On Katrina,
Global Warming
Speech given
by Al Gore
13 September, 2005
Commondreams.org
The following is a transcript of a speech given by former Vice President
Al Gore at the National Sierra Club Convention in San Francisco on September
9, 2005 addressing the challenges and moral imperatives posed by Hurricane
Katrina and global warming.
I
know that you are deeply concerned, as I am, about the direction in
which our country has been moving. About the erosion of social capital.
About the lack of respect for a very basic principle, and that is that
we, as Americans, have to put ourselves and our ability to seek out
the truth because we know it will make us free. And then on the basis
of truth, as we share it to the best of our abilities with one another,
we act to try to form a more perfect union and provide for the general
welfare and make this country worthy of the principles upon which it
was founded.
My heart is heavy
for another reason today, and many have mentioned this, but I want to
tell you personally that my heart is heavy because of the suffering
that the people of the gulf coast have been enduring. The losses that
they've suffered in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New Orleans in
particular, but other cities as well, and rural areas. We are here thinking
of them, thinking as well of the many brave men and women who have exceeded
the limits of exhaustion as they do their duty in responding to this
crisis, to the families of those responders and the families of the
victims.
When I received
the invitation that you generously extended for me to come and speak
to you, I did not at first accept, because I was trying to resolve a
scheduling conflict. The Fifty State Insurance Commissioners were meeting
in New Orleans, and asked me to speak about global warming and hurricanes.
I was supposed to
be there today and tomorrow morning. And of course as we all watch this
tragedy unfold, we had a lot of different thoughts and feelings. But
then all those feelings were mixed in with puzzlement at why there was
no immediate response, why there was not an adequate plan in place.
We are now told that this is not a time to point fingers, even as some
of those saying "don't point fingers" are themselves pointing
fingers at the victims of the tragedy, who did not - many of whom could
not - evacuate the city of New Orleans, because they didn't have automobiles,
and they did not have adequate public transportation.
We're told this
is not a time to hold our national government accountable because there
are more important matters that confront us. This is not an either/or
choice. They are linked together. As our nation belatedly finds effective
ways to help those who have been so hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, it
is important that we learn the right lessons of what has happened, lest
we are spoon-fed the wrong lessons from what happened. If we do not
absorb the right lessons, we are, in the historian's phrase, doomed
to repeat the mistakes that have already been made. All of us know that
our nation - all of us, the United States of America - failed the people
of New Orleans and the gulf coast when this hurricane was approaching
them, and when it struck. When the corpses of American citizens are
floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a hurricane strikes, it
is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe
but to hold the processes of our nation accountable, and the leaders
of our nation accountable, for the failures that have taken place. [applause]
The Bible in which
I believe, in my own faith tradition, says, "Where there is no
vision, the people perish."
Four years ago in
August of 2001, President Bush received a dire warning: "Al Qaeda
determined to attack inside the US." No meetings were called, no
alarms were sounded, no one was brought together to say, "What
else do we know about this imminent threat? What can we do to prepare
our nation for what we have been warned is about to take place?"
If there had been preparations, they would have found a lot of information
collected by the FBI, and CIA and NSA - including the names of most
of the terrorists who flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon
and the field in Pennsylvania. The warnings of FBI field offices that
there were suspicious characters getting flight training without expressing
any curiosity about the part of the training that has to do with landing.
They would have found directors of FBI field offices in a state of agitation
about the fact that there was no plan in place and no effective response.
Instead, it was vacation time, not a time for preparation. Or protecting
the American people.
Four years later,
there were dire warnings, three days before Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA,
that if it followed the path it was then on, the levees would break,
and the city of New Orleans would drown, and thousands of people would
be at risk. It was once again vacation time. And the preparations were
not made, the plans were not laid, the response then was not forthcoming.
In the early days
of the unfolding catastrophe, the President compared our ongoing efforts
in Iraq to World War Two and victory over Japan. Let me cite one difference
between those two historical events: When imperial Japan attacked us
at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt did not invade Indonesia. [applause]
I personally believe
that the very fact that there has been no accountability for the horrendous
misjudgments and outright falsehoods that laid the basis for this horrible
tragedy that we have ongoing in Iraq, the fact that there was no accountability
for those mistakes, misjudgments and dissembling, is one of the principal
reasons why there was no fear of being held accountable for a cavalier,
lackluster, mistaken, inadequate response to the onrushing tragedy that
was clearly visible - for those who were watching television, for those
who were reading the news - what happened was not only knowable, it
was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail. They did tabletop
planning exercises, they identified exactly what the scientific evidence
showed would take place. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
It's not only that
there is no vision; it's that there has been a misguided vision. One
of the principle philosophical guides for this administration has been
the man who said famously that he wants to render the government of
the United States so weak and helpless that you can drown it in a bathtub.
