Nobel
Prize Acceptance Speech
By Al Gore
11 December, 2007
The
Huffington Post
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.”
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