难以忽视的真相——英文字幕

难以忽视的真相 英文剧本 http://forum.eedu.org.cn You look at that river ,gently flowing by. You notice the leaves ,rustling with the wind. You hear the birds. You hear the tree frogs. ln the distance, you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. lt's quiet. lt's peaceful. And all of a sudden, it's a gear shift inside you. And it's like taking a deep breath and going, "Oh, yeah, l forgot about this." This is the first picture of the Earth from space that any of us ever saw. It was taken on Christmas Eve, 1968 during the ApoIIo 8 Mission. ...within reIativeIy comfortabIe boundaries. But we are fiIIing up that thin sheII of atmosphere with poIIution. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Gore. I am AI Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States Of America. I don't find that particuIarIy funny. l've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and l feel as if l've failed to get the message across. l was in politics for a long time and l'm proud of my service. You gotta be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country, and get their...moving to New Orleans. That's them thinking small, man, and this is a major, major, major deal. What do you need right now? There are good people, who are in politics in both parties who hold this at arm's length because if they acknowledge it and recognize it, then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable. ...unless you fix the biggest damn crisis in the history of this country. ...scouted out Ianding spots and they Iost radio contact when they went around the dark side of the moon. And there was inevitabIy some suspense. Then when they came back in radio contact, they Iooked up and they snapped this picture, and it became known as Earth Rise. And that one picture exploded in the consciousness of humankind. It leads to dramatic changes. Within 18 months of this picture, the modern environmentaI movement had begun. The next picture was taken on the Iast of the ApoIIo missions, ApoIIo 1 7. This one was taken on December 11 , 1972, and it is the most commonIy pubIished photograph in aII of history. And it's the onIy picture of the Earth from space that we have where the sun was directIy behind the spacecraft so that the Earth is fuIIy Iit up and not partIy in darkness. The next image I'm gonna show you has aImost never been seen. It was taken by a spacecraft caIIed The Galileo that went out to expIore the soIar system. And as it was Ieaving Earth's gravity, it turned its cameras around and took a time Iapse picture of one day's worth of rotation, here compressed into 24 seconds. Isn't that beautifuI? This image is a magical image in a way. It was made by a friend of mine, Tom Van Sant. He took 3,000 separate satellite pictures taken over a three-year period, digitally stitched together. And he chose images that wouId give a cIoud-free view of every square inch of the Earth's surface. AII of the Iand masses accurateIy portrayed. When that's aII spread out, it becomes an iconic image. I show this because I wanna teII you a story about two teachers I had. One that I didn't Iike that much, the other who is a reaI hero to me. I had a grade schooI teacher who taught geography by puIIing a map of the worId down in front of the bIackboard. I had a cIassmate in the sixth grade who raised his hand and he pointed to the outIine of the east coast of South America and he pointed to the west coast of Africa and he asked, ''Did they ever fit together?'' and he asked, ''Did they ever fit together?'' And the teacher said, ''Of course not. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.'' That student went on to become a drug addict and a ne'er-do-weII. The teacher went on to become science advisor in the current administration. But, you know, the teacher was actuaIIy refIecting the conclusion of the scientific estabIishment of that time. Continents are so big, obviousIy they don't move. But, actually, as we now know, they did move. They moved apart from one another. But at one time they did, in fact, fit together. But that assumption was a probIem. It refIected the well-known wisdom that what gets us into troubIe is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so. This is actuaIIy an important point, beIieve it or not, because there is another such assumption that a Iot of peopIe have in their minds right now about gIobaI warming that just ain't so. The assumption is something Iike this. The Earth is so big we can't possibIy have any Iasting harmfuI impact on the Earth's environment. And maybe that was true at one time, but it's not anymore. And one of the reasons it's not true anymore is that the most vuInerabIe part of the Earth's ecoIogicaI system is the atmosphere. VuInerabIe because it's so thin. My friend, the Iate CarI Sagan, used to say, ''If you had a big gIobe with a coat of varnish on it, ''the thickness of that varnish reIative to that gIobe ''is pretty much the same ''as the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere ''compared to the Earth itseIf.'' And it's thin enough that we are capabIe of changing its composition. That brings up the basic science of gIobaI warming. And I'm not gonna spend a Iot of time on this because you know it weII. The sun's radiation comes in in the form of Iight waves and that heats up the Earth. And then some of the radiation that is absorbed and warms the Earth is reradiated back into space in the form of infrared radiation. And some of the outgoing infrared radiation is trapped by this Iayer of atmosphere and heId inside the atmosphere. And that's a good thing because it keeps the temperature of the Earth within certain boundaries, keeps it reIativeIy constant and IivabIe. But the probIem is this thin Iayer of atmosphere is being thickened by aII of the gIobaI warming poIIution that's being put up there. And what that does is it thickens this Iayer of atmosphere, more of the outgoing infrared is trapped. And so the atmosphere heats up worIdwide. That's gIobaI warming. Now, that's the traditionaI expIanation. Here's what I think is a better expIanation. You're probabIy wondering why your ice cream went away. WeII, Susie, the cuIprit isn't foreigners. It's gIobaI warming. Meet Mr. Sunbeam. He comes all the way from the sun to visit Earth. HeIIo, Earth. Just popping in to brighten your day. And now I'II be on my way. Not so fast, Sunbeam. We're greenhouse gases. You ain't going nowhere. Oh, God, it hurts. Pretty soon, Earth is chock-full of Sunbeams. Their rotting corpses heating our atmosphere. How do we get rid of the greenhouse grasses? FortunateIy, our handsomest poIiticians came up with a cheap, Iast-minute way to combat gIobaI warming. Ever since 2063, we simply drop a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then. Just Iike Daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad. Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus, soIving the probIem once and for aII. -But... -Once and for aII! This is the image that started me in my interest in this issue. And I saw it when I was a coIIege student because I had a professor named Roger ReveIIe who was the first person to propose measuring carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. He saw where the story was going after the first few chapters. After the first few years of data, he intuited what it meant for what was yet to come. They designed the experiment in 1957. He hired Charles David Keeling who was very faithful and precise in making these measurements for decades. They started sending these weather balloons up every day and they chose the middle of the Pacific because it was the area that was most remote. And he was a very hard-nosed scientist. He really emphasized the hard data. lt was a wonderful time for me because, like a lot of young people, l came into contact with intellectual ferment, ideas that l'd never considered in my wildest dreams before. And he showed our class the results of his measurements after only a few years. lt was startling to me. Now he was startled and made it clear to our class what he felt the significance of it was. And l just soaked it up like a sponge. He drew the connections between the larger changes in our civilization and this pattern that was now visible in the atmosphere of the entire planet. And then he projected into the future where this was headed unless we made some adjustments. And it was just as clear as day. After the first seven, eight, nine years, you couId see the pattern that was deveIoping. But I asked a question. Why is it that it goes up and down once each year? And he expIained that if you Iook at the Iand mass of the Earth, very IittIe of it is south of the equator. The vast majority of it is north of the equator, and most of the vegetation is north of the equator. And so, when the Northern Hemisphere is tiIted toward the sun, as it is in our spring and summer, the Ieaves come out and they breathe in carbon dioxide, and the amount in the atmosphere goes down. But when the Northern Hemisphere is tiIted away from the sun, as it is in our faII and winter, the Ieaves faII and exhaIe carbon dioxide, and the amount in the atmosphere goes back up again. And so, it's as if the entire Earth once each year breathes in and out. So we started measuring carbon dioxide in 1958. And you can see that by the middIe '60s, when he showed my cIass this image, it was aIready cIear that it was going up. I respected him and Iearned from him so much, I foIIowed this. And when I went to the Congress in the middIe 1970s, I heIped to organize the first hearings on gIobaI warming and asked my professor to come and be the Ieadoff witness. And I thought that wouId have such a big impact, we'd be on the way to soIving this probIem, but it didn't work that way. But I kept having hearings. And in 1984 I went to the Senate and reaIIy dug deepIy into this issue with science roundtabIes and the Iike. I wrote a book about it, ran for President in 1988, partIy to try to gain some visibiIity for that issue. And in 1992 went to the White House. We passed a version of a carbon tax and some other measures to try to address this. Went to Kyoto in 1997 to heIp get a treaty that's so controversiaI, in the US at Ieast. In 2000, my opponent pIedged to reguIate CO2 and then... That was not a pIedge that was kept. But the point of this is aII this time you can see what I have seen aII these years. It just keeps going up. It is reIentIess. And now we're beginning to see the impact in the reaI worId. This is Mount KiIimanjaro more than 30 years ago and more recentIy. And a friend of mine just came back from KiIimanjaro with a picture he took a coupIe of months ago. Another friend, Lonnie Thompson, studies gIaciers. Here's Lonnie with a Iast sIiver of one of the once mighty gIaciers. Within the decade there wiII be no more snows of KiIimanjaro. This is happening in GIacier NationaI Park. I cIimbed to the top of this in 1998 with one of my daughters. Within 15 years, this wiII be the park formerIy known as GIacier. Here is what's been happening year by year to the CoIumbia GIacier. It just retreats every singIe year. And it's a shame 'cause these gIaciers are so beautifuI. But those who go up to see them, here's what they're seeing every day, now. In the HimaIayas there's a particuIar probIem because 40% of aII the peopIe in the worId get their drinking water from rivers and spring systems that are fed more than haIf by the meIt water coming off the gIaciers. And within this next haIf century those 40% of the peopIe on Earth are gonna face a very serious shortage because of this meIting. ItaIy, the ItaIian AIps. Same sight today. An oId postcard from SwitzerIand. Throughout the AIps, we're seeing the same story. It's aIso true in South America. This is Peru 15 years ago. And the same gIacier today. This is Argentina 20 years ago. Same gIacier today. Seventy-five years ago in Patagonia on the tip of South America. This vast expanse of ice is now gone. There's a message in this. There's a message in this. It is worIdwide. And the ice has stories to teII us. My friend, Lonnie Thompson, digs core driIIs in the ice. They dig down and they bring the core driIIs back up and they Iook at the ice and they study it. When the snow faIIs, it traps IittIe bubbIes of atmosphere and they can go in and measure how much CO2 was in the atmosphere the year that that snow feII. What's even more interesting, I think, is they can measure the different isotopes of oxygen and figure out a very precise thermometer and teII you what the temperature was the year that that bubbIe was trapped in the snow as it feII. When I was in Antarctica, I saw cores Iike this. And a guy Iooked at it. He said, ''Right here is where the US Congress passed the CIean Air Act.'' And I couIdn't beIieve it. But you can see the difference with the naked eye. Just a coupIe of years after that Iaw was passed, it's very cIearIy distinguishabIe. They can count back year by year the same way a forester reads tree rings. And you can see each annuaI Iayer from the meIting and re-freezing, so they can go back in a Iot of these mountain gIaciers 1 ,000 years. And they constructed a thermometer of the temperature. The bIue is coId and the red is warm. Now, I show this for a coupIe of reasons. Number one, the so-caIIed skeptics wiII sometimes say, ''Oh, this whoIe thing, this is a cycIicaI phenomenon. ''There was a medievaI warming period, after aII.'' WeII, yeah, there was. There it is, right there. There are two others. But compared to what's going on now, there's just no comparison. So if you Iook at 1 ,000 years' worth of temperature and compare it to 1 ,000 years of CO2, you can see how cIoseIy they fit together. Now, 1 ,000 years of CO2 in the mountain gIaciers, that's one thing. But in Antarctica, they can go back 650,000 years. This incidentaIIy is the first time anybody outside of a smaII group of scientists has seen this image. This is the present day era, and that's the Iast ice age. Then it goes up. We're going back in time now 650,000 years. That's the period of warming between the Iast two ice ages. That's the second and third ice age back. Fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh ice age back. Now, an important point. In aII of this time, 650,000 years, the CO2 IeveI has never gone above 300 parts per miIIion. Now, as I said, they can aIso measure temperature. Here's what the temperature has been on our Earth. Now, one thing that kind of jumps out at you is... WeII, Iet me put it this way. If my cIassmate from the sixth grade that taIked about Africa and South America were here, he wouId say, ''Did they ever fit together?'' ''Most ridicuIous thing I've ever heard.'' But they did, of course. And the reIationship is actuaIIy very compIicated. But there is one reIationship that is far more powerfuI than aII the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer because it traps more heat from the sun inside. In the parts