawing back from the abyss. I don't think that is likely. Our leaders and our voters have not shown any sign of being capable of voting against their own immediate, parochial interests.
If simply banning professional sports could save us, the end point would be the same. Intelligent life may exist here, but the collective IQ is somewhere around that of a beach clam!
Raise a glass to the end of humanity, but don't place any bets on it's survival.
2
66 million primary school children attend classes hungry every day.
750 million people have to survive on less than $1.90 a day.
I would prefef to see greater attention given to poverty and hunger in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Reining in climate change will help but it's not at the top of the list of measures needed to eliminate the scourge of hunger and poverty.
1
@Mike Edwards
A false choice. Global warming will make poverty worse. Stopping decertification and fostering sustainable agriculture will help solve both poverty and global warming.
1
@Mike Edwards of course, climate change solution & implementation is at the top of the list. what good would full stomachs do and poverty ended if the planet was burning down?
Yes Mr Gore, we have the tools. But we need to capitalize and commercialize those technologies, and it is an uphill battle all the way. Take our small clean-tech company (AirStoveOne Inc.) as an example. We have an incredibly efficient carbon-neutral combustion platform that if broadly commercialized would likely go a long way to pushing climate-change into remission. We have decided to go the licensing route, since raising capital for a start-up manufacturing play is nearly impossible in Canada. Our process is even less expensive in terms of $/btu than its fossil-fuel based alternatives. In most of the world outside the USA, obstacles to the free-flow of capital are the greatest impediments.
1
I have two good friends who are both conservative. I saved the front page of the NYT Feb. 7, 2019 showing a chart of the rise in temperature since 1880.
One of them looked at it for about ten seconds and she declared "What, temperatures started in 1880? What about earlier years?" Then she threw it back in my face.
My other friend looked at it and simply said that the chart proved nothing. We have had fluctuations for thousands of years as he said. He specifically noted the "little ice age", and like my other friend, threw the paper back at me.
This is the mentality. You can't talk to them reasonably.
3
@Sirlar
Let's see: 1880 - 2019 = 139 years
The planet's age: 4.5 billion years.
Number of times the planet has had global warming and cooling periods far more drastic than this one? Thousands.
Relax. If planet earth wants to shed itself of us pesky humans, it will. And there's not one thing we can do about it.
2
I hope you are right. Living in Daytona Beach, FL I do t see it. But I am practicing all my ways.
1
My company and our colleagues are part of the solution; we design and install ultra high efficiency ground source geothermal systems. These systems are electrical devices that use very few kilowatt hours to produce prodigious amounts of heating and cooling - perfect for residential and small commercial heating and cooling systems. Too few people are acquainted with the technology.
The last person who mentioned geothermal while on the "public stage" was Sarah Palin. Depressing...
When talking about ways to replace fossil fuel, It's time we start saying solar PV, wind turbines AND geothermal.
1
Gosh, this is the person we really need speaking out strongly on this issue.
Thank you, Mr. Gore, for all you have done over the decades to fight for the health of the planet.
Our nation would be in much different health and a different economy if only you had become our President. I have bemoaned many times over the years that missed opportunity to have you in the Oval Office.
7
Mr. Gore, you are the smartest and most sophisticated leader on the most important issue facing us. Could we persuade you to run for President? Like Joe Biden, you are a trusted known quantity who represents competence in government. But you are more articulate, and more vital -- without the historical gaffes. Get in the race and see how quickly you rocket to the top of the democratic polls!
7
The only thing stopping America from taking a global leadership position on saving our fragile ecosystems are the Gas Oil Petroleum party and their 0.1% oleaginous oligarchs who can't stand democracy or doing the right thing for all of the planet's species, not just human beings.
It's not nice to repeatedly rape Mother Nature, Grand Old Pillage party.
Decent human beings do not support Republican environmental violence and their science denialist propaganda.
November 3 2020
Register.
Donate.
Vote.
Save a species....it might be your own.
22
@Socrates
It's not just that. Each and every one of us contributes. We value apathy and cynicism. We don't want to be inconvenienced or deprived of things we want. Even being aware of our impact, we often make the wrong choice (easy example among 1000s: using disposable diapers).
Not that I disagree w/you about the rape & pillage party...
1
1. Plant More Trees
2. Replace Trump
3. Travel Less
4. Dump Trump
5. Reduce Energy Consumption
6. Vote Out Trump
7. Support All Climate Change Adjustmens
8. Welcome Extinction-Trump Administration
9. Vote 2020--Democrat
14
How different this world could have been had this man, who won the popular vote, been elected President in 2000 instead of President Oil & Gas.
10
@BoneSpur He was elected, but President Oil & Gas was appointed by a corrupt SCOTUS with a bogus argument. But I totally agree with you about what a different world we almost had in our grasp only to have it snatched away.
As I read day after day of negative climate news with a sense of dread, I ask myself, why does nothing seem to happen in response? And I can't get around one simple fact: It's just not bad enough yet.
That is, for those of us living in the United States -- the vast majority of us -- life seems normal. We don't really feel the effects of climate change yet; we only know it as an abstract concept. So in that sense, it's no wonder that we don't see an urgent response.
Is it simply that it will take the problem getting much worse to spur real, economic response en masse? I think that's likely. Unless we have some true, visionary leadership to guide us as a culture over our immediate understanding to a forward-looking view to motivate us to change.
3
If Trump were a normal person with some sensitivity he would be embarrasse by the young people who are demonstrating around the world for action on climate change. And what is Trump doing? Simply tearing up all the législation to reduce the amount of pollution in the US
1
we already have the technology to solve the problem (and cheap!) using very small reflective particles. that wouldn't be much fun though as it does not require ruling over the lives and behavior of the masses by a small number of hypocrites like al gore.
1
@Andrew Edge
What could go wrong with this strategy? There are never unintended consequences.
Great message from a great American. Thanks Mr. Gore and thanks for your continued public service.
4
I'm skeptical that we can 'win' this fight against an already mobilized mother nature; however, that said, we must at least try by greatly reducing the use of fossil fuels, etc.
Earth's human population growth remains as a catalyst for future disaster. Education is the key to stopping unsustainable population growth. An alternative might be bigger and more destructive wars, which might inflict tremendous damage to life on earth beyond humankind.
Reality is that there are no easy answers to man's current predicament.
Don't be afraid to say it! The Republican Party is the political party that needs to be kicked out of government. The GOP is the party that has prevented climate change amelioration. Stop beating around the bush and start naming the villains directly - you, me, everyone and everywhere, in bars, on the street, in super markets - so the anti-Science global warming deniers have no cover anywhere they go. The Republicans have long ago mastered that technique - and through repetition have convinced a huge number of Americans that guns don't kill people, coal is good for the economy, the NYTimes is the most liberal newspaper, tax cuts lead to economic growth, that Social Security is bad, welfare queens suck the economy dry, etc.
