Al Gore treads the middle road

I attended the launch of Safe Climate Australia over breakfast on Monday 13 July in Melbourne. The guest speaker was Al Gore, who I was very keen to hear.

I regard the Inconvenient Truth as one of the better movie-documentaries I have seen. It struck a chord with me when I viewed it, particularly Gore's observations about the shortcomings of the United States political system with respect to tackling climate change.

Gore speaks very well. His delivery is excellent. He engages the audience and looks about in a calm but forceful manner.

His content was good to. He spoke about the climate emergency the need for urgent action. But then he slipped up. He praised the Rudd government for displaying global leadership on climate change.

While this statement may be politically correct, it is factually untrue. Australia's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will not reduce emissions, but he didnt go into this.

I felt there was a gap between his rhetoric and his call for action. If governments around the world don't set the right policies and legislation to drastically reduce carbon emissions they will greatly hamper our ability to ensure a safe climate future.

We can't lock in failure to reduce carbon emissions, which is what the CPRS will do.

I think Gore was intent on delivering a positive message and unifying some of the fractures that have emerged between environment groups intent on political lobbying and those that are more closely aligned with the latest science and grass roots climate action groups.

However, as I have observed recently, our political process, the structure of our governments, and the influence industry has over them are part of the climate change problem at present, rather than part of the solution.

We need to build a movement with grass roots engagement that cannot be denied by recalcitrant goverments, and we need to recreate the political process so that people really do engage with it, trust it, and be truly represented.

This sounds odd doesn't it? Political and government systems that people want, like and trust! It is a real challenge to achieve this, but I feel we really need this to facilitate the paradigm shifts required to move to a low carbon society with a safe climate future.

Links

• Safe Climate Australia
• Safe Climate Australia, Greenlivingpedia

Al Gore on Climate Change Leadership

It is imperative that the Australian Government work constructively with other nations via the United Nations on a post-Kyoto agreeement to tackle climate change that includes tangible emission reduction targets. The current approach endorsed by John Howard, Alexander Downer and Malcolm Turnbull to set "aspirational voluntary targets" will be ineffective.

Self regulation of the most polluting industries carries a very real risk that short term profit motives will outweigh taking real action on addressing climate change - which science and our own experience now tells us is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today.

Here is a good quote from Al Gore on the important role governments have in setting real and binding emission reduction targets globally.

Quote of the Day: Al Gore on Climate Change Leadership, Montreal Protocol
(From TreeHugger)

All of the market initiatives are incredibly important. The market allocates more money in one hour than all of the governments allocate over a year's time. But governments set the rules of the road and determine how markets allocate capital and make decisions. And there should be no mistake that this crisis, the climate crisis, is not going to be solved only by personal action and business action. We need changes in laws; we need changes in policies; we need new leadership and we need a new treaty. We need a mandate at Bali during the first 14 days of December this year to complete a treaty not by 2012 but by 2009, and put it completely into force by 2010. We can do it and we must do it. ...

We face a genuine planetary emergency, we cannot just talk about it, we have to act on it, we have to solve it, urgently. ... Last week the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of a great success story. A hole in the ozone layer was discovered in 1985. And then, in the following year and a half, action took place. Some people said voluntary action will solve it; businesses will take the initiative. The Secretary of the Interior at that time said voluntary measures like wearing more sunglasses and floppy hats was the answer.

I would like to call on President Bush to follow President Reagan's example and listen to those among his advisers who know that we have to have binding reductions in CO2; we have to put a price on carbon, and the United States of America has to lead the world to solve the climate crisis."

—Al Gore, former vice president of the Untied States, in the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative, 26 Sept. 2007