Gore: Tell The Senate To Pass Climate Change Legislation By Earth Day 2010

In an address to the conference just before high-level talks began in Copenhagen yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore asked Washington to pass climate legislation by April 22, 2010 — the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. After a decade of inaction which was also the hottest on record, the world cannot afford to wait. Furthermore, if the US does not act, Gore said, other nations will leave it behind in building the clean energy future:

As a citizen of the United States, and no more, I will ask those among my fellow citizens who share my sense of urgency to join in asking President Obama and the leadership of the United States Senate to set a deadline of April 22, 2010.

Watch it:

This deadline would allow the world to reconvene in July in Mexico City to complete a binding international deal before the ugly politics of the midterm elections in November. Gore said the decisions made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference and the US Senate will answer a fundamental moral question — who we are as human beings. “Instead of forthrightly addressing a mortal threat to the future of civilization,” if we “allowed this process to fall into paralysis,” Gore argued, the next generation “would be justified in asking us: ‘Who are you?’”