7
For the deniers:
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
1
Not being a scientist, I will present an idea that the most likely cause of the decline of many bird species is that they fly in smog. They become subjected to respiratory disease. Humans don't experience the level of smog that birds must fly through. Humans are at ground level. Many species fly at altitudes where chimney smoke levels off. Smoke starts out hot. It rises in cool air until the temperature, pressure, and volume reach equilibrium. This is often a few hundred feet. The air at that altitude is intensely polluted in many locations. That is the altitude where the birds fly. The smog weakens the birds and can kill them. So who has air quality data at different elevations? And can they be more exact about air quality at the elevations bird fly? (This comment is one iota in the broader debate.)
2
In November 1965 President Johnson's Scientific Advisory Committee reported to him that, "We can conclude with fair assurance that at the present time, fossil fuels are the only source of CO2 being added to the ocean-atmosphere biosphere system."
On April 22, 1970 thousands of young (and not so young) people around the world took to the streets to warn of the dangers to our planet -- Earth Day.
Here we are 49 years later with the young in the streets to warn of impending environmental disruption on a scale not seen in millions of years.
This will not end well. Many will adapt, many more will not.
2
Subtitle: "Its not too late" Quote from article: "trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs [per day]"
But some of it is too late. Those half-million atom bombs are going off in Earth's oceans, and that heat cannot be re-extracted. It's going to drift up toward the poles, and melt quite a bit of ice up there from underneath it, and there is nothing we can do now to prevent that, unless future SciFi can put refrigerator coils down into the ocean, which sounds improbable. It's a lot easier to dump heat into something as large as the ocean, then to get it back out again. Hence, the likelihood of 15 feet of sea level rise by the year 2200 is 100%. Indeed, the likelihood of 15 feet by year 2100 is between 5% and 20% (based on conversations by Dr Richard Alley, glaciologist from Penn State). Some of what is going to happen cannot now be recalled, and we should stop sugarcoating these consequences. Wishful thinking is part of what got us into this difficulty in the first place.
2
@ Phil
What would you like to be different for me, now that I’ve read your reply to this comment?
Yes, you’re right — we will suffer some consequences from global warming, no matter what we do. And also yes, we still have to do what we can.
Sadly, Gore is absolutely wrong that "we still retain the ability to avoid truly catastrophic, civilization-ending consequences if we act quickly."
The depressing truth is that no matter what the US and Europe do, climate change will occur because China has been emitting so much greenhouse gasses that China's emissions alone will soon be enough to cause disastrous climate change all by itself....and China's plan under the Paris Climate Accord is to continue INCREASING their emissions for 11 more years (total increase about 25% above their current enormous level). Then add in the increases from the rest of the developing world, especially India, and the situation becomes clearly hopeless.
China is a very environmentally inefficient producer. China emits about 30% of all the CO2 emissions in the world but produces only about 18% of the world's goods and services. The US produces 50% more goods and services than China but emits only about 40% as much CO2 as China.
Unless China ceases increasing its emissions and begins reducing them, nothing anyone else does can stop climate change. The populations of the US and Europe could cease 100% of their emissions and still climate change occurs.
Note: Adding insult to injury is Gore's hypocrisy, his personal behaviors relative to emissions are a deplorable example to all.
3
There's an old saying that a politician worries about the next election while a statesperson worries about the next generation.
An updated version would be that any schmuck from Manhattan can build a following by appealing to the voters vanity, bigotry and fear. Tell them what they want to hear, reinforce their tribal prejudice, never admit an error.
Become the chosen one.
A true leader has the integrity to tell you what you need to hear. Challenges false assumptions. Learns from their mistakes. Damn shame the voters didn't appreciate the distinction in 2000; a President Gore may have given us a better environment and a trillion less on the national debt by not promoting the quagmire of Iraq.
We need smarter politicians. I say that starts with smarter voters...
2
Mr Gore is a hero of mine but... While the republican party has been by far the biggest sinner on this issue, having been bribed by the Koch brothers and others to pretend that global warming is a hoax, the Democratic party has shown enormous cowardice. Neither Mr Gore's campaign nor any since has pursued this as an issue, it was seen as a political non starter. All other issues, many of which are dear to progressives pale. The stasis in the political system must be overcome, and hopefully we have reached that tipping point. The children that lead us seem to realize that. As for those who have expressed in the comments section here and elsewhere that it is too late, and by implication, why bother, could you kindly exit my planet?
270
@runaway
The Democrats' political landscape is not quite so devoid of environmental responsibility. Jay Inslee's campaign, though ill fated, was based entirely on climate change, and he did draw attention to the issue. And the remaining candidates recently did a CNN town hall session about climate. A highlight was Pete Buttigieg saying that this is one area in which government can be very effective - succinct, but important. So if we keep working on turning the White House and Senate blue, we are closer to getting America green. And never mind the naysayers. We are here and have agency now.
29
@runaway The science on climate change is settled, but the politics isn't. The GOP is disingenuous when they deny the science, but let's be honest the Democrats are even more disingenuous when they deny the cost. Cap & Trade, carbon taxes, etc. are politically dead in the water. They're not happening. American voters (as well as people in other nations) simply don't want to pay more for energy. Bottom line. We & (the world) will continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future no matter what happens. Maybe less but still in massive amounts. It's baked into our energy grid. It can't & won't be eliminated overnight. That will take decades at best. Even though our governments now subsidize clean-power sources, efficient cars, buildings, we continue to rip as much oil, coal & gas out of the ground as possible. And if our green policies mean there isn't a market for these fuels at home, then no matter: they will be exported instead. The US is extracting carbon & flowing it into the global energy system faster than ever before. For years we've tried to simultaneously reduce demand for fossil fuels while doing everything possible to increase the supply. More efficient engines enable more people to drive more cars over greater distances, triggering more road building, more trade & indeed more big suburban houses that take more energy to heat. Can we bring ourselves to prioritize renewables over cheap fuels, power, convenient goods & services? We all know the answer is no.
5
@Bill Brown
We don't need cap and trade. Did you read the column?
We're almost there, with sustainable energy. Just a little push more and we have it all. Some cities are already at 100% sustainable energy. Just keep the republican dinosaurs out of the way, and if they get in the way--knee cap them.
19
"A record 72 percent of Americans polled say that the weather is growing more extreme. "
If you read articles like this every day, non-stop, it is easy to think that this true.
