As Prepared Remarks by Former Vice President Al Gore
New York University School of Law
September 18, 2006     


Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thank you Paul and Jim for those kind introductions.  I would especially
like to thank our host, New York University and the President of the College
John Sexton and the Dean of the Law School Richard Revesz.  I am also
grateful to our co-sponsors, the World Resources Institute and Set America
Free.

A few days ago, scientists announced alarming new evidence of the rapid
melting of the perennial ice of the north polar cap, continuing a trend of
the past several years that now confronts us with the prospect that human
activities, if unchecked in the next decade, could destroy one of the
earth¹s principle mechanisms for cooling itself. Another group of scientists
presented evidence that human activities are responsible for the dramatic
warming of sea surface temperatures in the areas of the ocean where
hurricanes form. A few weeks earlier, new information from yet another team
showed dramatic increases in the burning of forests throughout the American
West, a trend that has increased decade by decade, as warmer temperatures
have dried out soils and vegetation. All these findings come at the end of a
summer with record breaking temperatures and the hottest twelve month period
ever measured in the U.S., with persistent drought in vast areas of our
country. Scientific American introduces the lead article in its special
issue this month with the following sentence: ³The debate on global warming
is over.²

Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several
³tipping points² that could ­ within as little as 10 years ­ make it
impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet¹s habitability
for human civilization. In this regard, just a few weeks ago, another group
of scientists reported on the unexpectedly rapid increases in the release of
carbon and methane emissions from frozen tundra in Siberia, now beginning to
thaw because of human caused increases in global temperature. The scientists
tell us that the tundra in danger of thawing contains an amount of
additional global warming pollution that is equal to the total amount that
is already in the earth¹s atmosphere. Similarly, earlier this year, yet
another team of scientists reported that the previous twelve months saw 32
glacial earthquakes on Greenland between 4.6 and 5.1 on the Richter scale ­
a disturbing sign that a massive destabilization may now be underway deep
within the second largest accumulation of ice on the planet, enough ice to
raise sea level 20 feet worldwide if it broke up and slipped into the sea.
Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a planetary
emergency ­ a climate crisis that demands immediate action to sharply reduce
carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earth¹s
thermostat and avert catastrophe.

The serious debate over the climate crisis has now moved on to the question
of how we can craft emergency solutions in order to avoid this catastrophic
damage.

This debate over solutions has been slow to start in earnest not only
because some of our leaders still find it more convenient to deny the
reality of the crisis, but also because the hard truth for the rest of us is
that the maximum that seems politically feasible still falls far short of
the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis. This no-man¹s
land ­ or no politician zone ­falling between the farthest reaches of
political feasibility and the first beginnings of truly effective change is
the area that I would like to explore in my speech today.

T. S. Eliot once wrote: Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion
and the act Falls the Shadow. Š Between the conception and the creation,
Between the emotion and the response Falls the Shadow.

My purpose is not to present a comprehensive and detailed blueprint ­ for
that is a task for our democracy as a whole ­ but rather to try to shine
some light on a pathway through this terra incognita that lies between where
we are and where we need to go. Because, if we acknowledge candidly that
what we need to do is beyond the limits of our current political capacities,
that really is just another way of saying that we have to urgently expand
the limits of what is politically possible.

I have no doubt that we can do precisely that, because having served almost
three decades in elected office, I believe I know one thing about America¹s
political system that some of the pessimists do not: it shares something in
common with the climate system; it can appear to move only at a slow pace,
but it can also cross a tipping point beyond which it can move with
lightning speed. Just as a single tumbling rock can trigger a massive
landslide, America has sometimes experienced sudden avalanches of political
change that had their beginnings with what first seemed like small changes.

Two weeks ago, Democrats and Republicans joined together in our largest
state, California, to pass legally binding sharp reductions in CO2
emissions. 295 American cities have now independently ³ratified² and
embraced CO2 reductions called for in the Kyoto Treaty. 85 conservative
evangelical ministers publicly broke with the Bush-Cheney administration to
call for bold action to solve the climate crisis. Business leaders in both
political parties have taken significant steps to position their companies
as leaders in this struggle and have adopted a policy that not only reduces
CO2 but makes their companies zero carbon companies. Many of them have
discovered a way to increase profits and productivity by eliminating their
contributions to global warming pollution.

Many Americans are now seeing a bright light shining from the far side of
this no-man¹s land that illuminates not sacrifice and danger, but instead a
vision of a bright future that is better for our country in every way ­ a
future with better jobs, a cleaner environment, a more secure nation, and a
safer world.



