Gore Highlights Environmental Threats At SF Conference - Chronicle

[hatrack]

"When former Vice President Al Gore gave a long list of doom-and- gloom statistics Saturday about global warming -- warning people that rising sea levels could drown out parts of Florida, Louisiana and Manhattan -- there were no loud gasps or headshakes of disbelief from a roomful of Bay Area environmentalists. At the World Environment Day conference in San Francisco -- a five-day U. N. gathering dedicated to adopting sound environmental practices for urban centers -- he was preaching to the choir.

"To an audience like this, Al Gore needs little introduction," Randy Hayes, founder of Rainforest Action Network, told the crowd before Gore took the stage for his keynote address. Gore, who has made environmental activism a key component of his life since running for president in 2000, delivered an hourlong speech about climate change and global warming, which he called a "planetary emergency." "We can't ignore it," he told the packed audience at the Fort Mason Center. "We can't put our heads in the sand."

EDIT

"There are a lot of people, some in less responsible oil and utility companies, who say, 'Hey, what's the big deal,' " Gore said. "If we allow this to happen, it is deeply, ethically immoral in every way." He showed photos of rapidly melting glaciers in Antarctica and said that if half of Greenland and half of west Antarctica melted away, it would have a devastating effect through rising sea levels. Parts of Florida would be covered in water, he said. New Orleans would be virtually nonexistent, and the future World Trade Center memorial in New York would be underwater, he said.

"Is it only terrorists that we're worried about? Is that the only threat that is worth our attention?" Gore asked. "We are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the Earth."

EDIT/END

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/05/BAGROD3V5O1.DTL

[ramapo]

1. Gore remembers that he's an environmentalist!

Nice to hear that he's reclaiming the title having ceded it during his tenure as Veep and candidate.