In a recent example, I downloaded the weather station data from multiple locations in San Diego and showed a co-worker that the weather has in fact not become warmer in San Diego nor have the extremes become more extreme.
Data and human perception is completely fallible.
5
Did you turn off your air conditioning last summer Al? It requires a lot of electricity in your huge home. Fossil fuels produce that power. But if this year, you just raised the temperature setting a bit, how about providing copies of your electric bills for summer 2018 and 2019? What do you have to hide? Everyone would like to know if they are doing as much as you are.
10
@Richard Wright. If Mr. Gore actually believed what he is saying, he would sell his ginormous new house and live more sensibly. Instead he proposes all of the sacrifices be made by people who cannot afford a 15,000 square foot home on the beach in California. No thanks, I’ll be keeping my gas driven pickup truck.
“ For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these ‘ IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ‘ .” -John Greenleaf Whittier.
You, Sir, were robbed. And we, and the Planet are forever changed and damaged. I’m so very ashamed and sorry.
Vote-for the Planet and our Lives.
4
Well, we're either going to "win" or children and grandchildren will grow up in a very, very inhospitable world …. and they will (they should) curse us for our greed and blindness.
2
An Inconvenient Truth will be remembered as a concept and a movie that was way ahead of the curve. Americans will someday wish they had listened hard to you years ago. A Gore presidency might have changed things, instead of years of denial of climate change. It’s gotten harder to deny extreme weather effects when they have been on the news every night before our eyes for a long time now. Climate change is creating extreme human hardship, and we will be seeing increasing numbers of climate refugees. If human suffering doesn’t register, real estate values run amok just might.
You truly were a prophet crying in the wilderness. This article gives hope that after decades, we are finally hitting a tipping point. Let’s face it, Trump is a blip. Climate change is our biggest problem, and it’s global. We need to hear more from smart candidates and their plans to combat it.
591
@Patricia a Gore presidency would have changed nothing. We have known this was coming for the last 60 years and we did nothing. Humankind is on the way out and deservedly.
Most of us couldn't care less. One just has to count the SUVs on the road to get confirmation. I could go on and on but what for? To save what?
11
@Patricia
"An Inconvenient Truth will be remembered as a concept and a movie that was way ahead of the curve."
Sorry, thinking people saw this coming years ago. We learned about CO2's effect on climate 100 years ago.
We did nothing and still do nothing.
Ignorance is bliss.
4
@Patricia PM Modi pf India wrote a book in response to "An inconvenient truth" called CONVENIENT ACTION. One example is cheaper electricity from solar cells!
4
There has been much talk about various technologies and economic policies to address the global warming tsunami. Some, in the past have suggested all electric vehicles. Yes, that would help but what they usually leave out of the equation is the energy needed to power those vehicles. A friend showed me a few back of the envelope calculations that we would still be in trouble if the electricity was generated in the good o’fashioned fossil fuel way. As an engineer I see the need for an immediate ‘step function’ - that is, immediate reduction of atmospheric pollutants to 0! - to minimize the dystopian consequences. (We would still suffer some global disasters.) I suggest that there may be a way to avoid a colossal disaster with an ‘immediate’ elimination of the offending effluents. In their recent book “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow”, Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist describe how Sweden (and to some extent Germany) have addressed this problem. I submit - with much opposition from my acquaintances - that a key element of the solution is atomic energy as persuasively described in the book. Sweden uses water power AND ATOMIC ENERGY for generation of virtually all their electricity. And yes, they spend considerable time on the spent fuel issue that so frightens many to whom I have spoken. Perhaps you will be persuaded by Steven Pinker’s foreword.
Wondering whether Mr. Gore is still driving the SUV that he drove at the Sundance Film Festival where he debuted the sequel to his 2006 environmental catastrophe film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The inconvenient truth is that many of these virtue-signaling climate activists are hypocrites. To say the least. Oh, they also fly to Italy on private jets.
7
In New Zealand the different political parties organise volunteer members of their political parties to pick people up and take them to the voting polling booths.
1
The EPA needs to continue going after cities where the environment is in dramatic decline, i.e. San Francisco.
3
Al Gore references "biblical deluges" in his piece. So, lemme get this straight. The Bible was written over 3,000 years ago and they were experiencing cataclysmic meteorological events. Floods, earthquakes, drought, famine, etc. BEFORE Jesus walked the earth. No cars. No planes. Now factory farming. No iPhones. No Amazon. No Twitter.
And now, unless we hew to AOC's plans to "save the planet" we're all dead in 12 years.
Have I got that right? Just checking.
10
Global warming has made Mr. Gore the most wealthy VP ever.
8
Is Al Gore the dark horse candidate that Democrats are seeking? No ones too excited by the current roster. 71 years old fits in with the current front runners. Save the earth from climate change is the current Democratic growing number one issue and that’s all Al Gore. He shouldn’t have chosen Lieberman for his VP and should have fought harder and smarter for the contested Presidency vote in Florida. We should have taken to the streets back then. Is he tough enough to get the job done now? Either way, are we?
1
The only way to get change and make your voices heard is to get out there and vote on voting day, as every vote counts. Governments will sit up and listen if the public votes them in or out of their government on their environmental policies. Youth apparently don't get out there and vote so you need to make an effort and learn where to go and how to vote. This should be compulsory teaching in schools.
2
Better start building allot of new generation Nuclear power plants. The idea that wind and solar alone can replace the juggernaut of fossil fuels is as big a denial as climate change denial itself.
10
While not true in the long term, it is today. Nuclear power has long been my biggest issue with all the environmental movements. Should older plants be decommissioned, yes, but they should be replaced by newer and safer plants.
2
Of all the known sources of renewable energy, geothermal has the greatest potential. There is more heat energy stored in the earth than what we would be able to use in thousands of years... and it’s constantly replenished.
5
Did you not read the numbers in the article? Wind and solar production of production outstrip fossil and will in five years outstrip production. The only hinge possibly could be a mismatch between availability and time of production versus demand times but as the article said, battery storage technology has rapidly taken off removing the last true physical barrier. Carbon is no longer needed; wind and solar are fully capable of carrying the load. Only ignorance to the improved and improving technologies as well as carbon funded refuseniks stand in the way. Which are you? Neither physics nor economics pose any sort of real barrier to near zero emission power.
2
Thank you, Mr. Gore, for pursuing this issue.
I am appalled by American passivity over this issue. Yes, we'll vote, but not help campaign, then complain about the results. As a nation we'll continue to unnecessarily overheat/over air condition our homes and cars and public places, continue to purchase unneeded goods for emotional comfort, waste fuel in unneeded trips, consume meat and dairy at our health's peril, and invest solely for profit without regard for corporate environmental damage.
