Vice President Al Gore has rejoined the public fight on global warming, issuing a clarion call to take action to address the climate crisis. Twenty years ago, he participated in the international mobilization against the future threat of fossil fuel pollution heating up our atmosphere. For decades, he and other leaders have battled the fossil fuel industry and their corporate and political allies to mobilize for a sustainable civilization. Now, the crisis of dangerous climate change is upon us. Speaking before the Games for Change festival on Monday, Gore delineated a few of the catastrophic disasters caused by our superheated climate system in the past twelve months:
Look what’s happened in the last twelve months:
— The twenty million people displaced in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, one of the biggest flood events in their history.
— An area of Australia the size of France and Germany combined, flooded.
— The nation of Colombia, they’ve had five to six times the normal rainfall. Two million people are still homeless. Most of the country was underwater for a portion of last year.
— My hometown, my home city of Nashville, a thousand-year flood. Thousands of my neighbors lost their homes and businesses. They had no flood insurance because there had never been a flood in areas that were flooded.
— Drought. Russia, biggest drought in their history, biggest fires in their history, over 50,000 people killed, and then all of their wheat and other food crops, along with that of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, taken off the world markets, leading to an all-time record spike in food prices.
— Texas, right now. The drought raised from “extreme” to “exceptional.” 254 counties in Texas, 252 of them were filed in the major disaster.
— Today, biggest fire in the history of Arizona, spreading to New Mexico.
— Today, biggest flood in the history of the Mississippi River valley underway right now. At what point is there a moment where we say, ‘Oh, we ought to do something about this?’
Watch it:
Gore followed up by saying that the solution to the climate crisis doesn’t just involve changing to cleaner technology, but also the empowerment of women. When you “educate girls and empower women,” Gore said, “the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”
Update:
Gore’s factual litany of recent climate disasters was attacked on Fox Business by host Eric Bolling and guest Bill Kirk, CEO of Weather Trends International:
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Kirk is not a climate scientist.
Update:
In Rolling Stone, Gore explains the unique responsibility of President Barack Obama:
Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.