After all, many Americans are tired of borrowing huge amounts of money from
China to buy huge amounts of oil from the Persian Gulf to make huge amounts
of pollution that destroys the planet¹s climate. Increasingly, Americans
believe that we have to change every part of that pattern.



When I visit port cities like Seattle, New Orleans, or Baltimore, I find
massive ships, running low in the water, heavily burdened with foreign cargo
or foreign oil arriving by the thousands.  These same cargo ships and
tankers depart riding high with only ballast water to keep them from rolling
over.



One-way trade is destructive to our economic future. We send money,
electronically, in the opposite direction. But, we can change this by
inventing and manufacturing new solutions to stop global warming right here
in America.  I still believe in good old-fashioned American ingenuity.  We
need to fill those ships with new products and technologies that we create
to turn down the global thermostat. Working together, we can create jobs and
stop global warming. But we must begin by winning the first key battle ­
against inertia and the fear of change.


In order to conquer our fear and walk boldly forward on the path that lies
before us, we have to insist on a higher level of honesty in America¹s
political dialogue. When we make big mistakes in America, it is usually
because the people have not been given an honest accounting of the choices
before us. It also is often because too many members of both parties who
knew better did not have the courage to do better.

Our children have a right to hold us to a higher standard when their future
­ indeed the future of all human civilization ­ is hanging in the balance.
They deserve better than the spectacle of censorship of the best scientific
evidence about the truth of our situation and harassment of honest
scientists who are trying to warn us about the looming catastrophe. They
deserve better than politicians who sit on their hands and do nothing to
confront the greatest challenge that humankind has ever faced ­ even as the
danger bears down on us.

We in the United States of America have a particularly important
responsibility, after all, because the world still regards us ­ in spite of
our recent moral lapses ­ as the natural leader of the community of nations.
Simply put, in order for the world to respond urgently to the climate
crisis, the United States must lead the way. No other nation can.

Developing countries like China and India have gained their own
understanding of how threatening the climate crisis is to them, but they
will never find the political will to make the necessary changes in their
growing economies unless and until the United States leads the way. Our
natural role is to be the pace car in the race to stop global warming.

So, what would a responsible approach to the climate crisis look like if we
had one in America?

Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions
and then beginning sharp reductions. Merely engaging in high-minded debates
about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase
emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways,
that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the
gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it
is not.

An immediate freeze has the virtue of being clear, simple, and easy to
understand. It can attract support across partisan lines as a logical
starting point for the more difficult work that lies ahead. I remember a
quarter century ago when I was the author of a complex nuclear arms control
plan to deal with the then rampant arms race between our country and the
former Soviet Union. At the time, I was strongly opposed to the nuclear
freeze movement, which I saw as simplistic and naive. But, 3 4 of the
American
people supported it ­ and as I look back on those years I see more clearly
now that the outpouring of public support for that very simple and clear
mandate changed the political landscape and made it possible for more
detailed and sophisticated proposals to eventually be adopted.

When the politicians are paralyzed in the face of a great threat, our nation
needs a popular movement, a rallying cry, a standard, a mandate that is
broadly supported on a bipartisan basis.

A responsible approach to solving this crisis would also involve

joining the rest of the global economy in playing by the rules of the world treaty that
reduces global warming pollution by authorizing the trading of emissions
within a global cap.

At present, the global system for carbon emissions trading is embodied in
the Kyoto Treaty. It drives reductions in CO2 and helps many countries that
are a part of the treaty to find the most efficient ways to meet their
targets for reductions. It is true that not all countries are yet on track
to meet their targets, but the first targets don¹t have to be met until 2008
and the largest and most important reductions typically take longer than the
near term in any case.

The absence of the United States from the treaty means that 25% of the world
economy is now missing. It is like filling a bucket with a large hole in the
bottom. When the United States eventually joins the rest of the world
community in making this system operate well, the global market for carbon
emissions will become a highly efficient closed system and every corporate
board of directors on earth will have a fiduciary duty to manage and reduce
CO2 emissions in order to protect shareholder value.

Many American businesses that operate in other countries already have to
abide by the Kyoto Treaty anyway, and unsurprisingly, they are the companies
that have been most eager to adopt these new principles here at home as
well. The United States and Australia are the only two countries in the
developed world that have not yet ratified the Kyoto Treaty. Since the
Treaty has been so demonized in America¹s internal debate, it is difficult
to imagine the current Senate finding a way to ratify it. But the United
States should immediately join the discussion that is now underway on the
new tougher treaty that will soon be completed. We should plan to accelerate
its adoption and phase it in more quickly than is presently planned.

