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(BIRDS CHIRPING)

GORE: You look at that river,
gently flowing by.

You notice the leaves

rustling with the wind.

You hear the birds.

You hear the tree frogs.

In the distance,
you hear a cow.

You feel the grass.

The mud gives a little bit
on the river bank.

It's quiet. It's peaceful.

And all of a sudden,

it's a gear shift inside you.

And it's like taking
a deep breath and going,

(SIGHING)
"Oh, yeah,
I forgot about this."

This is the first picture
of the earth from space

that any of us ever saw.

It was taken on, uh,
Christmas Eve 1968

during the Apollo 8 Mission.

...within relatively
comfortable boundaries.

But we are filling up that
thin shell of atmosphere
with pollution.

MAN: Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Al Gore.

I am Al Gore.

I used to be
the next president of the
United States Of America.

(CHEERING)

I don't find that
particularly funny.

(CROWD CHEERING)

I've been trying to tell
this story for a long time,

and I feel as if I've failed
to get the message across.

I was in politics
for a long time
and I'm proud of my service.

(SCREAMING)

MAN ON RADIO:
You gotta be kidding me.
This is a national disaster.

Get every doggone Greyhound
bus line in the country,

and get their...moving to
New Orleans.

That's them thinking small,
man,

and this is a major, major,
major deal.

PRESENTER:
What do you need right now?

GORE: There are good people,

who are in politics
in both parties

who hold this at arm's length

because if they acknowledge it
and recognize it,

then the moral imperative
to make a big change is

is--is inescapable.

MAN: ...unless you fix the
biggest damn crisis in the
history of this country.

GORE:
...scouted out landing spots
and they lost radio contact

when they went around
the dark side of the moon.

And there was inevitably
some suspense.

Then when they came back
in radio contact,

they looked up

and they snapped this picture,
and it became known
as Earth Rise.

And that one picture exploded

in the consciousness
of humankind.

It lead to dramatic changes.

Within 18 months
of this picture,

the modern environmental
movement had begun.

The next picture
was taken on the last
of the Apollo missions,

Apollo 17.

This one was taken
on December 11, 1972,

and it is the most
commonly published
photograph in all of history.

And it's the only picture
of the earth from space
that we have

(LAUGHING)
where the sun was directly
behind the spacecraft

so that the earth
is fully lit up and not
partly in darkness.

The next image
I'm gonna show you
has almost never been seen.

It was taken by a spacecraft
called The Galileo

that went out to explore
the solar system.

And as it was
leaving Earth's gravity,
it turned its cameras around

and took a time lapse picture
of one day's worth
of rotation,

here compressed
into 24 seconds.

Isn't that beautiful?

This image is a magical
image in a way.

It was made by a friend
of mine, Tom Van Sant.

He took 3,000 separate
satellite pictures

taken over
a three-year period,
digitally stitched together.

And he chose images
that would give
a cloud-free view

of every square inch
of the earth's surface.

All of the land masses
accurately portrayed.

When that's all spread out,
it becomes an iconic image.

I show this because
I--I wanna tell you a story
about two teachers I had.

One that I didn't like
that much, the other
who is a real hero to me.

I had a grade school teacher
who taught geography

by pulling a map
of the world down
in front of the blackboard.

I had a classmate
in the sixth grade
who raised his hand

and he pointed to the outline
of the east coast
of South America

and he pointed
to the west coast of Africa

and he asked,
"Did they ever fit together?"

And the teacher said,

"Of course not.
That's the most ridiculous
thing I've ever heard."

That student went on
to become a drug addict
and a ne'er-do-well.

The teacher went on to become
science advisor

in the current administration.

But, you know, the teacher
was actually reflecting

the conclusion of the
scientific establishment
of that time.

Continents are so big,
obviously they don't move.

But, actually, as we now know,
they did move.

Uh, they moved apart
from one another.

But at one time they did,
in fact, fit together.

But that assumption
was a problem.

