An Inconvenient Truth Page #9

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Let me give you an example

of the wrong way to balance

the economy and the environment.

One part of this issue

involves automobiles.

Japan has mileage standards up here.

Europe plans to pass Japan.

Our allies in Australia and Canada

are leaving 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 steal all our markets.

Well, here is where China's

auto mileage standards are now.

Way above ours.

We can't sell our cars in China today

because we don't meet

the Chinese environmental standards.

California has taken an initiative

to have higher-mileage cars

sold in California.

Now the auto companies

have sued California

to prevent this law from taking effect

because, as they point out,

this would mean that California

would have to have cars for sale

that are as efficient 11 years from now

as China's are today.

Clearly too onerous a provision

to comply with.

And is this helping

our companies succeed?

Well, actually, if you look at

who's doing well in the world,

it's the companies that are building

more-efficient cars.

And our companies are in deep trouble.

Final misconception.

If we accept that this problem is real,

maybe it's just too big

to do anything about.

And, you know, there are a lot of people

who go straight from denial

to despair

without pausing

on the intermediate step

of actually doing something

about the problem.

And that's what I'd like to finish with.

The fact that we already know

everything we need to know

to effectively address this problem.

We've got to do a lot of things,

not just one.

If we use more efficient

electricity appliances,

we can save this much off

of the global warming pollution

that would otherwise be

put into the atmosphere.

If we use other end-use efficiency,

this much.

If we have higher mileage cars,

this much.

And all these begin to add up.

Other transport efficiency,

renewable technology,

carbon capture and sequestration.

A big solution that you're gonna

be hearing a lot more about.

They all add up,

and pretty soon we are below

our 1970 emissions.

We have everything we need,

save perhaps political will.

But you know what? In America,

political will is a renewable resource.

We have the ability 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 solutions are in our hands.

We just have to have the determination

to make them happen.

Are we gonna be left behind

as the rest of the world moves forward?

All of these nations have ratified Kyoto.

There are only two advanced nations

in the world that have not ratified Kyoto,

and we are one of them.

The other is Australia.

Luckily, several states

are taking the initiative.

The nine northeastern states

have banded together

on reducing CO2.

California and Oregon are taking

the initiative.

Pennsylvania's exercising leadership

on solar power and wind power.

And US cities are

stepping up to the plate.

One after the other, we have seen

all of these cities pledge

to take on global warming.

So what about the rest of us?

Ultimately this question

comes down to this.

Are we, as Americans,

capable of doing great things

even though they are difficult?

Are we capable

of rising above ourselves

and above history?

Well, 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.

Its 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 world.

But we took it on.

And the United States took the lead

in phasing out the chemicals

that caused that problem.

So now we have to use our political

processes in our democracy,

and then decide to act together

to solve those problems.

But we have to have

a different perspective on this one.

It's different from any problem

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,

Carl Sagan said,

"Let's take another picture of the Earth."

You see that pale blue dot?

That's us.

Everything that has ever happened

in all of human history

has happened on that pixel.

All the triumphs and all the tragedies.

All the wars, all the famines.

All the major advances.

It's our only home.

And that is what is at stake.

Our ability to live

on planet Earth,

to have a future as a civilization.

I believe this is a moral issue.

It is your time to seize this issue.

It is our time to rise again,

to secure our future.

There's nothing that unusual

about what I'm doing with this.

What is unusual is that

I had the privilege to be shown it

as a young man.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Al Gore.

It'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.

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