There were warnings three years ago from the last director in the Clinton-Gore
Administration of FEMA that FEMA was being rendered weak and helpless,
unable to respond in the event of a catastrophe. The budget was cut,
the resources sent elsewhere.
Carl [Pope] said
he was embarrassed. The word is a tricky word. What did you feel after
the invasion of Iraq when you saw American soldiers holding dog leashes
attached to helpless prisoners, 99% of whom, by the way, were innocent
of any connection to violence against our troops, much less terrorism
- innocent prisoners who were being tortured in our name - what did
you feel? I don't know the words. I don't know the words but I want
you to draw a line connecting the feelings you had when you saw the
visual images providing evidence that our soldiers, acting in our name,
with our authority, were torturing helpless people and that it was a
matter of policy - now, they pointed fingers at the privates and corporals
that were in charge - but I want you to draw a line between the emotions
that you felt when you absorbed that news, and the emotions that you
felt over the last ten days when you saw those corpses in the water,
when you saw people without food, water, medicine - our fellow citizens
left helpless. And of course in both cases the story is complex and
many factors are involved, but I want you draw a line connecting the
feelings that you had then and now. And I want you to draw another line,
connecting those responsible for both of those unbelievable tragedies
that embarrassed our nation in the eyes of the world.
There are scientific
warnings now of another onrushing catastrophe. We were warned of an
imminent attack by Al Qaeda; we didn't respond. We were warned the levees
would break in New Orleans; we didn't respond. Now, the scientific community
is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger
because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published a study
well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in
both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in
intensity, by about 50 %. The newscasters told us after Hurricane Katrina
went over the southern tip of Florida that there was a particular danger
for the Gulf Coast of the hurricanes becoming much stronger because
it was passing over unusually warm waters in the gulf. The waters in
the gulf have been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting
warmer. And the pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have
predicted for twenty years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries,
engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration
in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that
we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare
ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause]
It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific
evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce
our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again
and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are
facing us right now. [applause]
The president says
that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. He says that
he is not ready to do anything meaningful to prepare us for a threat
that he's not certain is real. He tells us that he believes the science
of global warming is in dispute. This is the same president who said
last week, "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break."
It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy
work. And the uncertainty and lack of resolution, the willful misunderstanding
of what the scientific community is saying, the preference for what
a few supporters in the coal and oil industry - far from all, but a
few - want him to do: ignore the science. That is a serious problem.
The President talked about the analogies to World War II - let me give
another analogy to World War II.
Winston Churchill,
when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings
of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in
power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was real, he said,
"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." He continued, "The era of procrastination,
of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is
coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."
Ladies and gentlemen,
the warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long
time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are
entering a period of consequences. Churchill also said this, and he
directed it at the people of his country who were looking for any way
to avoid having to really confront the threat that he was warning of
and asking them to prepare for. He said that he understood why there
was a natural desire to deny the reality of the situation and to search
for vain hope that it wasn't really as serious as some claimed it was.
He said they should know the truth. And after the appeasement by Neville
Chamberlain, he sad, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning.
This only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which
will be proffered to us year by year - unless by a supreme recovery
of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand
for freedom."
It is time now for
us to recover our moral health in America and stand again to rise for
freedom, demand accountability for poor decisions, missed judgments,
lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful denial of the obvious
truth about serious and imminent threats that are facing the American
people. [applause]
Abraham Lincoln
said, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise
with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."
We must disenthrall
ourselves with the sound-and-light show that has diverted the attentions
of our great democracy from the important issues and challenges of our
day. We must disenthrall ourselves from the Michael Jackson trial and
the Aruba search and the latest sequential obsession with celebrity
trials or whatever relative triviality dominates the conversation of
democracy instead of making room for us as free American citizens to
talk with one another about our true situation, and then save our country.
We must resist those wrong lessons.
Some are now saying,
including in the current administration, that the pitiful response by
government proves that we cannot ever rely on the government. They have
in the past proposed more unilateral power for themselves as the solution
for a catastrophe of their own creation, and we should not acquiesce
in allowing them to investigate themselves and giving them more power
to abuse and misuse, the way they have so recently done. The fact that
an administration can't manage its own way out of a horse show doesn't
mean that all government programs should be abolished. FEMA worked extremely
well during the previous administration.
A hundred years
ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand
something when his salary depends upon him not understanding."
Here's what I think we here understand about Hurricane Katrina and global
warming. Yes, it is true that no single hurricane can be blamed on global
warming. Hurricanes have come for a long time, and will continue to
come in the future. Yes, it is true that the science does not definitively
tell us that global warming increases the frequency of hurricanes -
because yes, it is true there is a multi-decadal cycle, twenty to forty
years that profoundly affects the number of hurricanes that come in
any single hurricane season. But it is also true that the science is
extremely clear now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger,
not only makes the winds stronger, but dramatically increases the moisture
from the oceans evaporating into the storm - thus magnifying its destructive
power - makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane,
stronger.