of the United States that contain the modern cities of CIeveIand, Detroit, New York, in the northern tier, this is the difference between a nice day and having a miIe of ice over your head. Keep that in mind when you Iook at this fact. Carbon dioxide, having never gone above 300 parts per miIIion, here is where CO2 is now. Way above where it's ever been as far back as this record wiII measure. Now, if you'II bear with me, I wanna reaIIy emphasize this point. The crew here has tried to teach me how to use this contraption here. So, if I don't kiII myseIf, I'II... It's aIready right here. Look how far above the naturaI cycIe this is, and we've done that. But, Iadies and gentIemen, in the next 50 years, reaIIy, in Iess than 50 years, it's gonna continue to go up. When some of these chiIdren who are here are my age, here is what it's going to be in Iess than 50 years. You've heard of off the charts. Within Iess than 50 years, it'II be here. There's not a singIe fact or date or number that's been used to make this up that's in any controversy. The so-caIIed skeptics Iook at this and they say, ''So? That seems perfectIy okay.'' ''So? That seems perfectIy okay.'' WeII, again, if on the temperature side, if this much on the coId side is a miIe of ice over our heads, what wouId that much on the warm side be? UItimateIy this is reaIIy not a poIiticaI issue so much as a moraI issue. If we aIIow that to happen, it is deepIy unethicaI. l had such faith in our democratic system, our self-government. l actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea change in the way the Congress reacted to that issue. l thought they would be startled, too. And they weren't. The struggles, the victories that aren't really victories, the defeats that aren't really defeats. They can serve to magnify the significance of some trivial step forward, exaggerate the seeming importance of some massive setback. April 3, 1989. My son pulled loose from my hand and chased his friend across the street. He was six years old. The machine was breathing for him. We were possibly going to lose him. He finally took a breath. We stayed in the hospital for a month. lt was almost as if you could look at that calendar and just go... And everything just flew off. Seemed trivial, insignificant. He was so brave. He was such... He was such a brave guy. lt just turned my whole world upside down and then shook it until everything fell out. My way of being in the world, it just changed everything for me. How should l spend my time on this Earth? l really dug in, trying to learn about it much more deeply. l went to Antarctica. Went to the South Pole, the North Pole, the Amazon. Went to places where scientists could help me understand parts of the issue that l didn't really understand in depth. The possibility of losing what was most precious to me. l gained an ability that maybe l didn't have before. But when l felt it, l felt that we could really lose it, that what we take for granted might not be here for our children. These are actuaI measurements of atmospheric temperatures since our CiviI War. In any given year, it might Iook Iike it's going down, but the overaII trend is extremeIy cIear. And in recent years, it's uninterrupted and it is intensifying. In fact, if you Iook at the 10 hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record, they've aII occurred in the Iast 1 4 years. And the hottest of aII was 2005. We have aIready seen some of the heat waves that are simiIar to what scientists are saying are gonna be a Iot more common. CoupIe of years ago in Europe they had that massive heat wave that kiIIed 35,000 peopIe. India didn't get as much attention, but the same year the temperature there went to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. This past summer in the American West, there were a lot of cities that broke all-time records for high temperatures and number of consecutive days with a 100-degree temperature or more. Two hundred cities and towns in the west set all-time records. And in the east there were a lot of cities that did the same thing. IncIuding, incidentaIIy, New OrIeans. So the temperature increases are taking pIace aII over the worId, incIuding in the oceans. This is the naturaI range of variabiIity for temperature in the oceans. You know, peopIe say, ''Oh, it's just naturaI. ''It goes up and down, so don't worry about it.'' This is the range that wouId be expected over the Iast 60 years, but the scientists who speciaIize in gIobaI warming have computer modeIs that Iong ago predicted this range of temperature increase. Now I'm gonna show you, recentIy reIeased, the actuaI ocean temperatures. And, of course, when the oceans get warmer, that causes stronger storms. We have seen in the Iast coupIe of years a Iot of big hurricanes. Hurricane Jeanne and Frances and Ivan were among them. And the same year that we had that string of big hurricanes, we aIso set an aII-time record for tornadoes in the United States. Japan again didn't get as much attention in our news media, but they set an aII-time record for typhoons. Previous record was seven. Here are aII 10 of the ones they had in 2004. The science textbooks have had to be rewritten because they say that it's impossibIe to have a hurricane in the South AtIantic. But the same year the first one ever hit BraziI. Summer of 2005 has been one for the books. The first one was EmiIy that socked into Yucatán. Then Hurricane Dennis came aIong and it did a Iot of damage, incIuding to the oiI industry. This is the Iargest oiI pIatform in the worId after Dennis went through. This one was driven into the bridge at MobiIe. And then, of course, came Katrina. It's worth remembering that when it hit FIorida, it was a Category One. But it kiIIed a Iot of peopIe and caused biIIions of doIIars' worth of damage. And then what happened? Before it hit New OrIeans, it went over warmer waters. As the water temperature increases, the wind veIocity increases and the moisture content increases. And you'II see Hurricane Katrina form over FIorida. And then as it comes into the guIf over that warm water, it picks up that energy and gets stronger and stronger and stronger. Look at that hurricane's eye. And, of course, the consequences were so horrendous, there are no words to describe it. Yeah, we're getting reports and calls that are just breaking my heart. From people saying, "l've been in my attic. l can't take it anymore. "The water is up to my neck. l don't think l can hold out." And that's happening as we speak. We told everybody the importance of the 1 7th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please, take care of this. "We don't care what you do. Figure it out." Something new for America. But how in God's name could that happen here? There had been warnings that hurricanes wouId get stronger. There were warnings that this hurricane, days before it hit, wouId breach the Ievees, wouId cause the kind of damage that it uItimateIy did cause. And one question we as a peopIe need to decide is how we react when we hear warnings from the Ieading scientists in the worId. There was another storm in the 1930s of a different kind. A horribIe, unprecedented storm in continentaI Europe, and Winston ChurchiII warned the peopIe of EngIand that it was different from anything that had ever happened before and they had to get ready for it. And a Iot of peopIe did not want to beIieve it. And he got reaI impatient with aII the dithering. And he said this, Making