Political action doesn't just mean casting a vote. It means taking a hard look at all that is around us and everything we do, and consider what each of us can do to mitigate the damage.
3
Short Version: "I told you so". And we didn't listen. Fortunately Al Gore is above that, and it is good to see him again trying to make a difference, the difference that matters most in the next 50 years.
29
Just try and imagine what the country, and maybe the world, would be like if not for hanging chads?
2
Al Gore didn't touch on the emissions from agriculture which are a big part of the problem. Methane emissions from ruminants are very significant and as are methane emissions from rice patties. Nitrous oxide emissions related to fertilizers are also a problem. In addition industrial processes involved in steel making and cement making are important sources of carbon dioxide. And deforestation accounts for perhaps 20% of carbon dioxide emissions. A lot more is required than wind and solar and electric vehicles. And cutting emissions from planes and ships seems like an extremely difficult problem. Given all the political and technological obstacles it seems that staying under 1.5C is no longer feasible but if the Republican Party comes around there might still be a chance to stay under 2C. I would say the Republican Party is the biggest obstacle in the world to dealing with climate change. It is a major political party in a two-party system and the US is most crucial nation in the battle against climate change even though China has more emissions. Despite the surveys that Americans care about climate change they are still buying SUVs like crazy and continue to travel on land, in the air, and on the sea with little regard for the consequences. While trying to cut emissions we need to plan for adaptation, probably at least for reaching 4C which is the track that the world is on for this century.
4
George Shultz has suggested a carbon tax that is refunded equally to every American. If the tax is high enough, engineers and entrepreneurs would quickly invent ways to make electricity without using fossil fuels.
The federal government should give everyone with a social security number an electronic bank account to which the tax could be refunded on a daily or weekly basis.
Since the wealthy use more carbon, the poor, especially those without cars, would get refunds that exceed their tax payments. So this equally refunded carbon tax would reduce economic inequality as well as global warming.
Subsidies currently granted to fossil-fuel companies should be used to help displaced fossil-fuel workers with any surplus added to the carbon-tax refund.
6
The elephant in the room is that most of the industrial population that uses the most energy is in the north of the planet and the differential between summer and winter energy production from renewable sources is enormous. We cannot replace fossil fuels without Nuclear Power for the winter and the base load. Also all homes and businesses will need to be converted to electric heat so electricity generation will need to ramp up by a considerable factor and it must be cheap, only nuclear power can deliver this. Don't take my word for it, this is all recommended in the landmark book "Storms of my grandchildren" read it and think about it. If we are truly serious about climate change and eliminating fossil fuel use then everything must be on the table that does not raise Carbon Dioxide.
3
@Harry Arendt
Hansen has some great policy ideas, but I suggest checking out some other sources, such as Reinventing Fire. There are plenty of other solutions besides nuclear power. There is plenty of wind on the plains and in TX in winter to heat the midwest, and offshore to heat the NE. There is also a national grid that can transmit solar energy from the Great Basin to...anywhere in the US. The new "safe" generation of nukes is long promised, but still unproven. Solar and wind, plus storage, are now the cheapest sources and can be deployed quickly along with investments in improving and extending the grid. Look at the news and see what utilities are investing in--not nukes: S. Cal is retiring gas fired plants way ahead of plans to use existing transmission from retired coal plants in NM for new solar capacity. We have reached a tipping point for renewables.
2
Thank you for the recommendation, the Amazon (which pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030) review makes it sound very interesting.
A huge number of scientists agree that it is too late to stop the inevitable destruction that is already occurring with unsettling rapidity as we blithely exist in our own time machine....
Mr. Gore does stress that it is too late to regain what we have lost, but that we do have the chance to at least arrest the onslaught of the devastation and check the raging pace of this catastrophe...Certainly, my generation has been an abysmal and embarrassing failure stubbornly sticking to its feckless tenets....As a 77 year-old, I am so sorry to the generations that must suffer for our folly. But I am heartened by the Youth of today and their rightful anger and determination..I have tremendous hope that they will right our wrongs...
6
My first thought in reading this was "Gosh I wish this guy was our president, how did we get stuck with such a clunker". Then I had to remind myself that far too many of us are "really moral cowards, easily manipulated into lethargic complacency by the huge continuing effort to deceive us into ignoring what we see with our own eyes". Yes unlike trump and McConnell we really need to have leaders who are leading the way and the two of them need to get out of the way. We should be spear heading the Paris Climate Accords, not threatening to leave them. We need to make America greater and our planet whole.
8
we have already passed the point at which measures merely reducing the amount of green house gasses we emit are going to be sufficient to stop or even reduce the amount of global warming we are subjecting ourselves to will work. emphasis on subjecting ourselves to because we are not subjecting the planet to anything. the planet does not care what we do to it. the planet will continue to exist even after it its consumed by an expanding sun 4 billion year from now. we are subjecting our selves to an environment that will become increasingly unsupportive of our civilization as we know and perhaps even human life over much of its surface. unless we rapidly develop technologies for large scale removal and sequestration of green house gasses our fate is sealed.
1
Yesterday's report on the enormous loss of birds in our world brought to the forefront something I have been struggling with in the background for some time: I am experiencing an environmental grief and loss that is every bit as profound as the grief I experienced due to the loss of loved ones in years past.
I expect I am not the only one needing to occasionally hear that there is still a shred of hope. I will be joining our young people today in our local climate strike.
Thank you.
152
I feel exactly as you do. Though I am only in my early 50’s I worry about what life will be like in my 70’s and 80’s. Will it even be worth it to still be alive? And what about my kids? I don’t know if I would want to bring children into the world today knowing what we are up against. The crazy thing is- politicians aren’t above the consequences of mass climate crisis. Sure, their wealth can stave it off longer than the rest of us, but life as they know it will be gone. WAKE UP , PEOPLE! Interest rates, 5G networks, health care will mean nothing if we don’t have a planet!!!
10
@Eating On Two Wheels
So far the loss of birds relates more to habitat than climate, although that may be about to change.
2
@Philip Brown
You realize that windmills kill millions of birds, right? If we rely on wind, say goodbye to millions and millions of birds. Just saying, radical solutions may create unintended results.
Another issue-we need incentives to keep land open. Vermont penalizes ownership of open land by higher taxes, yet claims to be pro environment. There is no incentive to manage open land for bird or wildlife habitat.
Vermont tried it's own mini new green deal, and co2 levels are up 16%. Do you see how devastating ill conceived but well meaning plans can be?
