I know not everyone has time for Al Gore, but I wanted to share his latest TED talk, delivered at a recent event called TED Countdown Summit. It’s interesting both for its content and for its tone. If you remember Gore’s influential movie An Inconvenient Truth, you’ll know his measured style as he explains climate science. Here, he’s furious.
The object of his ire is the fossil fuel companies, and the way that they have used their power to prevent climate action, including the way that an oil CEO has ended up in charge of this year’s climate talks. As I said earlier this week, there are bad actors in the climate debate, those who will do anything necessary to keep making money. Gore picks his examples well, and this is one of the clearest explanations of fossil fuel obstructionism and well worth watching.
The Earthbound Report 
Yes, thank you to Mr. Gore for making his first movie, but what he has done since then has been less interesting. Instead of railing against businesses that have a vested interest in ignoring the science, i think it would be a good idea to ask our legislators for laws against idling and also for a carbon tax (with a refund in the U.S. where gas is cheap but so are employees and pay for workers can be extremely low).
The science on a carbon tax/refund may not add up to driving a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by individuals by itself, but it would force people to understand that the government is serious about changing our consumption habits.
Yes, I think Gore has put his name to too many things, some of them headed in the wrong direction, and as a political figure his association hasn’t helped to build cross-party agreement on climate. But this is helpful because it’s so rare to hear senior political figures speak so strongly against the fossil fuels industry.
After all, part of the reason we can’t get any serious change on consumption habits is that the fossil fuel industry keeps telling us to carry on as usual, and blocks government interventions that might change that.
Yes. True. It would be better for them to acknowledge and then diversify, so that they no longer had an incentive to do what should be criminal by now. Good point. Thanks.
It is ot just the fossil fuel industry itself. The United States government, banking and finance, and business community is afraid that if we act to really cut the use of fossil fuels in any significant amount, business will slow down and the result will be a severe depression. There is truth to that. Fossil fuels deliver our products to us, deliver raw materials to factories, fuel our vehicles, heat and cool our homes and provide almost everything we use and upon which we depend. That fear on economic downturn is real and not an illusion. Most people are not convinced that our society, culture, and life as we know it can survive without fossil fuels. They are probably right.
Sure, and nobody suggests switching off fossil fuels overnight. What we need is a transition, which takes time. What gets people most angry is investing in new fossil fuels, because that sends a signal that whatever they may say, the industry is committed to delaying that transition as long as possible.