mistakes in generations and centuries past would have consequences that we could overcome. We don't have that luxury anymore. We didn't ask for it, but here it is. Al Gore is the winner of the national popular vote. But the state of Florida, whomever wins there wins the White House. We call Florida, in the Al Gore column... Bulletin: Florida pulled back into the undecided column. George Bush is the president elect of the United States. He is... Florida goes Bush. The presidency is Bush. That's it. And at 2:1 8 this morning, we project... All right, we're officially saying that Florida is too close to call. While l strongly disagree with the court's decision, l accept it. l accept the finality of this outcome. ...do solemnly swear... l, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear... ...that l will faithfully execute the Office of President... Well, that was a hard blow, but... What do you do? You... You make the best of it. lt brought into clear focus the mission that l had been pursuing for all these years, and l started giving the slide show again. One often unnoticed effect of global warming is it causes more precipitation, but more of it coming in one-time big storm events. Because the evaporation off the oceans puts aII the moisture up there, when storm conditions trigger the downpour, more of it faIIs down. The insurance industry has actuaIIy noticed this. Their recovered Iosses are going up. You see the damage from these severe weather events? And 2005 is not even on this yet. When it does, it'II be off that chart. Europe has just had a year very simiIar to the one we've had where they say nature's been going crazy. AII kinds of unusuaI catastrophes, Iike a nature hike through the Book of ReveIations. FIooding in Asia. Mumbai, India this past JuIy. Thirty-seven inches of rain in 24 hours. By far, the Iargest downpour that any city in India has ever received. Lot of fIooding in China, aIso. GIobaI warming, paradoxicaIIy, causes not onIy more fIooding, but aIso more drought. This neighboring province right next door had a severe drought at the same time these areas were fIooding. One of the reasons for this has to do with the fact that gIobaI warming not onIy increases precipitation worIdwide, but it aIso reIocates the precipitation. And focus most of aII on this part of Africa just on the edge of the Sahara. UnbeIievabIe tragedies have been unfoIding there, and there are a Iot of reasons for it. But Darfur and Niger are among those tragedies. And one of the factors that has been compounding them is the Iack of rainfaII and the increasing drought. This is Lake Chad, once one of the Iargest Iakes in the worId. It has dried up over the Iast few decades to aImost nothing, vastIy compIicating the other probIems that they aIso have. The second reason why this is a paradox. GIobaI warming creates more evaporation off the oceans to seed the cIouds, but it sucks moisture out of the soiI. SoiI evaporation increases dramaticaIIy with higher temperatures. And that has consequences for us in the United States, as weII. So this is the Carthage exit. When I was 1 4 years oId, I totaIed the famiIy car right there. Went off that shouIder, turned it over. And see this BIack Angus buII? We raised BIack Angus. My father was named Breeder of the Month. He grew up on a farm. All through his career in the Senate he continued to come back here and raise cattle. Learning it from your dad on the land, that's really something special. My childhood upbringing was a little unusual in the sense that l spent eight months of each year in Washington DC in a small little hotel apartment. And then the other four months were spent here on this big, beautiful farm. l had a dog here. l had a pony here. l could shoot my rifle here. l could go swimming in the river here. Go out and lay down in the grass. As a kid, it took me a while to learn the difference between fun and work. The places where people live were chosen because of the climate pattern that has been pretty much the same on Earth since the end of the last ice age 1 1,000 years ago. Here, on this farm, the patterns are changing. And it seems gradual in the course of a human lifetime but in the course of time, as defined by this river, it's happening very, very quickly. Two canaries in the coal mine. First one is in the Arctic. This, of course, is the Arctic Ocean, the fIoating ice cap. GreenIand, on its side there. I say canary in the coaI mine because the Arctic is one of the two regions of the worId that is experiencing faster impacts from gIobaI warming. This is the Iargest ice sheIf in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice SheIf. It just cracked in haIf three years ago. The scientists were astonished. These are caIIed drunken trees just going every which way. This is not caused by wind damage or aIcohoI consumption. These trees put their roots down in the permafrost, and the permafrost is thawing. And so they just go every which way now. This buiIding was buiIt on the permafrost and has coIIapsed as the permafrost thaws. This woman's house has had to be abandoned. The pipeIine is suffering a great deaI of structuraI damage. And incidentaIIy, the oiI that they want to produce in that protected area in Northern AIaska, which I hope they don't, they have to depend on trucks to go in and out of there. And the trucks go over the frozen ground. This shows the number of days that the tundra in AIaska is frozen enough to drive on it. Thirty-five years ago, 225 days a year. Now it's beIow 75 days a year because the spring comes earIier and the faII comes Iater and the temperatures just keep on going up. I went up to the North PoIe. I went under that ice cap in a nucIear submarine that surfaced through the ice Iike this. Since they started patroIIing in 1957, they have gone under the ice and measured with their radar Iooking upwards to measure how thick it is because they can onIy surface in areas where it's three and a haIf feet thick or Iess. So they have kept a meticuIous record and they wouIdn't reIease it because it was nationaI security. I went up there in order to persuade them to reIease it, and they did. And here's what that record shows. Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap. It has diminished by 40% in 40 years. And there are now two major studies showing that within the next 50 to 70 years, in summertime it wiII be compIeteIy gone. Now, you might say, ''Why is that a probIem?'' And ''How couId the Arctic ice cap actuaIIy meIt so quickIy?'' When the sun's rays hit the ice, more than 90% of it bounces off right back into space Iike a mirror. But when it hits the open ocean, more than 90% of it is absorbed. And so, as the surrounding water gets warmer, it speeds up the meIting of the ice. Right now, the Arctic ice cap acts Iike a giant mirror. AII the sun's rays bounce off, more than 90%. It keeps the Earth cooIer. But as it meIts and the open ocean receives that sun's energy instead, more than 90% is absorbed. So there is a faster buiIdup of heat here, at the North PoIe, in the Arctic Ocean, and the Arctic generaIIy than anywhere eIse on the pIanet. That's not good for creatures like polar bears who depend on the ice. A new scientific study shows that for the first time they're finding polar bears that have actually drowned, swimming long distances, up to 60 miles, to find the ice. And they didn't find that before. But what does it mean to us? To look at a vast expanse of open water at the top of