The environment is my top concern also, but the notion that "massive" energy works will fix it, is dubious. Immediate action to reduce energy consumption, like a gas and carbon tax, would help now. But of course, no one wants to make a personal contribution or sacrifice.
1
Our scientists friends were over for dinner some weeks ago. Climate change came up. Of course it's happening, is human-caused, and has been changing our planet in bigger and bigger ways since the industrial ramp-up in the 1950s. But the takeaway is this: radical climate change is upon us there is really nothing we can do at this point. All this talk about deindustrialization, terraforming, etc. will not make a bit of difference. It's simply too late. Feedback mechanisms are in place and the rate of change is much sharper than anyone expected. Of course you won't see this in the MSM. It's too easy to make climate change a raw political issue for gaining power, and that's essentially what is going on, on both sides of the isle.
5
I attended an environmental college over almost 50 years ago. We knew the perils then. We discussed temperature, snow storms, hail, etc. frequently. It took too long for the rest of the country to catch up. The future will never forgive us.
33
As a US scientist, thank you Mr. Gore. I for one am pretty tired of the “Internet experts” who claim this is some sort of hoax and who think they know more than the folks who do this for a living.
719
@Marc : You have unwittingly hit the nail on the head. Quite possibly the majority of the scientists who argue that human activity is the major factor to climate change make their livings by producing climate computer models etc. The international climate change community has been fed by billions of dollars in grants and allocations in university budgets of the course of roughly four decades.
12
@Christopher Arend
And so the conclusions of scientists who make computer models is somehow inferior to that of completely ignorant internet experts?
Or are you criticizing the methodology, that somehow predictions from mere computer models are not reliable enough? The strength of a model, whether theoretical or simulated, lies in how well it can model and predict outcomes. And climate models have increasingly become better at both.
Or is the insinuation that scientists have a vested interest in predicting catastrophic climate outcomes because their funding depends on it? If so, how do you feel about the entities arguing that climate change is a hoax/not real/not serious/not man-made? These include oil and coal lobbies and the politicians in their pockets. If I have to choose between scientists and politicians/businesses as being more trustworthy, I'll go with scientists any day.
86
@Christopher Arend
Quite possibly not. Scientists from a wide range of disciplines agree the planet is warming and human activity is a major contributor. Few of them are engaged in climate modeling. There are not "billions of dollars in grants and allocations in university budgets" for climate modeling. That is a fiction of Fox News propaganda, fueled by at least tens of millions of fake studies supported by large energy corporations such as Koch Industries.
56
Thank you Al Gore! (If only he’d been Pres.) Thinking strategically, and lacking a better forum, let me request someone like Barack Obama give some HELP to the climate-ally Justin Trudeau so the darn Canadian Tar-sands Conservatives don’t return to power.
4
Well, until you stop ALL Private Jet Travel and require net Migration to 1st World Countries be reduced to zero not going to listen to a word you say. And I mean it.
7
@GregP
You understand that most of the migration is being CAUSED by a changing climate?! So how do we reduce migration to zero without addressing climate change? But you are not going to listen to me, so I'll just plead for you to get out of the way.
3
@Bill M
What part of climate change caused the populations to explode in Central and South America and Africa last 50 years?
@Concerned Citizen
Dear Uninformed Citizen,
You are wrong. Whether you call it economic or starvation because the farmers are unable to make a living as the droughts in Central America worsen, the underlying cause is indeed a warming climate. It's not ALL due to climate change, but to say it is Zero is simply untrue. Migrants generally would rather stay where they were born and are familiar with the way of life that has been passed down to them as is common to all peoples, they are not coming simply to steal our jobs and social services, they come out of necessity, in many cases for their very existence to continue. You and I would do the same.
1
Al Gore is correct, except that the US and the International Community have done a terrible job at actually doing over the past 2 generations? Why? Simple: Nations talk about it but do little! Politicians want to require their major GHG emitters top 'foot the bill', while not being honest about the real cost (actual and projected); AND which part of their population will have to pay for it! President Obama's answer was a non-bonding "executive' agreement to set up a program in the UN almost four years ago. Little has happened, AND the UN program does not require any nation to do anything.
The only way to address this issue realistically is for the major GHG emitting countries to set up a real program that would: provide $$ for the necessary technology to reduce current and future emissions; ensure that nations participate as otherwise little will get done; use the WTO to allow importing nations to tax imports of needlessly Carbon intensive exports (China, etc.); to use the most efficient product technologies for their exports; provide real incentives for companies to adopt new technologies (and reduce incentives for them to adopt them).
I suggest a worldwide program akin to what the US has effectively done with "Carbon Trading' which has successfully reduced 'acid rain' in the US for almost 2 generations.
As Mark Twain said about the weather, "everybody talks about it, but does nothing about it!"
2
We have to adapt. Even if we stop emitting carbon today, the consequences will stick around for a very long time. Sea levels will still continue to rise, coral reefs will continue to die, forests will continue to burn. Yes, we still have a problem to fix, but it's too late to expect places like Miami to weather the storm, even if we succeed. Seeking higher ground would be wise. "If it keeps on raining, the levee's going to break."
3
Ernest Hemingway described exponential increase (in another context, in his novel, "The Sun Also Rises") as happening "gradually and then suddenly." We have been exploiting nature for far too long. At first it was gradual, with everyone caught up in aspiring to a higher standard of living at the expense of earth's limited natural resources, until suddenly it caught up with us, and now we see devastation everywhere, from deforestation to acid rain to the extinction species. Is the destructive impacts of the climate crisis reversible through humanity's concerted action? I don't think so, and that's not being pessimistic, that's being realistic. Those who say technology will rescue us from this looming catastrophe fail to recognize that our insatiable demand for technological wonders created, to a large extent, this crisis in the first place. Perhaps if we admit defeat and THEN look at what we can do will save us in the long run. Some destruction simply cannot be undone but if small pockets of reversible success at the local level here and there around the world inspire us to take action ourselves, who knows, in perhaps half-a-century the earth will begin to heal. What is the probability of collectively conceding defeat and beginning anew? If it is more than 50%, I say there is still hope for the generations to come.
6
Why assume that powerful special interests are sacrificing the planet for their greed? It could well be that destruction of the planet is their direct goal. How else does one explain the ferocious measures they are taking to thwart each and every attempt to address climate change, using all of the legal, financial and political means at their disposal?
3
Thank you, Mr. Gore, for this message of hope.
Over the past few years, I have found myself becoming increasingly despondent about our future on this planet we call home. The problems are so large and our apparent will to do anything about them at a scale that will make a difference seems so small.
Your article has reminded me that positive things ARE happening. That all is not yet lost. That possibly, with the right leadership, we can move back from the brink.
