Al Gore has recently released a new climate change slide show presentation. After giving his original presentation over 2000 times, he decided to create a newer, and more trimmed-down version. First given at the TED Talks, the presentation focuses more on what needs to be done to stop global warming. The majority of scientists agree that climate change is affected by humans and public opinion has also taken this stance. So, now that we know this is happening, what can we do about it?
You can watch the full presentation below, but here are a few key points that I picked out from it. First, Gore argues that there needs to be political will and the only way that will happen is if people start making demands. This is a call for us to stand up and make a claim; we do live in a democracy, afterall, and that means it is ultimately up to the people to decide what issues are talked about and taken care of. “We cannot change the climate problem if we do not change the democracy problem.”
Gore notes that we have become addicted to oil. He compares us to junkies: “Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse. Developing tar sands and coal shale is the equivalent.” Although some effort is being put into renewable energy (I don’t include corn-based ethanol in this category), we are still claiming these harmful energy sources as promising for our future. In fact, all of the televised presidential nomination debates have been sponsored by “clean coal.” Clean coal? There’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.
He ends on a positive note, claiming that it is actually somewhat of an honour that our generation has been faced with the potential to make one of the biggest changes the world has seen. Gore says, “History has presented us with a choice … We now have a culture of distraction, but we have a planetary emergency and we have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission,” and continues with, “Don’t tell me that we don’t have the capacity to do it; if we had just one week’s worth of what we spend on the Iraq war, we could be well on the way to solving this challenge. We have the capacity to do it.”
You can watch the full presentation below:
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3 Comments
This man needs to run for president again. He is someone I can stand behind
I dont think that he can be a president again.
Yes he can run for President, he was not previously a President -he served as VIce President for 8 years with Bill Clinton as President.
I would gladly welcome him as a President because he has the right priorities before we totally destroy this planet.
Gore has no interest in running for President but rather he has dedicated his life to global warming and saving this planet, by affecting change in politics to do something about this disaster, while with George Bush we have lost 8 years of time to take effective action.