It reflected
the well-known wisdom

that what gets us into trouble
is not what we don't know,

it's what we know for sure
that just ain't so.

This is actually
an important point,
believe it or not,

because there is another
such assumption

that a lot of people
have in their minds right now
about global warming

that just ain't so.

The assumption
is something like this.
The earth is so big

we can't possibly have
any lasting harmful impact

on the earth's environment.

And maybe that
was true at one time,
but it's not anymore.

And one of the reasons
it's not true anymore

is that the most vulnerable
part of the earth's
ecological system

is the atmosphere.

Vulnerable because
it's so thin.

My friend,
the late Carl Sagan,
used to say,

"If you had a big globe
with a coat of varnish on it,

"the thickness of that varnish
relative to that globe

"is pretty much the same

"as the thickness
of the earth's atmosphere

"compared to
the earth itself."

And it's thin enough

that we are capable
of changing its composition.

That brings up
the basic science
of global warming.

And I'm not gonna spend
a lot of time on this
because, uh, you know it well.

The sun's radiation comes in
in the form of light waves

and that heats up the Earth.

And then some of the radiation
that is absorbed
and warms the earth

is reradiated back into space

in the form
of infrared radiation.

And some of the outgoing
infrared radiation is trapped

by this layer of atmosphere
and held inside
the atmosphere.

And that's a good thing
because it keeps the
temperature of the earth

within certain boundaries,

keeps it relatively
constant and livable.

But the problem is this
thin layer of atmosphere
is being thickened

by all of the
global warming pollution
that's being put up there.

And what that does is
it thickens this layer
of atmosphere,

more of the outgoing
infrared is trapped.

And so the atmosphere
heats up worldwide.
That's global warming.

Now, that's the
traditional explanation.

Here's a... What I think
is a better explanation.

(MAN READING)

(SOBBING)

(LAUGHING)

You're probably wondering
why your ice cream went away.

Well, Susie, the culprit
isn't foreigners.

It's global warming.

Global wha...
Yeah.

MAN: Meet Mr. Sunbeam.

He comes all the way
from the sun to visit Earth.

Hello, Earth. Just popping in
to brighten your day.

* La, la, la, la,
la, la, la! **

And now I'll be on my way.

Not so fast, Sunbeam.

We're greenhouse gases.
You ain't going nowhere.

(YELPING)

Oh, God, it hurts.

MAN: Pretty soon, Earth is
chock-full of Sunbeams.

Their rotting corpses heating
our atmosphere.

(ALL LAUGHING)

How do we get rid
of the greenhouse grasses?

Fortunately,
our handsomest politicians

came up with a cheap,
last-minute way
to combat global warming.

Ever since 2063,

we simply drop
a giant ice cube into
the ocean every now and then.

Just like Daddy puts
in his drink every morning.

And then he gets mad.

MAN: Of course,
since the greenhouse gases
are still building up,

it takes more and more ice
each time.

Thus, solving the problem
once and for all.

But...
Once and for all!

This is, uh, the image
that started me

in my interest in this issue.

And I saw it
when I was a college student

because I had a professor
named Roger Revelle

who was the first person
to propose measuring
carbon dioxide

in the earth's atmosphere.

GORE: He saw where
the story was going

after the first few chapters.

After the first few years
of data,

he intuited what it meant

for what w-was yet to come.

They designed the experiment
in 1957.

He hired Charles David Keeling

who was very faithful
and precise

in making these measurements
for decades.

They started sending
these weather balloons
up every day

and they chose
the middle of the Pacific

because it was the area
that was most remote.

And he was a very
hard-nosed scientist.

He really emphasized
the hard data.

It was a wonderful time for me

because, like a lot
of young people,

I came into contact
with intellectual ferment,

ideas that I'd never
considered

in my wildest dreams before.

And he showed our class

the results
of his measurements
after only a few years.

It was startling to me.

Now he was startled

and made it clear to our class

what he felt
the significance of it was.

And I just soaked it up
like a sponge.