Both of our countries have elections coming up very shortly. I hope your message is heard far and wide and that we come together to elect leaders who will provide us with the opportunity to seize what is most probably our last chance.
8
"and We Can Win"—
Al Gore, don't start using words like "win".
It makes you sound like Trump.
And although you're an amateur, your decades preoccupation with this would certainly inform you that the damage already done is colossal and overwhelming.
A word like "mitigate" would be a better word. And, it's not a three-letter Trump word.
94
@srwdm
From the context, by "win" Mr. Gore means a political win, a win in the "national conversation."
I do not think that he means a thermodynamic win.
14
@James R. Wilson. I would hazard that we can eke out a narrow win thermodynamically, too, if we explore geoengineering with appropriate urgency. E.g., aerosol particulate in the upper atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions and cool the planet just enough to avoid more permafrost and polar ice melting and their knock-on effects. I repeat: and their knock on effects.
However, we continue to demure, fearful of changing things, while clinging to this quaint notion that humanity hasn’t already completely transformed the planet.
5
@Larry McCallum Yeah, but in this case, with complex systems, the cure will likely be worse than the problem - it is not fear of changing things, but fear of changing things for the worse for the planet. Not worse for us of course, since it's our extinction and it won't matter either way, but for the remaining life on this planet.
We're running out of time to get our act together to save human civilisation and I think we won't anyway, i.e., it's too late but it's still possible to do things to mitigate the problem. I just think we'll go along BAU. But if we can't get our act together in time, I think we deserve to die out and let the planet and the remaining life on it come back sooner than later.
I'm even okay with using nuclear power for renewables (newest design are very safe and can be with minimal damage to the planet) but I don't support geoengineering an aerosol cloud. That's a solution that is worse than the problem.
4
Putin, who views his oil as mother's milk, is the defining element in the current US energy and environmental policy. The Saudis dominate the Trump policy, as well. Trump will fight furiously to keep the carbon kings in charge, but, with effort and hard work, the whole dirty lot of them can be thrown out next year, marked as the criminals against humanity that they are.
12
How would this crisis have been different if the Presidency hadn't been robbed from us in 2000 by Bush and his brother.
101
@laurenlee3
Florida outcome would not have mattered if Gore would have won his home State.
@Concerned Citizen
"we don't KNOW what would have happened in 2004, except that Gore would not have been re-elected"
We don't know that either. That's the nature of counterfactual scenarios.
To save species, slow warming & have a future, we must ramp down economic activity instead of maniacally increasing it.
Since 1950 global GDP has shot up like a rocket. https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth
So has global temperature.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
So has species extinction and human population.
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/extinction/index.html
It's crystal clear. The planet can't take what we do NOW. But politicians, corporations, economists, banks & the media tell us economic growth is heathy, natural & essential. 4% annual growth doubles an economy's size in 19 years. Unlimited, exponential growth on a finite planet is a necessary fantasy when over 90% of money banks debt which must be repaid with interest. 'No one loses at musical chairs as long as the music never stops.'
No politician talks about slowing down—or even stabilizing—the economy. Not Gov. Inslee. Not Elizabeth Warren. It would be political suicide.
The NYT sends profoundly mixed messages. Articles like this one appear alongside 'Can Anyone Hold the Global Economy Together?' where economic historian Adam Tooze bemoans Trumps erratic trade wars & the lack of global economic leadership spooking investors. "...globalization is no longer supported by the combination of investor-friendly economic policy and congenial politics...long taken for granted."
We must ramp down. Now. No matter how painful.
32
@Tom Palmer
Switching to renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, efficient production and transportation all involve investment and economic activity. They don't necessarily involve less economic growth--just different growth, and maybe some redefinition of GDP to include well being.
7
@Tom Palmer. As painful as your extended family having no jobs but a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed? Dream on on.
"And right now, we don’t have the right policies because the wrong policymakers are in charge." Moreover, while Mr. Gore's statistics say people are "aware" that climate change is human caused, their behavior contradicts that claimed awareness.
Donald Trump is still favored by somewhat more than 40% of the voters to be the next president! He is a President with policies openly adverse to climate issues, believes it is a hoax, and won't allow those words to be used in public documents. And. we. may. elect. him. again. May God help us with our choices !!!!
Americans are notoriously adverse to science and facts. Those, like Mr. Gore, who use facts are part of an elite who a majority of us despise. (Not all of us, just a majority.)
It will take more crises. More hurricanes to level cities, more floods like the current one near Houston, forest fires that devastate thousands more of homes, floods and droughts that ruin major food crops. I dread that, but that is what it will take. Gut level facts!
Implementing technologies described by Mr. Gore will take money. Pres. Carter claimed, "This is the moral equivalent of war." So redirect half the defense budget to implement anti climate change technologies.
I hear the response: "Oh no, we couldn't do that." If you care about your children, we could do that. Or let's just wait for Miami, New Orleans, or Houston to be leveled by a cat 5 hurricane. That, just maybe, will change people's minds.
8
@DGP
40% is not a majority
2
@Howamart But something like 45% is enough to elect the president. And side issues can move more than 5% of the voters who are independent or conservative Democrats. Trump did NOT need a majority to become President.
I cited 40% as an immovable base that will vote for Trump even if he "shoots someone on 5th avenue" -- his words, not mine.
1
Mr. Gore,
If you are serious about stopping the catastrophic effects of climate change, please embrace nuclear power. It is one technology that can scale, it has the best safety records of all energy technologies, and has the smallest environmental footprint. You talk about the falling price of wind and solar. These prices do not reflect the true costs, and the cost of storage and managing these intermittent sources are not included.
5
What's wrong with just letting our current trajectory run it's course? At some point this century, we will have stressed the global environment to the point where we can't support 8 billion humans and most will die off until we reach a sustainable population.
People are welcome to hold out hope that 8 billion of us spread out among hundreds of governments can come together to make draconian sacrifices to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Based on what I've seen of human nature, I'm not betting on it.
4
Don't wait for Government Action-Do Something Now. Walk when possible or skip car errand until compiled together. Plant a tree. Use less plastic or don't buy one cupcake encased unthinkingly in huge plastic case. One moment of joy isn't worth hundreds of years non biodegradables. Do one thing a day. Times it by millions --it will make a difference.
7
We may be able to change our behavior in the United States, and Europe may do so too, but the rest of the 7 billion people on the planet don't have the resources to do so, ultimately leaving us with one option: learn to adapt because climate change can't be stopped.
6
@Dan Barthel I would suggest that the rest of the world is much more ready and in many ways in the process of changing their behavior, I see the US political establishment fighting it tooth and nail and if anything moving in the wrong direction!