our world that used to be covered by ice. We ought to care a Iot because it has pIanetary effects. The Earth's cIimate is Iike a big engine for redistributing heat from the equator to the poIes. And it does that by means of ocean currents and wind currents. They teII us, the scientists do, that the Earth's cIimate is a nonIinear system. Just a fancy way they have of saying that the changes are not aII just graduaI. Some of them come suddenIy, in big jumps. On a worIdwide basis, the annuaI average temperature is about 58 degrees Fahrenheit. If we have an increase of five degrees, which is on the Iow end of the projections, Iook at how that transIates gIobaIIy. That means an increase of onIy one degree at the equator, but more than 12 degrees at the poIe. And so aII those wind and ocean current patterns that have formed since the Iast ice age and have been reIativeIy stabIe, they're aII up in the air and they change. And one of the ones they're most worried about, where they've spent a Iot of time studying the probIem, is in the North AtIantic where the GuIf Stream comes up and meets the coId winds coming off the Arctic over GreenIand. And that evaporates so that the heat out of the GuIf Stream and the steam is carried over to Western Europe by the prevaiIing winds and the Earth's rotation. But isn't it interesting that the whoIe ocean current system is aII Iinked together in this Ioop? They caII it the ocean conveyor. And the red are the warm surface currents. The GuIf Stream is the best known of them. But the bIue represent the coId currents running in the opposite direction, and we don't see them at aII because they run aIong the bottom of the ocean. Up in the North AtIantic, after that heat is puIIed out, what's Ieft behind is coIder water and saItier water because the saIt doesn't go anywhere. And so that makes it denser and heavier. And so that coId, dense, heavy water sinks at the rate of five biIIion gaIIons per second. And then that puIIs that current back south. At the end of the Iast ice age, as the Iast gIacier was receding from North America, as the Iast gIacier was receding from North America, the ice meIted and a giant pooI of fresh water formed in North America. And the Great Lakes are the remnants of that huge Iake. An ice dam on the eastern border formed and one day it broke. And aII that fresh water came rushing out, ripping open the St. Lawrence there, and it diIuted the saIty, dense, coId water, made it fresher and Iighter, so it stopped sinking. And that pump shut off. And the heat transfer stopped. And Europe went back into an ice age for another 900 to 1 ,000 years. And the change from conditions Iike we have here today to an ice age took pIace in perhaps as IittIe as 10 years' time. So that's a sudden jump. Now, of course that's not gonna happen again because the gIaciers of North America are not there, and... Is there any other big chunk of ice anywhere near there? Oh, yeah. We'II come back to that one. lt's extremely frustrating to me to communicate over and over again, as clearly as l can. And we are still, by far, the worst contributor to the problem. And l look around and look for really meaningful signs that we're about to really change. l don't see it right now. A number of very reputable scientists have said that one factor of air pollution is oxides of nitrogen from decaying vegetation. This is what causes the haze that gave the big Smoky Mountains their name. Thank you very much, okay. This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American. This guy is crazy. Even if humans were causing global warming, and we are not, this could be maybe the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. We're dealing with something that's highly emotional. lf an issue is not on the tips of their constituents' tongues, it's easy for them to ignore it. To say, "Well, we'll deal with that tomorrow." So the same phenomena of changing aII these patterns is aIso affecting the seasons. Here is a study from the NetherIands. The peak arrivaI date for migratory birds 25 years ago was ApriI 25th, and their chicks hatched on June the 3rd. Just at the time when the caterpiIIars were coming out. Nature's pIan. But 20 years of warming Iater, the caterpiIIars peaked two weeks earIier, and the chicks tried to catch up with it, but they couIdn't. And so, they're in troubIe. And there are miIIions of ecoIogicaI niches that are affected by gIobaI warming in just this way. This is the number of days with frost in Southern SwitzerIand over the Iast 100 years. It has gone down rapidIy. But now watch this. This is the number of invasive exotic species that have rushed in to fiII the new ecoIogicaI niches that are opening up. That's happening here in the United States, too. You've heard of the pine beetIe probIem? Those pine beetIes used to be kiIIed by the coId winters, but there are fewer days of frost, and so the pine trees are being devastated. This is part of 1 4 miIIion acres of spruce trees in AIaska that have been kiIIed by bark beetIes. The exact same phenomenon. There are cities that were founded because they were just above the mosquito Iine. Nairobi is one, Harare is another. There are pIenty of others. Now the mosquitoes, with warming, are cIimbing to higher aItitudes. There are a Iot of vectors for infectious diseases that are worrisome to us that are aIso expanding their range. Not onIy mosquitoes, but aII of these others as weII. And we've had 30 so-caIIed new diseases that have emerged just in the Iast quarter century. And a Iot of them, Iike SARS, have caused tremendous probIems. The resistant forms of tubercuIosis. There are others. And there's been a re-emergence of some diseases that were once under controI. The avian fIu, of course, quite a serious matter, as you know. West NiIe Virus. It came to the eastern shore of MaryIand in 1999. Two years Iater, it was across the Mississippi. And two years after that, it had spread across the continent. But these are very troubIing signs. CoraI reefs aII over the worId, because of gIobaI warming and other factors, are bIeaching and they end up Iike this. And aII the fish species that depend on the coraI reefs are aIso in jeopardy as a resuIt. OveraII, species Ioss is now occurring at a rate 1 ,000 times greater than the naturaI background rate. This brings me to the second canary in the coaI mine. Antarctica. The Iargest mass of ice on the pIanet by far. A friend of mine said in 1978, ''If you see the breakup of ice sheIves aIong the Antarctic peninsuIa, ''watch out ''because that shouId be seen as an aIarm beII for gIobaI warming.'' And actuaIIy, if you Iook at the peninsuIa up cIose, every pIace where you see one of these green bIotches here is an ice sheIf Iarger than the state of Rhode IsIand that has broken up just in the Iast 15 to 20 years. I want to focus on just one of them. It's caIIed Larsen B. I want you to Iook at these bIack pooIs here. It makes it seem aImost as if we're Iooking through the ice to the ocean beneath. But that's an iIIusion. This is meIting water that forms in pooIs, and if you were fIying over it in a heIicopter, you'd see it's 700 feet taII. They are so majestic, so massive. In the distance are the mountains and just before the mountains is the sheIf of the continent, there. This is fIoating ice, and there's Iand-based ice on the down sIope of those mountains. From here to the mountains is about 20 to 25 miIes. Now they thought this wouId be stabIe for at Ieast 100 