http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200705/gore.asp The Power of Truth
{excerpted from Al Gore's comments at Sierra's climate forum}
May/June 2007
Former U.S. vice president Al Gore has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to bring attention to the threat of climate change. His 2006 documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, recently won an Academy Award, and his book on the degradation of democracy, The Assault on Reason, will be released in May.
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GLOBAL WARMING is, first and foremost, a challenge to the moral imagination. Nothing in our history or experience prepares us for contemplating, much less acting upon, our new relationship to a planet that has been utterly transformed in a short period of time. Though the population is stabilizing, it has had an effect on our footprint. We've nearly quadrupled the population in less than a hundred years, and that has set the stage for the introduction of technologies that are thousands of times more powerful than any our grandparents had. Along with this, we've had a curious change in philosophy. We think it's OK not to worry about the long-term consequences of our actions.
All the information flowing toward us may be one factor that foreshortens our time horizons, causing us to focus on the near term and instant gratification. So much so, in fact, that when one says, "This will hurt your grandchildren," it's hard to get a response. Recently I read about the newly emerging consensus with regard to the rate of melting of the North Polar ice cap. Under business-as-usual conditions, the ice cap will be completely gone in the summertime within 34 years. First they came for our grandchildren, then they came for our children, and now they're coming for us. This is playing out now. To build a consensus for change, we have to effectively communicate the danger we face. Yet this is difficult. T. S. Eliot wrote, "Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow ... Between the conception / And the creation ... Falls the Shadow." We have to cross that shadow.
Three systems are involved: the value, market, and political systems. Our values are formed in different ways, by our culture, faith traditions, families, and communities. We have achieved a great deal of progress in building a consensus that important values are now at risk and we have to act. Translating that into meaningful change in the market and political systems is the immediate challenge. We've heard from Paul Anderson and others about the importance of putting a price on carbon as a way of assisting the market to make intelligent decisions. That has to be done.
For 14 years, I've proposed that we ought to reduce employment-based taxes down to nearly zero and replace them dollar for dollar with pollution-based taxes, principally on CO2. Think about it: We live in an outsourcing world where competition with low-wage-based developing countries is fierce. We are handicapping ourselves by piling on top of our single biggest disadvantage--our high-wage structure--the full cost of our health, education, and welfare systems, which come in the form of employment-based taxes. These taxes are killing our ability to compete. Why not give employers and employees a break and encourage more jobs while discouraging the destruction of the planet?
With regard to our political system, it now devalues knowledge and facts. It didn't used to. What was special about the America we were born into was that it still embodied the highest values of the Enlightenment. We grew up in a world where truth mattered, and when new ideas came from people like Stephen Schneider, Dan Reicher, Paul Anderson, and Vinod Khosla, the merit of the ideas was judged against the rule of reason. Our political system, never perfect, nevertheless paid more attention to such things. The political system doesn't act that way anymore. As in the feudal era, wealth and power now regularly trump knowledge, facts, and reason. The diminished role of reason in the public marketplace of ideas has an impact--from the auto industry to the upcoming presidential campaigns. The joke about the auto industry is that after the Clean Air Act was amended in 1970, every Japanese auto company hired 100 new engineers, and every U.S. company hired 100 new lawyers. It's not too far from the truth, unfortunately.
I have a political idea that is scalable, to use an important concept properly underscored and highlighted by the Sierra Club's roundtable. We ought to have a mass movement around a carbon freeze; it's scalable from the individual level to the company, community, state, and national level. Gandhi used the word satyagraha, or "truth force." In American politics, there have been soaring moments throughout our history when the truth has swept aside entrenched power. In the darkest hours of our Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." We need once again to disenthrall ourselves.
ON THE WEB The San Francisco-based Alliance for Climate Protection is a new initiative from Al Gore. He calls it "an effort of mass persuasion" to motivate the public, develop political consensus, and implement solutions.
Visit:
http://www.allianceforclimateprotection.org~~~~
And Al Gore most certainly speaks truth. He speaks truth about the monumental global task ahead of us that transcends any challenge we have ever faced as a species. He speaks truth about the state of our political system that we have allowed to evolve to that which was before our American Revolution. A system that stifles ideas, truth, reason, and Democratic growth in search of a false choice.
In his words I do not see a double edged meaning as others wish to see to appease their own political desires. I see a sincere dedicated man who truly means what he is saying and believes that only a people informed and armed with knowledge can bring back the reason and truth that has been lost through our own neglect of the very systems that have sustained this nation for so long. And that can only happen if we join in this fight as we must.
I am so grateful to him and all of those who now stand up for our planet in the face of ignorance and greed, because in this century, doing so will be the one act that transcends all noble actions. And every one of us must now be standing. We must take a hold of the hand of our sick planet that is slipping from our grasp and hold firmly and never let her go.
We must fight with all of our might to save this our only home. Only through mobilization of the masses to see the truth through facts and to once again be revived with the spirit that birthed this nation can we then see innovations that will light the way to a better future. Only through a moral awakening is there hope. This is Al Gore's vision and mission and the vision and mission of so many including myself, and one that is attainable if we but only get beyond the shadows.
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