Secret first footage – clean coal technology

A hero shall rise

Dear [deleted],

I wanted to share with you my speech from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. Check AlGore.com for video of the event later today.

Thank you,

Al Gore

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, “We must act.”

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures – a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.” After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless — which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwell reminds us: “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: “Mutually assured destruction.”

More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a “nuclear winter.” Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer.”

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Either, he notes, “would suffice.”

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the “Father of the United Nations.” He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, “crisis” is written with two symbols, the first meaning “danger,” the second “opportunity.” By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon — with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters — most of all, my own country –– that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

Taking your name to the Bali Climate Conference delegates

From an email I received this week:

Dear Friend,

In Bali, Indonesia thousands of delegates from nearly 190 countries have gathered at the UN Conference on Climate Change. In ten days, I will address the conference to urge the adoption of a visionary new treaty to address global warming and I want to bring your voices with me.

Click here to sign my petition today and I will bring your signatures on stage with me as a clear demonstration of our resolve :http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

Together, we will call on the US government to assume a new leadership role in solving the climate crisis.

World leaders including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have all agreed to aggressively battle the climate crisis – yet our country still lags behind.

Over the next ten days, I would like you to help me get people from across the country to sign our message to the global community. We can demonstrate that the American people understand the immediacy of the climate crisis and want to work with the nations of the world to solve it.

Time is short – we need to mobilize everyone to bring this message to Bali: http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

The American people want a visionary treaty to address climate change and for the US government to play a positive leadership role in its development.

Thank you,

Al Gore.

P.S. After signing the petition, please urge your friends and family to sign the petition and join the movement. http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

UPDATE: Australians may wish to follow this link to the getup site to sign the petition.

Hollow words at a moment of great significance

The staff at Verdurous are of course overjoyed at the imminent return of Australia to the framework convention on climate change negotiations. I look forward to Australia’s involvement in helping solve all of our global environmental concerns.When I first started writing this blog, Kim Beazley was opposition leader and I felt that, despite his troubles, changing to Rudd would be a disaster. At the time, Labor had already started to improve in the polls on the back of the Iraq war and climate change was emerging as an issue. History now shows I was wrong. Rudd was good for the party. Nevertheless, I’ve found him a very colourless figure, prone to dry pronouncements and speeches laced with what former Keating speech writer Don Watson calls “weasel words” – dull, lifeless cliches, empty platitudes, management speak and cant.I will re-print below Kevin Rudd’s victory speech from Saturday night (source: SMH) and will italicise what I believe to be weasel words or weasel phrases. It is pretty hard to read without the eyes glazing over. For contrast, I link here to a certain politician’s electoral concession speech from 2000 (transcript and audio) to show what Mr Rudd might have aspired to.It seems that David Marr of the SMH agrees with me (and puts it better of course). Other more generous comment on Rudd’s language style is here.

Today Australia has looked to the future. Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward – to plan for the future, to prepare for the future, to embrace the future. And together to unite and write a new page in our nation’s history. To make this great country of ours, Australia, even greater.

I want to thank all those people in Australia who have placed their trust in me and my team. And I say tonight to the nation: I will never take their sacred trust for granted.I am determined to honour the confidence which has been extended to us by the people of our great land. And I say to all of those who have voted for us today, I say to each and every one of them: that I will be a prime minister for all Australians; a prime minister for indigenous Australians; Australians who have been born here and Australians who have come here from afar and have contributed to the great diversity that is our nation.

Friends, tomorrow the work begins. Australia’s long-term challenges demand a new consensus across our country. I’m determined to use the office of prime minister to forge that consensus. I want to put aside the old battles of the past: the old battles between business and unions, the old battles between growth and the environment, the old and tired battles between federal and state. The old battles between public and private. The future is too important for us not to work together to embrace the challenges of the future and to carve out our nation’s destiny.

We have put before the Australian people a plan. It’s our agenda for work: To start building a world-class eduction system. To embrace the long-term funding needs of our public hospital system. To act, and act with urgency, on the great challenges of climate change and water. To build a 21st-century infrastructure for a 21st-century economy. And to get the balance right between fairness and flexibility in the workplaces of the nation.And this task as well: to remain ever vigilant in the defence of our nation’s national security.

Yawn.  Am I being too critical?

Pigs take flight: Chief coal miner becomes Gore prophet

A sign of the times perhaps.  The environmental enlightenment has come so far in the last couple of years.  Unbelievably, the head of Australia’s coal mining union (CFMEU) is learning how to give Al Gore’s keynote presentation.

I’m so shocked I don’t know quite what to make of this.  Below is recent News Limited coverage.  (I suspect the heading should probably read “Miners embrace fight against climate change.”)

