The Climate Crisis

Tipping Towards the Future

I talked to a CEO of one of the ten largest companies in the United States, who supported Bush and Cheney. He told me, "Al, let's be honest. Fifteen minutes after George Bush leaves the presidency, America is going to have a new global-warming policy, and it doesn't matter who's elected."

If you read only one article this summer about the Climate Crisis, you'd do well to read the Rolling Stone interview with Al Gore. That's a quote from it above. Here are some others:

Here's the essence of our problem: Right now, the political environment in the country does not support the range of solutions that have to be introduced. The maximum you can imagine coming out of the current political environment still falls woefully short of the minimum that will really solve the crisis. But that's just another way of saying we have to expand the limits of the possible.

Sometimes, the political system is like the climate system, in that it's nonlinear. It can seem to change at a snail's pace and then suddenly cross a tipping point beyond which it shifts into a shockingly fast gear. All of a sudden, change that everybody thought was impossible becomes matter of fact. In 1941, it was absurd to think the U.S. could build a thousand airplanes a month to fight the Second World War. By 1943 that was a real small number.

Gore outlines a new effort to raise consciousness about the Climate Crisis beyond his phenomenonally successful movie and book, with a new foundation to begins ads etc. in the fall, with heavyweight participants like Steve Jobs. For those partial to Bush snark, there are some choice bits here, too. Even the RS headline, identifying Gore as the person who won the 2000 election. But in general this is the most articulate and on point interview I've read in years, by anyone. It will actually give you hope.