Last year we had
a lot of hurricanes. Last year, Japan set an all-time record for typhoons:
ten, the previous record was seven. Last year the science textbooks
had to be re-written. They said, "It's impossible to have a hurricane
in the south Atlantic." We had the first one last year, in Brazil.
We had an all-time record last year for tornadoes in the United States,
1,717 - largely because hurricanes spawned tornadoes. Last year we had
record temperatures in many cities. This year 200 cities in the Western
United States broke all-time records. Reno, 39 days consecutively above
100 degrees.
The scientists are
telling us that what the science tells them is that this - unless we
act quickly and dramatically - that Tucson tied its all-time record
for consecutive days above 100 degrees. this, in Churchill's phrase,
is only the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us
year by year until there is a supreme recover of moral health. We have
to rise with this occasion. We have to connect the dots. When the Superfund
sites aren't cleaned up, we get a toxic gumbo in a flood. When there
is not adequate public transportation for the poor, it is difficult
to evacuate a city. When there is no ability to give medical care to
poor people, its difficult to get hospital to take refugees in the middle
of a crisis. When the wetlands are turned over to the developers then
the storm surges from the ocean threaten the coastal cities more. When
there is no effort to restrain the global warming pollution gasses then
global warming gets worse, with all of the consequences that the scientific
community has warned us about.
My friends, the
truth is that our circumstances are not only new; they are completely
different than they have ever been in all of human history. The relationship
between humankind and the earth had been utterly transformed in the
last hundred years. We have quadrupled the population of our planet.
The population in many ways is a success story. The demographic transition
has been occurring more quickly than was hoped for, but the reality
of our new relationship with the planet brings with it a moral responsibility
to accept our new circumstances and to deal with the consequences of
the relationship we have with this planet. And it's not just population.
By any means, the power of the technologies now at our disposal vastly
magnifies the average impact that individuals can have on the natural
world. Multiply that by six and a half billion people, and then stir
into that toxic mixture a mindset and an attitude that says its okay
to ignore scientific evidence - that we don't have to take responsibility
for the future consequences of present actions - and you get a collision
between our civilization and the earth. The refugees that we have seen
- I don't like that word when applied to American citizens in our own
country, but the refugees that we have seen could well be the first
sip of that bitter cup because sea-level rise in countries around the
world will mobilize millions of environmental refugees. The other problems
are known to you, but here is what I want to close with:
This is a moral
moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political
dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It is about
our capacity to transcend our own limitations. To rise to this new occasion.
To see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response
that is now called for. To disenthrall ourselves, to shed the illusions
that have been our accomplices in ignoring the warnings that were clearly
given, and hearing the ones that are clearly given now.
Where there is no
vision, the people perish. And Lincoln said at another moment of supreme
challenge that the question facing the people of the United States of
America ultimately was whether or not this government, conceived in
liberty, dedicated to freedom, of the people, by the people, and for
the people - or any government so conceived - would perish from this
earth.
There is another
side to this moral challenge. Where there is vision, the people prosper
and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our communities recover.
The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, we have everything
we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all
the technologies we need, more are being developed, and as they become
available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will
make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, we
must not wait, we have every thing we need - save perhaps political
will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.
[sustained applause]
I know that you
are debating as an organization and talking among yourselves about your
own priorities. I would urge you to make global warming your priority.
I would urge you to focus on a unified theme. I would urge you to work
with other groups in ways that have not been done in the past, even
though there have been Herculean efforts on your part and the part of
others. I would urge you to make this a moral moment. To make this a
moral cause.
There are those
who would say that the problem is too big and we can't solve it. There
are many people who go from denial to despair without pausing on the
intermediate step of actually solving the problem. To those who say
it's too big for us, I say that we have accepted and successfully met
such challenges in the past. We declared our liberty, and then won it.
We designed a country that respected and safeguarded the freedom of
individuals. We freed the slaves. We gave women the right to vote. We
took on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured great diseases, we have landed
on the moon, we have won two wars in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously.
We brought down communism, we brought down apartheid, we have even solved
a global environmental crisis before - the hole in the stratospheric
ozone layer - because we had leadership and because we had vision and
because people who exercise moral authority in their local communities
empowered our nation's government "of the people by the people
and for the people" to take ethical actions even thought they were
difficult. This is another such time. This is your moment. This is the
time for those who see and understand and care and are willing to work
to say this time the warnings will not be ignored. This time we will
prepare. This time we will rise to the occasion. And we will prevail.
Thank you. Good luck to you, God bless you.