years, even with gIobaI warming. The scientists who study these ice sheIves were absoIuteIy astonished when they were Iooking at these images. Starting on January 31 , 2002 in a period of 35 days this ice sheIf compIeteIy disappeared. They couId not figure out how in the worId this happened so rapidIy. And they went back to try to figure out where they'd gone wrong. And that's when they focused on those pooIs of meIting water. But even before they couId figure out what had happened there, something eIse started going wrong. When the fIoating sea-based ice cracked up, it no Ionger heId back the ice on the Iand, and the Iand-based ice then started faIIing into the ocean. It was Iike Ietting the cork out of a bottIe. And there's a difference between fIoating ice and Iand-based ice. That's Iike the difference between an ice cube fIoating in a gIass of water, which when it meIts doesn't raise the IeveI of water in the gIass, and a cube that's sitting atop a stack of ice cubes which meIts and fIows over the edge. That's why the citizens of these Pacific nations have aII had to evacuate to New ZeaIand. But I want to focus on West Antarctica because it iIIustrates two factors about Iand-based ice and sea-based ice. It's a IittIe of both. It's propped up on tops of isIands, but the ocean comes up underneath it. So as the ocean gets warmer, it has an impact on it. If this were to go, sea IeveI worIdwide wouId go up 20 feet. They've measured disturbing changes on the underside of this ice sheet. It's considered reIativeIy more stabIe, however, than another big body of ice that's roughIy the same size. GreenIand wouId aIso raise sea IeveI aImost 20 feet if it went. A friend of mine just brought back some pictures of what's going on on GreenIand right now. Dramatic changes. These are the same kinds of pooIs that formed here, on this ice sheIf in Antarctica. And the scientists thought that when that water seeped back into the ice, it wouId just refreeze. But they found out that actuaIIy what happens is that it just keeps on going. It tunneIs to the bottom and makes the ice Iike Swiss cheese, sort of Iike termites. This shows what happens to the crevasses, and when Iakes form, they create what are caIIed mouIins. The water goes down to the bottom and it Iubricates where the ice meets the bedrock. See these peopIe here for scaIe. This is not on the edge of GreenIand, this is in the middIe of the ice mass. This is a massive rushing torrent of fresh meIt water tunneIing straight down through the GreenIand ice to the bedrock beIow. Now, to some extent, there has aIways been seasonaI meIting and mouIins have formed in the past, but not Iike now. In 1992, they measured this amount of meIting in GreenIand. Ten years Iater, this is what happened. And here is the meIting from 2005. Tony BIair's scientific advisor has said that because of what's happening in GreenIand right now, the maps of the worId wiII have to be redrawn. If GreenIand broke up and meIted, or if haIf of GreenIand and haIf of West Antarctica broke up and meIted, this is what wouId happen to the sea IeveI in FIorida. This is what wouId happen to San Francisco Bay. A Iot of peopIe Iive in these areas. The NetherIands, one of the Iow countries. AbsoIuteIy devastating. The area around Beijing that's home to tens of miIIions of peopIe. Even worse, in the area around Shanghai, there are 40 miIIion peopIe. Worse stiII, CaIcutta, and to the east, BangIadesh, the area covered incIudes 60 miIIion peopIe. Think of the impact of a coupIe hundred thousand refugees when they're dispIaced by an environmentaI event. And then imagine the impact of a hundred miIIion or more. Here's Manhattan. This is the WorId Trade Center memoriaI site. And after the horribIe events of 9/1 1 , we said, ''Never again.'' But this is what wouId happen to Manhattan. They can measure this preciseIy, just as the scientists couId predict preciseIy how much water wouId breach the Ievees in New OrIeans. The area where the WorId Trade Center MemoriaI is to be Iocated wouId be underwater. Is it possibIe that we shouId prepare against other threats besides terrorists? Maybe we shouId be concerned about other probIems as weII. 1.3 billion people. An economy that's surging. More and more energy needs. Massive coal reserves. The coaI beIt in Northern China, Then there's Shaanxi province. Every time l've visited China, l've learned from their scientists. They're right on the cutting edge. Give me some sense of the numbers of new coaI fire generating pIants. WeII, I have to say that the number is enormous because it's so profitabIe. This issue is really the same for China as it is for the US. We are both using old technologies that are dirty and polluting. ...more flooding and more drought and stronger storms is going up, and global warming is implicated in the pattern. And if you were to give some suggestions to everybody here about, like, what we can do for the situation now. Separating the truth from the fiction and the accurate connections from the misunderstandings is part of what you learn here. But when the warnings are accurate and based on sound science, then we as human beings, whatever country we live in, have to find a way to make sure that the warnings are heard and responded to. We both have a hard time shaking loose the familiar patterns that we've relied on in the past. We both face completely unacceptable consequences. And there are three factors that are causing this coIIision, and the first is popuIation. When my generation, the baby boom generation, was born after WorId War II, the popuIation had just crossed the two biIIion mark. Now, I'm in my 50s, and it's aIready gone to aImost six and a haIf biIIion. And if I reach the demographic expectation for the baby boomers, it'II go over nine biIIion. So if it takes 10,000 generations to reach two biIIion and then in one human Iifetime, ours, it goes from two biIIion to nine biIIion, something profoundIy different's going on right now. We're putting more pressure on the Earth. Most of it's in the poorer nations of the worId. This puts pressure on food demand. It puts pressure on water demand. It puts pressure on vuInerabIe naturaI resources, and this pressure's one of the reasons why we have seen aII the devastation of the forest, not onIy tropicaI, but eIsewhere. It is a poIiticaI issue. This is the border between Haiti and the Dominican RepubIic. One set of poIicies here, another set of poIicies here. Much of it comes not onIy because of cutting, but aIso burning. AImost 30% of aII the CO2 that goes up each year into the atmosphere comes from forest burning. This is a time-Iapse picture of the Earth at night over a six-month period showing the Iights of the cities in white and the burning forests and brush fires in red. The yeIIow areas are the gas fIares, Iike these in Siberia. And that brings me to the second factor that has transformed our reIationship to the Earth. The scientific and technoIogicaI revoIution is a great bIessing in that it has given us tremendous benefits in areas Iike medicine and communications. But this new power that we have aIso brings a responsibiIity to think about its consequences. Here's a formuIa to think about. OId habits pIus oId technoIogy have predictabIe consequences. OId habits that are hard to change pIus new technoIogy can have dramaticaIIy aItered consequences. Warfare with spears and bows and arrows and rifIes and machine guns, that's one thing. But then a new technoIogy came. We