7
To those who point out that this article does not mention overpopulation:
« The lesson from this experience is almost unbearably obvious. Our global civilization, which after the many thousands of generations up to the end of World War II had reached a population of fewer than 2.5 billion people, may, by quadrupling in the space of a single lifetime, dramatically increase our vulnerability to the extreme climate changes that we ourselves are now setting in motion. »
This quote is from Senator Gore’s chapter entitled Climate and Civilization, in his book Earth in the Balance, published 1992. It’s worth rereading. The book simply demonstrates he’s been grappling with the immensity of the problem for decades.
How could a focused Op Ed piece cover what he’s addressed throughout an entire, distinguished career immersed in the full range of climate issues? On this occasion Mr. Gore could have been forgiven for deciding he’d had enough criticism for several lifetimes. Instead, he steps up to remind us « political will is a renewable resource ».
Bravo and thank you, Al!
103
Sorry, Mr. Gore, but there is simply no chance for such a change as long as humans are running the show.
If nature decides to take the wheel thru some catastropic act--like a massive sheet of ice sliding off Greenland into the sea, causing hundreds of millions of deaths, if not billions, then the planet's environment may survive.
Frankly, I'm concerned that our world will suffer the same fate as Mars and Venus. Both had standing water on their surfaces at one time, but not any more.
56
Is this true? What is the source?
1
@john clagett
"some catastropic act"
This is literally the only way real change will happen. And the economic and social disruptions will be so dramatic living conditions will be similar to what we had in the 19th century.
2
@john clagett More bad science that creates skepticism. Venus and Mars are what they are because of natural process. Earth is the lotto winner of planets in many ways, distance from the local star, magnetic fields to protect the atmosphere from being stripped away etc.
Then tossing a planet with a super dense atmosphere that keeps it's surface hot in the same sentence as one that has lost most of its atmosphere so stays cold shows a lack of understanding of the core science
17
What, exactly, we can win will be far less than if we'd truly heeded Gore and others way back when, but I agree:
This is our last, best chance to turn this thing around,
and we cannot fail this challenge, or it will be
the last challenge we ever face.
368
@C. Whiting I wouldn't call it the last challenge. If we fail, the challenges will get much worse.
11
@C. Whiting
The beetles and the social insects will not miss nor mourn our demise.
Perhaps we can start over again somewhere else in this solar system.
NASA was the gift of Nazi German war criminal rocket scientists and engineers.
1
@C. Whiting
All the more reason to support Sanders or Warren in the coming election.
The demand for cars in India and China is expected to surge. Unless all these millions of new vehicles are electric, then our efforts here in the U.S. are probably for naught.
4
With tremendous respect for Mr. Gore, we will not win this fight because it is not a fight. It is not a battle we can "win" and go back to things as they were. The enemy is not "special interests" but all of us - you and me reading this on a computer or phone full of rare-earth metals, who drive or fly or eat or use products created and transported by fossil-fuel energy, which cannot be replaced by wind/solar/etc. and allow us to keep anything approaching our standard of living.
Could we go without fossil fuels and have meaningful lives? Of course. But modern medicine, a steady food supply, non-physical employment, retirement, suburbs, skyscrapers, vacations, and uncountable other things would not exist in their current form, let alone be available to the billions of people who do not have these things now and are logically asking why they should be deprived. Changes where we can make them (e.g. a bike-lane society like the Netherlands), while a tremendous improvement, would make only a tiny dent in this issue.
Climate change is not just a collective action problem, but a collective action problem that will require everyone to agree to lower their standard of living (at least according to metrics that are ingrained at the core of most cultures). And not just temporarily, but permanently. I'm not aware of any successful political effort to ever make that happen. And yes, despite believing this I'm just as complicit as everyone else, which is of course the issue.
60
is it really a lower standard of living if air pollution disappears, if our water is clean, if the food we eat is nourished by good soil, clean food and free of growth hormones and antibiotics? is it really a lower standard of living if we stop paying for Rent-A-Storage because we have more stuff than we could ever possibly use? is it really a lower standard of living if the fish and sea mammels do not swallow plastics and humans are not swallowing microbeads?
9
@D
Some time in the mid-1980s I read a paper in the journal "Science" that analysed energy usage. The paper concluded that halving the energy use per head in the US would shift lifestyles to about those of the late 1950s. Hardly an era of great deprivation.
With the knowledge gained since then; going to the same energy usage would provide an even more "modern" lifestyle.
Think about that.
5
@V Thank you, V, from an old timer who remembers the distant past, without all the plastic, and gives thanks for Greta and the kids, a stark contrast to today's elderly politicians and our current man in charge.
4
Thank you for your continued service Mr. Gore. This is a fight we must win and can win.
622
This is generational warfare. Baby boomers need to divest. Not just carbon fuels, but airlines and car makers. Mass transit needs to be supported. We must stop price supporting corn. It IS too late because of a generation. Now debt, a destroyed Earth and political collapse falls not on the generation that created it, but the next. Professors should give away climate degrees for free. Public transit should be free. Boomers should pay triple taxes on wealth. Al, your ideas wont work anymore. You are too timid.
11
Don't forget volcanos. A few Krakatoas and you will see the earth's temperature drop.
Al Gore, over 20 years ago, predicted the planet being uncontrollably ablaze and Manhattan under water. He’s correct about starting a political movement of fanatical believers (religious like) whereby they believe that the planet will be dead in 10 years while pushing a green new deal that even scientists say is unattainable. All of this while becoming a billionaire, living in huge house and flying all over the world polluting the planet he claims to worship. He and AOC might get what they want in the end but people will suffer in the process.....not that he cares.
4
@JAC, I have no idea whether Al is a billionaire or not and I do not really care but he did not say that Manhattan would be underwater in 20 years ; he said eventually it would without action. Unless we act, people will suffer. HIs campaign is not a religion; quite the opposite. He is just heeding science and employing human ingenuity and technology.
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You sound nice enough but Gore is a billionaire exclusively from promoting the idea that the planet is dying....it’s not,
and when I say people will suffer, imagine famine, massive unemployment and civil wars. Usually climate fanatics condemn nuclear energy as a worthy alternative.
It’s hypocrisy......
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@JAC You should have attended the environmental college I attended. We had visiting scientists, professors, etc who determined this is actual and we must do something. I have no family left so I shouldn't care but I do. And I decrease my footprint.
