I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” again last night, and once more came away so very impressed with Al Gore, and particularly the evolution in his career and in his life since losing to George Bush in 2000 (at least in the Supreme Court). And again, I came away astonished at how well he presents complex scientific information about global warming, its consequences and its solutions to ordinary people without a scientific background. Not an easy skill. Yes, he dumbs down some of the complexity, but so do all science writers who attempt to reach a mass audience.
Which got me to thinking/wondering why so little has been made about this critical issue in the Presidential race this year. None of the candidates do more than give passing mention to the issue (though at least all of the remaining candidates at least believe global warming is real). This year we are seeing ever more stories about increased droughts across the globe (e.g., in Australia, Africa and in the United States), the loss of water resources, the growing global food crisis, melting polar ice caps and glaciers, the spread of disease vectors, the mass extinction of species, etc. However, the subject never seems to garner any serious debate in this country. Indeed, the popular press is as likely to publish articles dismissing global warming and climate change as a hoax as they are to discuss the truth of it and the reality of its consequences.
Terrorism killed 3000 people in 2001 in the United States, yet hundreds of thousands if not millions have died over the last two decades because of the effects of global climate change and our failure to seriously address it. What is the greater threat to our national security, and indeed to global security? We are expending trillions of dollars in Iraq to combat a threat which is more imagined than actual. A threat that is more psychological than reality based. One can even make the argument that our current foreign policy is being driven by the wrong paradigm: the perceived need to control all the oil resources in the Middle East so that we, with our American lifestyles of mass consumption, can continue to pump greenhouse gas emissions into the air at ever increasing rates.
What if we had taken that money we are currently using to pursue a misguided military/imperial policy in the Middle East and used it to fund research and projects regarding alternative energy, conservation, better automobiles with reduced carbon emissions, protection of critical ecosystems and wetlands, better agricultural methods to sustain our ever increasing global population, to remove our dependence on fossil fuels, and so forth? Wouldn’t our need to dominate the Middle East in order to ensure the flow of its oil be a choice we no longer needed to make? Wouldn’t we be able to develop a less expensive response to terrorism, focusing more on defense of our own territory, and the prevention of present and future sources of terrorism in collaboration with our allies, rather than this doomed attempt to dominate the planet militarily? Wouldn’t we have developed new technologies and created new industries to improve the economic outlook for our country?
I think you know the answers to those questions as well as I do. For today is not just the day of a Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania, important as that may seem at the moment. It is also a day to remember that our world is in crisis, a crisis that threatens all of humankind. It is a crisis of our own making, but also a crisis to which we have the ability to respond if we can only marshal the political will to take the steps needed to confront it. And that begins with informing the American public of the facts regarding the crisis, its severity and the need to elect politicians who will take the steps necessary to respond.
For the last 8 years (and indeed for many years prior to that) we have ignored this crisis. Too many of our leaders have denied that a response to global climate change must be a priority. Indeed, under the current regime of George W. Bush, our government has actively sought to censor any information regarding the extent of this crisis, and deliberately worked to provide disinformation and sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of the American public, in order to appease its corporate patrons in the energy and automotive industries. Science under the Bush administration has become a dirty word, and hardworking, truth telling scientists have been treated as individuals as dangerous as Osama bin Laden, if not more so.
The time for continued denial of this global crisis, however, must come to an end. The time for pretending that a phony controversy exists regarding the reality and causes of global warming is no longer a luxury we can afford. We need leadership in the Congress and in the office of the President who recognize that fact. Who recognize that America is not only the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, but also the potential source of many of the solutions to reducing and even eliminating those deadly emissions.
We have the ability to implement any number of steps to accomplish this. The technology already exists to reduce CO2 emissions, and new technologies are being developed that will permit us to begin the transition to a more sustainable, less environmentally damaging civilization. A society that places the needs of all human beings on par with the needs of the earth itself.
Because in the end, they are one and the same. If we continue to befoul our world, continue down the path our ancestors first started at the dawn of the industrial age, we will be signing the death warrants of future generations. To be specific, we will be condemning our own children and grandchildren to great harm and less fruitful lives, and likely earlier deaths. It is they who will suffer the most for the delays in attacking this crisis which we have permitted to occur on our generation’s watch.
Therefore, the time to act is now. This day, and every day that follows. For all of them are our Earth Days. And we should demand that our politicians recognize that fact, and lead us in new directions, lead us to break with a past that is literally killing so many of our fellow human beings already, and which will kill and harm so many more in the future.
I once believed that Al Gore should be the next President. I was disappointed when he did not run. But I was wrong. He is serving a far greater good by being the prophet of this cause, one we so desperately need to point out the dangers of this looming catastrophe, but also the reasons for hope that it can be overcome if we, as a world community, all work together. And his work has done much to begin the groundswell of support for a change in direction in this country and around the world. But it is up to us to make our country’s political leaders take action to address the reality global climate change. So far they, and we, have failed our nation, and failed the world.
It is time for that to stop. Time for the lies, the denial, the deliberate ignorance regarding this issue to be banished from our politics and our lives. We can no longer withstand another president like George Bush, or another Congress like the one the Republicans have either dominated and/or manipulated over the last 14 years to ignore the very real problem staring us all in the face, and to obstruct viable solutions to that problem. As Barrack Obama has said often on the campaign trail this year, it’s time for change. And the biggest change we can make is for our government and our society to move away from refusing to address this crisis. Instead we must direct our energy, our will and our spirit to doing everything we can to make this world one in which a response to global climate change is job no. 1.
Not because we can, not because we should, but because we must.
