Gore Urges Bold Moves In Nobel Speech

[RestoreGore]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/world/11nobel.html?em&ex=1197435600&en=e2fa117e176a1da1&ei=5087%0A


Pool photo by Bjorn Sigurdson

By SARAH LYALL
Published: December 11, 2007

OSLO, Dec. 10 — He has said it over and over again, in increasingly somber and urgent terms, to anyone who would listen. But former Vice President Al Gore used the occasion of his Nobel Peace Prize lecture here today to proclaim it to the world: climate change is a “planetary emergency,” he said — a “real, rising, imminent and universal” threat to Earth’s very survival.

“We still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this,” Mr. Gore said: “Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?”

The ceremony marking the prize, which Mr. Gore shares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations panel of scientists, comes even as representatives of the world’s governments are meeting in Bali to negotiate a new international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new treaty would replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

Mr. Gore called on the negotiators to establish a universal global cap on emissions and to ratify and enact a new treaty by the beginning of 2010, two years early. And he singled out the United States and China — the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide — for failing to meet their obligations in acting to mitigate climate change. “They will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act,” he said.

He added: “Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.”

In his own address, Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the international climate-change panel, gave a sober, statistics-filled account of the possible consequences of climate change. He said that the prize committee’s decision to award the Nobel to the panel “can be seen as a clarion call” for the world to face up to the gravity of the situation.

Both Mr. Gore and Mr. Pachauri are heading to Bali this week to join the international negotiations.

The Bush administration has refused to support the Kyoto Protocol. In an interview with The Associated Press before the speech today, Mr. Gore said that American political leadership would have to seriously engage with climate change.

“The new president, whichever party wins the election, is likely to have to change the position on this climate crisis,” Mr. Gore was quoted as saying. “I do believe the U.S., soon, is to have a more constructive role.”

end of excerpt

[stillcool]

1. My favorite...

Mr. Gore, in his speech, said humanity had begun to wage war on the earth itself.

“It’s time to make peace with the planet,” he said in the acceptance ceremony in Oslo’s city hall. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization.” He added: “Something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong and we must make it right.”

He referred to or quoted several major world and literary figures such as George Orwell, Ghandi, Robert Frost, and Ibsen, and gave a litany of the world’s environmental problems including cities that were running out of water, wild fires and temperature extremes.

Quoting Orwell, he said that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.”

[RestoreGore]

2. "It's time to make peace with the planet"

Amen!

[bananas]

3. Great photo! Thanks! nt

[RestoreGore]

4. yes it is

Great photo of two great men. Now let's see how great some think they are once all the concerts are over and it comes down to the reality that what Mr. Gore stated about us having to act means all of us and now.

[RestoreGore]

5. Then where is the action?

[SpiralHawk]

6. "Be quiet, you are distubing my vacation." - Commander AWOL

"I'm warning you, do not disturb me or my republicon homelander chickenhawk cronies with this again, or I will sic Homeland Security on you. Everyone knows this is fact-based stuff, and therefore we republicons automatically reject it. It would cut back on our oil and munitions profits. End of discussion. You have been warned."

- Commander AWOL