Third, a responsible approach to solutions would avoid the mistake of trying
to find a single magic silver bullet and recognize that the answer will
involve what Bill McKibben has called ³silver-buckshot² ­ numerous important
solutions, all of which are hard, but no one of which is by itself the full
answer for our problem.

One of the most productive approaches to the multiple solutions needed isa road-map designed by two Princeton professors, Rob Socolow and Steven
Pacala, which breaks down the overall problem into more manageable parts.
Socolow and Pacala have identified 15 or 20 building blocks (or wedges)
that can be used to solve our problem effectively ­ even if we only use 7 or
8 of them. I am among the many who have found this approach useful as a way
to structure a discussion of the choices before us.

Over the next year, I intend to convene an ongoing broad-based discussion ofmsolutions that will involve leaders from government, science, business,
labor, agriculture, grass-roots activists, faith communities and others.

I am convinced that it is possible to build an effective consensus in the
United States and in the world at large on the most effective approaches to
solve the climate crisis. Many of those solutions will be found in the
building blocks that currently structure so many discussions. But I am also
certain that some of the most powerful solutions will lie beyond our current
categories of building blocks and ³wedges.² Our secret strength in America
has always been our capacity for vision. Make no little plans, one of our
most famous architects said over a century ago, they have no magic to stir
mens blood.

I look forward to the deep discussion and debate that lies ahead. But there
are already some solutions that seem to stand out as particularly promising:

First, dramatic improvements in the efficiency with which we generate,
transport and use energy will almost certainly prove to be the single
biggest source of sharp reductions in global warming pollution. Because
pollution has been systematically ignored in the old rules of America's
marketplace, there are lots of relatively easy ways to use new and more
efficient options to cheaply eliminate it. Since pollution is, after all,
waste, business and industry usually become more productive and efficient
when they systematically go about reducing pollution. After all, many of the
technologies on which we depend are actually so old that they are inherently
far less efficient than newer technologies that we haven't started using.
One of the best examples is the internal combustion engine. When scientists
calculate the energy content in BTUs of each gallon of gasoline used in a
typical car, and then measure the amounts wasted in the car¹s routine
operation, they find that an incredible 90% of that energy is completely
wasted. One engineer, Amory Lovins, has gone farther and calculated the
amount of energy that is actually used to move the passenger (excluding the
amount of energy used to move the several tons of metal surrounding the
passenger) and has found that only 1% of the energy is actually used to move
the person. This is more than an arcane calculation, or a parlor trick with
arithmetic. These numbers actually illuminate the single biggest opportunity
to make our economy more efficient and competitive while sharply reducing
global warming pollution.

To take another example, many older factories use obsolete processes that
generate prodigious amounts of waste heat that actually has tremendous
economic value. By redesigning their processes and capturing all of that
waste, they can eliminate huge amounts of global warming pollution while
saving billions of dollars at the same time.

When we introduce the right incentives for eliminating pollution and
becoming more efficient, many businesses will begin to make greater use of
computers and advanced monitoring systems to identify even more
opportunities for savings. This is what happened in the computer chip
industry when more powerful chips led to better computers, which in turn
made it possible to design even more powerful chips, in a virtuous cycle of
steady improvement that became known as Moore's Law. We may well see the
emergence of a new version of Moore's Law producing steadily higher levels
of energy efficiency at steadily lower cost.

There is yet another lesson we can learn from America's success in the
information revolution. When the Internet was invented ­ and I assure you I
intend to choose my words carefully here ­ it was because defense planners
in the Pentagon forty years ago were searching for a way to protect
America's command and communication infrastructure from being disrupted in a
nuclear attack. The network they created ­ known as ARPANET ­ was based on
distributed communication that allowed it to continue functioning even if
part of it was destroyed.

Today, our nation faces threats very different from those we countered
during the Cold War. We worry today that terrorists might try to inflict
great damage on America's energy infrastructure by attacking a single
vulnerable part of the oil distribution or electricity distribution network.
So, taking a page from the early pioneers of ARPANET, we should develop a
distributed electricity and liquid fuels distribution network that is less
dependent on large coal-fired generating plants and vulnerable oil ports and
refineries.

Small windmills and photovoltaic solar cells distributed widely throughout
the electricity grid would sharply reduce CO2 emissions and at the same time
increase our energy security. Likewise, widely dispersed ethanol and
biodiesel production facilities would shift our transportation fuel stocks
to renewable forms of energy while making us less dependent on and
vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of expensive crude oil from the
Persian Gulf, Venezuela and Nigeria, all of which are extremely unreliable
sources upon which to base our future economic vitality. It would also make
us less vulnerable to the impact of a category 5 hurricane hitting coastal
refineries or to a terrorist attack on ports or key parts of our current
energy infrastructure.