Miners embrace climate change

 By Tony Maher

September 19, 2007 12:00am

IN The Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore speaks of his family’s struggle to come to terms with their history as tobacco farmers.

When faced with the evidence of tobacco’s harmful affects, the family’s initial instinct is to ignore it – until Gore’s sister is herself stricken with lung cancer and the charade of business as usual is crushed forever.

The scene struck a chord with me – the national leader of Australian coal miners – who is charged with looking after both short term interests of wages and conditions – as well as long-term job security…..

See the rest of the article here.

Catch o’ the day

A fresh haul from around the green web:

• David Roberts of enviro-blog Gristmill lets fly at a coal executive in no uncertain terms.
• Thanks also to Gristmill for highlighting Naomi Oreskes work on why we can be confident that scientists have got it right on climate change.
• John Feeney explains why it’s not taboo to talk about population – in fact it’s a stark necessity.
• The New York Times reveals the trouble with “light green” consumerism; and gives Al Gore some page space , perhaps to atone for its generally facile attacks on the man.

Image source: flickr user gari.baldi under creative commons licence

The man in green tights

It seems some people will pull out all stops to draw a certain person into the US presidential candidacy.  The melodrama is perhaps a little overcooked, but I’m with them in spirit.

Have a look at these videos below.

Assault on Reason – Al Gore

I reprint below a letter I received for those registered at AlGore.com .  Take a look at Al’s journal too at blog.algore.com

Dear  [name removed],
In the months following the release of An Inconvenient Truth, I began to focus on why our democracy has been so slow to deal with the climate crisis. The unwillingness to solve this problem is not only the result of a lack of political will, but it has also been caused by the emergence of a new political environment dangerously hostile to reason, knowledge, and facts. In the long-term, this poses a threat to the very basis of American democracy: the ability of a well-informed citizenry to use the rule of reason to hold government accountable.

This Assault on Reason is the focus of my new book that goes on sale today. You can purchase the book at your local bookstore or by visiting:

http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Reason-Al-Gore/dp/1594201226

When George Bush launched his preemptive war in Iraq, more than 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorists who caused 9-11. After the 2004 election, when asked what stuck in their minds about the campaign, voters in Ohio named two ads playing to the fears of terrorism paid for by the Bush Campaign. One pattern that has held true since 2001 is that this White House is less interested in openness and truth than any previous administration.

We are facing so many long-term challenges, from the climate crisis and the war in Iraq to health care and social welfare. To solve these problems and move forward we need to reverse the damage done to our democracy. We have little time to waste.

My goal in The Assault on Reason is to explore why our public forum now welcomes the enemies of reason. More importantly, the book focuses on what we can do together, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason to our democracy.

You can purchase The Assault on Reason by visiting:

http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Reason-Al-Gore/dp/1594201226

My team will be emailing those of you who live in the cities that I will visit for book signings. I hope that I’ll have the chance to see you in person.

I’ll be back in touch soon.

Thank You,

Al Gore

Misleading climate claims from the Australian PM

From ABC online:

Speaking at a meeting of the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, Mr Dimas urged Australia to sign up to the protocol – a move which he said would boost international efforts to address climate change.

But Mr Howard says 12 of the EU’s member countries are not on track to meet their Kyoto targets, citing Italy, Spain and Portugal as examples.

“You’ve got the spokesman for a group of countries lecturing us about not having signed Kyoto,” he said.

“Yet the great bulk of the countries on whose behalf he speaks are falling well behind their Kyoto targets, and are doing less well than Australia in meeting them…

Let us not forget that:

a) Australia remains the largest emitter of CO2 per capita in the world.

b) Australia’s means of achieving its target has been through ending land clearing, although there is concern by some critics that we are not able to accurately measure the degree to which this continues.

c) Europe (EU) as a whole is emitting less CO2 than it did in 1990, even if it is not much less.  This is not true of Australia.

d) Australia negotitated an 8% INCREASE in greenhouse emissions for the current period over 1990 levels as opposed to the EU’s target of an 8% DECREASE and then…..

e) We pulled out of Kyoto anyway, even after being permitted to increase the rate at which we foul the atmosphere.

It seems that Australia’s leader is happy to just sling mud and do nothing.  “They can’t talk..”……. “If they’re not playing then we’re not playing either.”   This is schoolyard stuff.  Infantile in the extreme.  Let’s see some firm targets and commitments rather than just talk.  Nuclear is a terrible red herring.  We have not the time to sit on our hands.

Two little nuggets

Here’s some links to two youtube clips I’ve enjoyed recently courtesy of other blogs.

The first, from Growth is Madness!, celebrates human’s ape-like attributes in a rather humorous way.

The second is a very brief clip of Al Gore’s powerful closing remarks to the US Congress recently. It’s here at Ecological Economics.

Both worth a look.