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Al Gore likens fight against Global Warming climate change to battle with Nazis
Al Gore today compared the battle against Global Warming climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.
The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change. He also accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid difficult decisions.
Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: "Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II."
| He could ask for the Churchill bust his dear friend President Obama returned not long ago. |
He added: "We have everything we need except political will but political will is a renewable resource."
Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat from Nazi Germany.
| That's 'cause it isn't as urgent. Of course, climate change isn't a threat either, but rather a promise, and one we can do absolutely nothing to affect on a global level. Locally, small changes can be made by replanting forests -- perhaps Mr Gore should suggest to his English listeners that they give up their lovely village cottages for flats in the city, and replant the vasty woodlands the Robin Hood tales made famous. |
"The level of awareness and concern among populations has not crossed the threshold where political leaders feel that they must change.
"The only way politicians will act is if awareness raises to a level to make them feel that it's a necessity."
Mr Gore, who brought the issues around climate change to a mass audience with the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Lie Truth, said the great hope for the future lay in a high level of environmental awareness among young people. He said sceptics who refused to believe dramatic cuts in carbon emissions could be delivered
| Mean global temperature has dropped since he showed that movie. Perhaps he should make another movie. |
should consider the example of the young scientists in the NASA team which put a man on the moon on 1969. "The average age of scientists in the space centre control room was 26, which means they were 18 when they heard President Kennedy say he wanted to put a man on the moon in 10 years. Neil Armstrong did it eight years and two months later."
He said future generations would put one of two questions to today's adults. "It will either be 'what were you thinking, didn't you see the North Pole freezing melting before your eyes, didn't you hear what the scientists were saying?' Or they will ask 'how is it you were so stupid to believe Al Gore able to find the moral courage to solve the crisis which so many said couldn't be solved?'."
| Gosh, why would so many say such a thing? |
Sir David King, the Government's former chief scientist and now director of the Smith School, also berated politicians for failing to follow up their statements on climate change with a clear programme of action. "I do think it's relatively easy for a prime minister to make a speech on climate change which sounds committed and very much more difficult for that prime minister to persuade the Treasury to put the finance behind that commitment to make it a reality.
"There is a long distance in government between saying what you think needs to be said and then doing in terms of taxing people to death making budgets available."
| Indeed. That's because the politicians are the ones who have to face the voters who actually pay for your pie-in-the-sky projects, Sir David. |
Sir David expressed disappointment that no senior British politician had taken up his invitation to address a conference attended by the world's top climate scientists, senior business leaders and the presidents of the Maldives and Rwanda.
The Maldives and Rwanda are the vanguard of enlightenment regarding Global Warming?| Since they've refused to think about more important issues, they can devote themselves to such trivialities. |
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2009-07-07 |
