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SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE
OF THE
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY
Your Majesties,
Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.
I have a purpose
here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have
prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.
Sometimes,
without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and
painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a
wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years
before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a
newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his lifes work, unfairly labeling
him The Merchant of Death because of his invention dynamite. Shaken by
this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause
of peace.
Seven years
later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his
name.
Seven years ago
tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to
me harsh and mistaken if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also
brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh
new ways to serve my purpose.
Unexpectedly,
that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match
this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated
clearly enough that those who hear me will say, We must act.
The
distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life
to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different
futures a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet:
Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both
thou and thy seed may live.
We, the human
species, are confronting a planetary emergency a threat to the survival
of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential
even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the
ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst though not all of its
consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.
However, despite
a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the worlds leaders
are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those
who ignored Adolf Hitlers threat: They go on in strange paradox, decided
only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift,
solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.
So today, we
dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin
shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer.
And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative
concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.
As a result, the
earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it
is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a
second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent
conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is
wrong.
We are what is
wrong, and we must make it right.
Last September
21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists
reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is
falling off a cliff. One study estimated that it could be completely
gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be
presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could
happen in as little as 7 years.
Seven years from
now.
In the last few
months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our
world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive
droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their
livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning
evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented
wildfires have forced a half million people from their homes in one
country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the
government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already
inhabited by people with different cultures, religions, and traditions,
increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific
and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions
have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have
increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly
burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into
extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and
frayed.
We never
intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never
intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his
invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal
when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.
Even in Nobels
time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the
very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, We are
evaporating our coal mines into the air. After performing 10,000
equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earths average
temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere.
Seventy years
later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began
to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.
But unlike most
other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, and odorless --
which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate
out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening
us is unprecedented and we often confuse the unprecedented with the
improbable.
We also find it
hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to
solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient,
whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George
Orwell reminds us: Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid
reality, usually on a battlefield.
In the years
since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between
humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we
have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.
Indeed, without
realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and
the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war
planners: "Mutually assured destruction."
More than two
decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much
debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight
from our atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warnings
here in Oslo helped galvanize the worlds resolve to
halt the nuclear arms race.
Now science is
warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution
that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back
out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent carbon
summer.
As the American
poet Robert Frost wrote, Some say the world will end in fire; some say
in ice. Either, he notes, would suffice.
But neither need
be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.
We must quickly
mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has
previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior
struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th
hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to
sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.
These were not
comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or
imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary
life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we
would not do for ourselves.
No, these were
calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon
the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of
every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat
once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free
people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course,
catastrophically wrong.
Now comes the threat of climate crisis a threat that is real, rising,
imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties
for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near
point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have
the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this:
Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain
imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?
Mahatma Gandhi
awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with
what he called Satyagraha or truth force.
In every land,
the truth once known has the power to set us free.
Truth also has
the power to unite us and bridge the distance between me and we,
creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.
There is an
African proverb that says, If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you
want to go far, go together. We need to go far, quickly.
We must abandon
the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer.
They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without
collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing
globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity
and a new lock-step ism.
That means
adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity
and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses
originating concurrently and spontaneously.
This new
consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all
humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the suns
energy for pennies or invent an engine thats carbon negative may live in
Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and
inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.
When we unite
for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual
energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism
throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome
challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision
to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of
global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the
emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much
of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, It is time we steered
by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.
In the last year
of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2000
people, Carthage, Tennessee. Cordell Hull was described by
Franklin Roosevelt as the Father of the United Nations. He was an
inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate
and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation.
My parents spoke
often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and
admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest
emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that
simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that
moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt were they
alive.
Just as Hulls
generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis
caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in rising
to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both
Chinese and Japanese, crisis is written with two symbols, the first
meaning danger, the second opportunity. By facing and removing the
danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral
authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other
crises that have been too long ignored.
We must
understand the connections between the climate crisis and the
afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these
problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by
making the common rescue of the global environment the central
organizing principle of the world community.
Fifteen years
ago, I made that case at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates
in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty
that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market
in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most
effective opportunities for speedy reductions.
This treaty
should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by
the beginning of 2010 two years sooner than presently contemplated. The
pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace
of the crisis itself.
Heads of state
should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for
addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity
of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months
until the treaty is completed.
We also need a
moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns
coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.
And most
important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax
that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the
laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from
employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest
way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.
The world needs
an alliance especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the
scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps theyve taken in recent
years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate
crisis its first priority.
But the outcome
will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do
enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it
should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters most
of all, my own country that will need to make the boldest moves, or
stand accountable before history for their failure to act.
Both countries
should stop using the others behavior as an excuse for stalemate and
instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global
environment.
These are the
last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright
and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a
solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let
us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again
with moral authority, then these are the hard truths:
The way ahead is
difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible
is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here
and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.
That is just
another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is
possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, Pathwalker,
there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.
We are standing
at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with
a vision of two futures each a palpable possibility and with a prayer
that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between
those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.
The great
Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, One of these days, the
younger generation will come knocking at my door.
The future is
knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation
will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: What were you
thinking; why didnt you act?
Or they will ask
instead: How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully
resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?
We have
everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but
political will is a renewable resource.
So let us renew
it, and say together: We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose
we will rise, and we will act.
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