have to think differentIy about war because the new technoIogies so compIeteIy transformed the consequences of that oId habit that we can't just mindIessIy continue the patterns of the past. In the same way, we have aIways expIoited the Earth for sustenance. For most of our existence, we used reIativeIy simpIe tooIs. The pIow, the tractor. But even tooIs Iike shoveIs are different now. ShoveI used to be this. ShoveIs have gotten bigger. And every year, they get more powerfuI. So our abiIity to have an effect, in this case on the surface of the Earth, is utterIy transformed. You can say the same thing about irrigation, which is a great thing. But when we divert rivers without considering the consequences, then sometimes rivers no Ionger reach the sea. There were two rivers in CentraI Asia that were used by the former Soviet Union for irrigating cotton fieIds unwiseIy. The AraI Sea was fed by them. It used to be the fourth Iargest inIand sea in the worId. When I went there, I saw this strange sight of an enormous fishing fIeet resting in the sand. This is the canaI that the fishing industry desperateIy tried to buiId to get to the receding shoreIine. Making mistakes in our deaIings with nature can have bigger consequences now because our technoIogies are often bigger than the human scaIe. When you put them aII together, they've made us a force of nature. And this is aIso a poIiticaI issue. This is a computer map of the worId that distorts to show the reIative contributions to gIobaI warming. In our country, we are responsibIe for more than aII of South America, aII of Africa, aII of the MiddIe East, aII of Asia, aII combined. The per capita average in Africa, India, China, Japan, EU, Russia. There's where we are. Way, way above everyone eIse. If you take popuIation into account, it's a IittIe bit different. China's pIaying a bigger roIe, so is Europe. But we are stiII by aII odds the Iargest contributor. And so it is up to us to Iook at how we think about it, because our way of thinking is the third and finaI factor that transforms our reIationship to the Earth. If a frog jumps into a pot of boiIing water, it jumps right out again because it senses the danger. But the very same frog, if it jumps into a pot of Iukewarm water that is sIowIy brought to a boiI, wiII just sit there and it won't move. It'II just sit there, even as the temperature continues to go up and up. It'II stay there, untiI... UntiI it's rescued. It's important to rescue the frog. But the point is this. Our coIIective nervous system is Iike that frog's nervous system. It takes a sudden joIt sometimes before we become aware of a danger. If it seems graduaI, even if it reaIIy is happening quickIy, we're capabIe of just sitting there and not responding. And not reacting. l don't remember a time when l was a kid when summertime didn't mean working with tobacco. lt was just... l used to love it. lt was during that period when working with the guys on the farm seemed like fun to me. Starting in 1964, with the Surgeon GeneraI's report, the evidence was Iaid out on the connection between smoking cigarettes and Iung cancer. We kept growing tobacco. Nancy was almost 10 years older than me, and there were only the two of us. She was my protector and my friend at the same time. She started smoking when she was a teenager and never stopped. She died of lung cancer. That's one of the ways you don't want to die. The idea that we had been part of that economic pattern that produced the cigarettes, that produced the cancer, it was so... lt was so painful on so many levels. My father, he had grown tobacco all his life. He stopped. Whatever explanation had seemed to make sense in the past, just didn't cut it anymore. He stopped it. lt's just human nature to take time to connect the dots. l know that. But l also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly. There are three misconceptions in particuIar that bedeviI our thinking. First, isn't there a disagreement among scientists about whether the probIem is reaI or not? ActuaIIy, not reaIIy. There was a massive study of every scientific articIe in a peer-reviewed journaI written on gIobaI warming for the Iast 10 years. And they took a big sampIe of 10%, 928 articIes. And you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we're causing gIobaI warming and that it's a serious probIem? Out of the 928, zero. The misconception that there's disagreement about the science has been deIiberateIy created by a reIativeIy smaII group of peopIe. One of their internaI memos Ieaked. And here's what it said, according to the press. Their objective is to reposition gIobaI warming as theory rather than fact. This has happened before. After the Surgeon GeneraI's report. One of their memos Ieaked 40 years ago. Here's what they said. ''Doubt is our product, ''since it is the best means of creating a controversy in the pubIic's mind.'' But have they succeeded? You'II remember that there were 928 peer-reviewed articIes. Zero percent disagreed with the consensus. There was another study of aII the articIes in the popuIar press. Over the Iast 1 4 years, they Iooked at a sampIe of 636. More than haIf of them said, ''WeII, we're not sure. It couId be a probIem, may not be a probIem.'' So no wonder peopIe are confused. Hey. What did you find out? Working for who? Chief of Staff? I'm gonna... That's the White House environment office. American PetroIeum Institute. It's fair to say that's the oiI and gas Iobby. Is that fair? TotaIIy fair. Do a IittIe bit more and see who his cIients were. So he was defending the Exxon Valdez thing. Uh, very. Thank you. Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it. Why do you directly contradict yourself in the testimony you're giving about this scientific question? The last paragraph in that section was not a paragraph which l wrote. That was added to my testimony. lf they force you to change a scientific conclusion, it's a form of science fraud by them. You know, in the Soviet Union, ordering scientists to change their studies to conform with the ideology... l've seen scientists who were persecuted, ridiculed, deprived of jobs, income, simply because the facts they discovered led them to an inconvenient truth that they insisted on telling. He worked for the American Petroleum lnstitute. And in January of 2001 , he was put by the president in charge of environmentaI poIicy. He received a memo from the EPA that warned about gIobaI warming and he edited. He has no scientific training whatsoever. But he took it upon himseIf to overruIe the scientist. I said, ''I want to see what this guy's handwriting Iooks Iike.'' This is the memo from the EPA. These are his actuaI pen strokes. He says, ''No, you can't say this. This is just specuIation.'' This was embarrassing to the White House, so this feIIow resigned a few days Iater. And the day after he resigned, he went to work for Exxon MobiI. You know, more than 100 years ago, Upton SincIair wrote this. That it's difficuIt to get a man to understand something if his saIary depends upon his not understanding it. The second misconception. Do we have to choose between the economy and the environment? This is a big one. Lot of peopIe say we do. I was trying to convince the previous administration, the first Bush administration, to go to the Earth Summit. And they organized a big White House conference to say, ''Oh, we're on top of this.'' And one of these view graphs caught my attention. And I want to taIk to you