My Conversation (question) w/Al Gore/Boston adv film screening

[katty]

more: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/27/12158/2010

My Conversation with Al Gore
by dnta

Thu Apr 27, 2006 at 09:15:08 AM PDT
I had a conversation with Al Gore two nights ago. It was a conversation about conservation: a conservation conversation, if you will. (Try saying that 3 times fast). Seriously. Okay, I asked a question and he answered it, at length, but that still qualifies as a conversation, doesn't it?

I was an invited guest at an advance screening in Boston Tuesday night of "An Inconvenient Truth", Gore's forthcoming documentary on global warming, and after the film Gore came into the theater to discuss the issues it raised and answer questions from the audience of 100 or so local environmentalists, activists, and other community leaders from the Boston area. I was privileged to be able to address him with a question that I've been turning over in my brain for awhile, and he offered a wonderfully serious and thoughtful response. Luckily, I had a recorder, so I can provide a full transcript, on the flip side.

dnta's diary :: ::
Here's what I asked, after he had been discussing the political and personal aspects of responding to global warming:


Q: Just along the lines of what you were just saying, I was thinking about recycling and how for year there was the same kind of urgency or sense of importance to the notion of recycling, but really the average person was not going to be bothered to make the extra effort to take the renewables or the recyclables to the special place where they had to go. But once government stepped in and mandated first of all returnable bottles and deposits and then came up with the local recycling collection along with your trash and separate the glass and the plastic and so forth, it became a lot more convenient to act according to your conscience. So I'm concerned realistically, people are not going to stop driving SUVs and they're not going to cut back on a lot of the things we do out of habit as individuals but what can we do as a government and as a society to make it easier and more convenient for people to comply with their own conscience.

And here was Gore's response:


AG: Well, that's what The Kyoto Protocol is all about and the legislation here in the United States that would be passed to implement Kyoto would change everything. If we had a limit on carbon dioxide emissions and a system of trading emissions rights among different companies and sources instantly there would be a massive change and capital would be allocated to the places where we could get the fastest reductions. That's being done in the European Union. It hasn't been going on long but it's already having a big effect. And the minute the United States joins Kyoto or more likely a rapidly negotiated successor to Kyoto then every member of every board of directors on the planet, every corporate board of directors would have a legal obligation to insist on reductions of CO2 because the only way to protect shareholder value would be to manage CO2 reductions. And that is the way to get the market system working for us.

Now there's a full range of policies beyond that that involve legislation that in the current political environment is seen as completely unrealistic. And actually the maximum, that is imaginable as politically possible today in terms of these measures in the government still falls short of the minimum that would really be effective.

But all that means is that we have to expand the limits of the imaginable. And we can. In 1941 it was unimaginable that the United States could build a 1000 airplanes. In 1943 it was pretty easy.

And we have two gears in our democracy. Slow and lightning. And we have to build public opinion and the sense of urgency in the public's mind about the reality of this crisis to the point where the elected officials in both parties switch gears and start moving quickly and competing with one other to offer genuinely meaningful solutions.



Personally, I was very pleased with this answer, even if it didn't offer too many specifics about legislative options to spur public conservation, as he clearly painted the outline of the most imperative steps needed, starting with ratifying and complying with Kyoto and beyond. I'd like nothing more to explore the implications of that policy in greater depth: exactly how might industry begin to respond to the Kyoto emissions standards, and how might other legislative and regulatory initiatives complement those with programs that engage consumers and small businesses and communities? This is such a huge topic, I'm afraid that I share Gore's perception that many people run away from it because it's too overwhelming to wrap their brains around. But it's great to hear such a positive, can-do perspective in the midst of the doomsday scenarios that the film unavoidably portrays.

Gore had quite a bit more to say, both in the film and in person. I must say, while I was already a strong Al Gore fan, his presentation and speeches at this event really knocked me over.

[glitch]

1. Well done, both of you. nt

[ThomWV]

2. Imagine A President Going Back To Kyoto. Imagine President Gore

I find it very easy and pleasing to do.

[Squeech]

3. Good point

America can do it, if we want it. As he mentioned, the war effort. I would have talked about the space program first. But we've accomplished a boatload of monumentally heroic jobs in our history: digging the canals, laying rails across the continent, building Hoover Dam, rural electrification, the Interstate Highway System, landing a man on the moon.

What stands between us and a sustainable economy is as much a matter of will as anything technical.

We need to convince our countrymen that being wasteful doesn't make you look strong or powerful or wealthy, it actually makes you look ridiculous.