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Climate change is NOT the center of the problem - it seems that way as it is the most immediate. But GHGs are just one of many types of pollution and degradation doing us in. We could 'solve' climate change and still collapse, due to problems with biodiversity and loss of open space, soils losses. decreasing water access and quality, resource depletion.... etc. They are all symptoms of the bigger issues humanity does not want to really face or address - our ever-expanding production and consumption patterns, the mantra of endless economic expansion in sync with widening inequality, and a general attitude that our planet is simply here to be exploited for our short-term benefits as if there are no consequences. Well ALL these chickens are coming home to roost, and all our energy-saving light bulbs, solar panels and electric vehicles are never going to be our salvation, that's for sure.
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@Food Guy I love how we make all of this so incredibly complicated when it all boils down to one factor: too many humans with their associated consumption of Earth's scarce resources.
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We've been reading articles like this for the last 30 years. While population and CO2 alike continue to rise. Empty chatter.
The human project is too big. It needs to be downsized. Ultimately, the problem will take care of itself. If the long-term sustainable population is closer to a billion than to 10 billion, which it probably is, then eventually we will get down to that number. Whether it is by voluntary restraint or by war, famine and disease we will get to the right level in the end.
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It’s interesting to note: I wouldn’t know WHERE to plant a tree even if I wanted to. It’s not like you can just enter a national forest, Central Park or trespass on some farm and plant something.
Obviously there are tree planting charities one can give to. I just wonder if leg-dragging and private property obsessed governments are actually sequencing LAND in enough quantities and with the correct legal and environmental framework to facilitate the necessary meaningful increases in these magnificent examples of natural carbon sequestration.
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For starters, and for free, try using Ecosia instead of Google. Ecosia allocates 80 percent of its profits to planting trees in the tropics where they are most needed. If you're interested in going further, give to the Rain Forest Trust or to another nonprofit whose goal is to plant trees and preserve biodiversity - by involving the locals and making it in their best interest for the plantings to succeed.
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In 2015 "scientific American" wondered if we had passed the point of no return. Co2 was 398 ppm then. It is now ~415 ppm the second highest jump ever recorded and the highest number in millions of years. It is going higher. The action that would be needed to not only slow down this record rate of rise, but to reverse it, is not even being discussed. I get that mr gore is a politician and has to present the optimistic, happy face of this crises, but I think we are well beyond that.
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While it is essential to tackle climate change, this is an overly optimistic view that is unlikely to succeed. Adaptation to climate change will entail lower levels of consumption, decline in population, and lower economic inequality that cannot be easily achieved in democracies.
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No. It's too late.
We have started processes of climate change and loss of biodiversity that will continue until our civilization and all or most of our species are gone.
Driven by positive feedbacks.
The worst of those feedbacks are driven by us:
1. As rising heat drives more migration, hatreds give us right-wing science deniers around the world: Trump, McConnell, Boris . .
2. Democrats heist public concern about climate to mislead us into the swamps of arguments about everything else, as we pass the point of no return. At the last debate, it was 5% climate, 95% swamp of arguments about everything else. Led by Medicare for All -- when All are gone.
3. For any hope, we need a Warren for human survival, pinpointing practical actions for human survival instead of her economics obsession. But instead of specific practical actions, we now get increasing waves of words and parades filling our streets. The last time we did that on this scale, we got the "silent majority" -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump, McConnell, right-wing judges in our courts . .
The net result is that all our noise about climate is making the future of our children and their descendants even worse.
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Mr. Gore, thank you for your service to our nation and to future generations. And thank you for writing this, “We have the technology we need.” It was the application of technology – and the sacrifices of coal and oil workers - that brought us the huge improvements in quality of life and average length of life we currently enjoy. Unfortunately, that technology also brought us global warming and millions of annual deaths from air pollution and vehicle crashes. We now have the technology to enjoy the benefits without the horrific costs. We should implement these better physical products, software, and processes as rapidly as possible.
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It's time for Al Gore to step out of the forefront of this discussion and become a behind the scenes player. The reality is that he is a divisive person. There is a certain smugness about him and a self righteousness that turns people off. We need someone to lead the climate crisis movement that is not constantly trying to politicize it. I think that we need people in leadership roles that can unite their fellow humans regardless of any perceived differences - political, etc.
Gore is no doubt very smart, but he has zero credibility with a decent portion of Americans. That is a problem.
@Brian
Well, good luck finding that person.
Could that "certain smugness" be based on the fact that he's been correct all along?
And if the election hadn't been stolen from him in 2000, the US would probably be 19 years into a massive program to stop climate change?
And the US would probably be leading the world in that same effort?
Seems to me that "smugness" is well deserved.
I'll take Al for now. You can keep looking...
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@Brian, That is a problem with a decent portion of Americans, not Al Gore.
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@Brian
Did you even read this editorial? The only place where Al Gore is mentioned at all is the byline.
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It is encouraging to read your words that inspire us to believe that climate degradation can still be mitigated.The technology is inspiring but I fear that the sociological changes will be much more difficult to achieve.Whole populations are going to have to be moved from areas which will no longer sustain life-where will they go? We will have to eat a different diet, travel less, and give up beachside cottages-how many are willing to do this? So many challenges and so little commitment to meet really tough choices.
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We’ve had the tools for half a century - nuclear power. Ill-informed activists, hippie NIMBYs, and the fossil fuel industry have worked hand in hand to destroy use of nuclear power wherever they can. With the exception of France and Sweden (the two developed countries who truly have relatively low emissions), every other country has fallen victim to their scaremongering and anti-scientific war against nuclear. Without nuclear power we will never meet carbon goals. Fusion power is coming - we’re a couple decades out and we need fission to bridge the gap.
Before you respond about “dangerous waste,” please educate yourself on the actual dangers of it, and how little has actually been produced in the history of nuclear power. Terrifying series like Chernobyl (which played up the absolute one in a billion worst case scenario, and used very inflated death tolls) along with the media’s terrible understanding of “disasters” like Fukushima has led to a global panic about nuclear which has only hindered progress toward stopping global warming.
Mr. Gore and other climate advocates need to get on board with nuclear and fast. One day renewables may be viable, but for now - and for the foreseeable future - they will not staunch the bleeding.
You only need look at carbon emissions for “progressive” states and nations like Germany and my own California to see what happens when you start shutting down nuclear. Emissions here are going up, not down and Germany now supplements with COAL.
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@Beatrix
You live in so cal. That area and all of California are touted as the future paradise this country should emulate by the democrats and the left. Stuffed to over flowing with people all driving everywhere, but with lots of democrats and immigrants (legal and otherwise) which are supposed to solve all our problems, California is the ideal future we are told. Please step outside, look around, take a big breath of the air (cough) and tell us this can continue in any form much longer or that it is an answer to climate change.
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