Year in Review: Gore speaks at Schottenstein
By Joe Lowe, Staff Writer
June 9, 2008 | 6 a.m.
Former Vice President Al Gore spoke to a packed house Sunday, May 1, at Ohio State's Schottenstein Center in Columbus about global warming and what students can do to stop it.
In recent years, nothing has done more to publicize the climate crisis than Al Gore’s documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." The movie, released in 2006, earned more than $49 million dollars, eventually winning an Oscar for best documentary. It also catapulted the issue of global warming onto the covers of magazines like Time, making it the topic of household conversation. In 2007, Gore won the Nobel peace prize for his efforts. Since then, climate change has enjoyed steady press coverage, but Gore, after rumors of a possible White House run last year, began dropping out of the headlines.
Gore still tours, speaking passionately about climate change, but now with a new focus. Sunday, May 1, he was in Columbus speaking to a crowd of mostly college students at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center. His message remains the same: Climate change presents the greatest challenge yet faced by human civilization. But Gore has focused on a specific audience. That is, America’s next generation.
This generation will be forced to confront new and unraveling climatic changes in a way their parents never did, Gore said. They will face a host of challenges but will also have the chance to play a “heroic” role in reversing the tide of climate change.
Visibly older and rounder, Gore carries himself with the dignified air of senior statesmen. The “robot” reputation he earned during his stiff presidential debate performances, however, is long gone. On stage, he is obviously relaxed, radiating the jocular casualness that helped make "An Inconvenient Truth" so successful. Apart from the surprising appearance of Gore’s personal charm, "An Inconvenient Truth" worked because Gore carefully chose a set of simple, dramatic metaphors to illustrate his points. His performance provided some new examples.
The Earth and Venus, he began, are similar in size and roughly the same distance from the sun. They also contain similar amounts of carbon dioxide. “The difference, however, is that most Co2 on Venus is in the atmosphere, while here on Earth a lot of has been deposited in the Earth. What effect does that have? Well, the average temperature on Earth is 59 degrees Fahrenheit. On Venus it’s 877 degrees Fahrenheit and rains sulfuric acid. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound too appealing to me,” Gore said.
To demonstrate the Earth’s warming trend, he turned to the Arctic Circle, where some of the most dramatic climatic changes to date have taken place. Historically, he said, ice cover in the arctic has been comparable in size to the continental U.S. “Scientists, last September looking at satellite images, were shocked to find that more than half of that ice gone. What was left was equal to the size of the United States east of the Mississippi plus one western state.”
This thawing trend has been increasing, Gore said.
“When I first started talking to scientists about these issues twenty years ago, they said ‘It’ll be 100 years before the arctic is ice-free in the summer.’ Then it was 75, then 50, 25, and now scientists are saying it may be only five years before the arctic is ice-free in the summer.” The thawing of arctic ice, Gore said, will inevitably lead to changes in air and sea patterns that will have unpredictable climatic consequences.
At one point during the speech, Gore asked rhetorically, “Many in the world have been puzzled because America hasn’t been leading in the fight against climate change. What’s been going wrong?” A voice from the crowed brought applause, “Bush!” Gore responded, “I’m not going to comment. I’ve lost objectivity on that issue, but you are tempting me.” However, he did comment later on America’s political situation, saying “The problem today is that we are borrowing money from China to buy oil from Saudi Arabia to burn inefficiently, contributing to the problem of global warming.”
As usual Gore spoke about the climate debate. He characterized global change research done by world scientists over the last twenty years as “the most organized and extensive scientific study in human history” and reminded audience members that twenty years ago, climate scientist James Hanson testified before Congress saying that he was 99 percent positive that global change was man-made.
“Since then the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has issued five warnings, each one more confident than the last,” Gore said.
Gore then moved into new material. “In the history of our country a few generations have faced bigger choices than others. In 1776 our founding fathers faced an enormous decision. And again in the 1940s during World War II, another generation faced an equally momentous decision.”
After describing the challenges faced by these “hero generations,” Gore focused on his college-aged audience.“We are not living in ordinary times. You must be America’s third hero generation.” Gore said it is not too late to stop global warming before it reaches an irreversible threshold of change, but, “We need you to be involved.”
To do so Gore called on younger people to think long-term and take concrete action. Gore emphasized this: “You have to insist that others face up to it [climate change] because it affects no one more than your generation.” A good way to get started, he said, was to visit the Web site www.wecansolveit.org, which lists simple ways you can become involved and lower your carbon footprint. It also serves as a good source of current information on the topic.
Climate change, he said, has been ignored by the American press.
“Last year researchers found that the three candidates running for president had been asked by the media about the climate crisis a total of six times. Six times. That’s the same amount of times they were asked about UFOs.” He ended by criticizing American politicians for not taking action. One line brought the audience to their feet. “We’ve got everything we need [to deal with climate change], save the political will, but luckily in the U.S., political will is a renewable resource.”
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