about it for a minute. Now here is the choice that we have to make according to this group. We have here a scaIes that baIances two different things. On one side, we have goId bars. Don't they Iook good? I'd just Iike to have some of those goId bars. On the other side of the scaIes, the entire pIanet. I think this is a faIse choice for two reasons. Number one, if we don't have a pIanet... The other reason is that if we do the right thing, then we're gonna create a Iot of weaIth -and we're gonna create a Iot of jobs. -Yes. Because doing the right thing moves us forward. l've probably given this slide show 1,000 times. l would say, at least 1,000 times. Nashville to Knoxville to Aspen and Sundance. Los Angeles and San Francisco. Portland, Minneapolis. Boston, New Haven, London, Brussels, Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna, Munich, ltaly and Spain and China, South Korea, Japan. Thank you. l guess the thing l've spent more time on than anything else in this slide show is trying to identify all those things in people's minds that serve as obstacles to them understanding this. And whenever l feel like l've identified an obstacle, l try to take it apart, roll it away. Move it. Demolish it, blow it up. l set myself a goal. Communicate this real clearly. The only way l know to do it is city by city, person by person, family by family. And l have faith that pretty soon enough minds are changed that we cross a threshold. Let me give you an example of the wrong way to baIance the economy and the environment. One part of this issue invoIves automobiIes. Japan has miIeage standards up here. Europe pIans to pass Japan. Our aIIies in AustraIia and Canada are Ieaving us behind. Here is where we are. Now there's a reason for it. They say that we can't protect the environment too much without threatening the economy and threatening the automakers. Because automakers in China might come in and just steaI aII our markets. WeII, here is where China's auto miIeage standards are now. Way above ours. We can't seII our cars in China today because we don't meet the Chinese environmentaI standards. CaIifornia has taken an initiative to have higher-miIeage cars soId in CaIifornia. Now the auto companies have sued CaIifornia to prevent this Iaw from taking effect because, as they point out, 1 1 years from now this wouId mean that CaIifornia wouId have to have cars for saIe that are as efficient 1 1 years from now as China's are today. CIearIy too onerous a provision to compIy with. And is this heIping our companies succeed? WeII, actuaIIy, if you Iook at who's doing weII in the worId, it's the companies that are buiIding more-efficient cars. And our companies are in deep troubIe. FinaI misconception. If we accept that this probIem is reaI, maybe it's just too big to do anything about. And, you know, there are a Iot of peopIe who go straight from deniaI to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actuaIIy doing something about the probIem. And that's what I'd Iike to finish with. The fact that we aIready know everything we need to know to effectiveIy address this probIem. We've got to do a Iot of things, not just one. If we use more efficient eIectricity appIiances, we can save this much off of the gIobaI warming poIIution that wouId otherwise be put into the atmosphere. If we use other end-use efficiency, this much. If we have higher miIeage cars, this much. And aII these begin to add up. Other transport efficiency, renewabIe technoIogy, carbon capture and sequestration. A big soIution that you're gonna be hearing a Iot more about. They aII add up, and pretty soon we are beIow our 1970 emissions. We have everything we need, save perhaps poIiticaI wiII. But you know what? In America, poIiticaI wiII is a renewabIe resource. We have the abiIity to do this. Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each of us can make choices to change that. With the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive, we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The soIutions are in our hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen. Are we gonna be Ieft behind as the rest of the worId moves forward? AII of these nations have ratified Kyoto. There are onIy two advanced nations in the worId that have not ratified Kyoto, and we are one of them. The other is AustraIia. LuckiIy, severaI states are taking the initiative. The nine northeastern states have banded together on reducing CO2. CaIifornia and Oregon are taking the initiative. PennsyIvania's exercising Ieadership on soIar power and wind power. And US cities are stepping up to the pIate. One after the other, we have seen aII of these cities pIedge to take on gIobaI warming. So what about the rest of us? UItimateIy this question comes down to this. Are we, as Americans, capabIe of doing great things even though they are difficuIt? Are we capabIe of rising above ourseIves and above history? WeII, the record indicates that we do have that capacity. We formed a nation, we fought a revolution and brought something new to this Earth, a free nation guaranteeing individual liberty. America made a moral decision. lts slavery was wrong, and that we could not be half free and half slave. We, as Americans, decided that of course women should have the right to vote. We defeated totalitarianism and won a war in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously. We desegregated our schools. And we cured fearsome diseases like polio. We landed on the moon. The very example of what's possible when we are at our best. We worked together in a completely bipartisan way to bring down communism. We have even solved a global environmental crisis before, the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer. This was said to be an impossible problem to solve because it's a global environmental challenge requiring cooperation from every nation in the worId. But we took it on. And the United States took the Iead in phasing out the chemicaIs that caused that probIem. So now we have to use our poIiticaI processes in our democracy, and then decide to act together to soIve those probIems. But we have to have a different perspective on this one. It's different from any probIem we have ever faced before. You remember that home movie of the Earth spinning in space? One of those spacecraft continuing on out into the universe, when it got four billion miles out in space, CarI Sagan said, ''Let's take another picture of the Earth.'' You see that paIe bIue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in aII of human history has happened on that pixeI. AII the triumphs and aII the tragedies. AII the wars, aII the famines. AII the major advances. It's our onIy home. And that is what is at stake. Our abiIity to Iive on pIanet Earth,to have a future as a civiIization.l believe this is a moral issue lt is your time to seize this issue. lt is our time to rise again, to secure our future.There's nothing that unusual about what l'm doing with this. What is unusual is that l had the privilege to be shown it as a young man. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Gore. lt's almost as if a window was opened through which the future was very clearly visible. "See that?" he said, "See that? "That's the future in which you are going to live your life." Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? "Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now. PAGE SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT 8