He drew the connections

between the larger changes
in our civilization

and this pattern
that was now visible

in the atmosphere
of the entire planet.

And then he
projected into the future
where this was headed

unless we made
some adjustments.

And it was just
as clear as day.

After the first seven,
eight, nine years,

you could see the pattern
that was developing.

But I asked a question.

Why is it that it goes
up and down once each year?

And he explained that
if you look at the
land mass of the earth,

very little of it
is south of the equator.

The vast majority of it
is north of the equator,

and most of the vegetation
is north of the equator.

And so,
when the Northern Hemisphere
is tilted toward the sun,

as it is in our spring
and summer,

the leaves come out
and they breathe in
carbon dioxide,

and the amount
in the atmosphere goes down.

But when the
Northern Hemisphere
is tilted away from the sun,

as it is in our fall
and winter,

the leaves fall
and exhale carbon dioxide,

and the amount
in the atmosphere
goes back up again.

And so, it's as if
the entire earth

once each year
breaths in and out.

(TAKING DEEP BREATH)

So we started measuring
carbon dioxide in 1958.

And you can see

that by the middle '60s,
when he showed my class
this image,

it was already clear
that it was going up.

I respected him
and learned from him
so much, I followed this.

And when I went
to the Congress
in the middle 1970s,

I helped to organize
the first hearings
on global warming

and asked my professor to come
and be the leadoff witness.

And I thought that would have
such a big impact,

we'd be on the way
to solving this problem,
but it didn't work that way.

But I kept having hearings.
And in 1984
I went to the Senate

and really dug deeply
into this issue

with science roundtables
and the like.

I wrote a book, uh, about it,
ran for President in 1988,

partly to try to gain some
visibility for that issue.

And in 1992 went to the
White House. We passed
a version of a carbon tax

and some other measures
to try to address this.

Went to Kyoto in 1997
to help get a treaty

that's so controversial,
in the US at least.

In 2000,

my opponent pledged
to regulate CO2 and then...

T-That--That was not
a pledge that was kept.

But the point of this is

all this time you can see

what I have seen
all these years.

It just keeps going up.
It is relentless.

And now we're beginning to see
the impact in the real world.

This is Mount Kilimanjaro
more than 30 years ago

and more recently.

And a friend of mine
just came back
from Kilimanjaro

with a picture he took
a couple of months ago.

Another friend,
Lonnie Thompson,
studies glaciers.

Here's Lonnie with
a last sliver of one of
the once mighty glaciers.

Within the decade
there will be no more snows
of Kilimanjaro.

This is happening
in Glacier National Park.

I climbed to the top of this
in 1998 with
one of my daughters.

Within 15 years,
this will be the park
formerly known as Glacier.

Here is what's been happening
year by year to the
Columbia Glacier.

It just retreats
every single year.

And it's a shame
'cause these glaciers
are so beautiful.

But those who go up
to see them,

here's what they're seeing
every day, now.

In the Himalayas, uh,
there's a particular problem

because 40 percent of all
the people in the world

get their drinking water
from rivers and spring systems

that are fed more than half
by the melt water

coming off the glaciers.

And within this next
half century those 40 percent
o-of the people on Earth

are gonna face
a very serious shortage

because o-of this melting.

Italy, the Italian Alps.

Same sight today.

An old postcard
from Switzerland.

Throughout the Alps,
we're seeing the same story.

It's also true
in South America.

This is Peru 15 years ago.

And the same glacier today.

This is Argentina
20 years ago.
Same glacier today.

Seventy-five years ago
in Patagonia
on the tip of South America.

This vast expanse
of ice is now gone.

There's a message in this.

It is worldwide.

And the ice has stories
to tell us.

My friend, Lonnie Thompson,
digs core drills in the ice.

They dig down

and they bring
the core drills back up
and they look at the ice

and they study it.

When the snow falls,
it traps little bubbles
of atmosphere

and they can go in and measure

how much CO2
is in the atmosphere
the year that that snow fell.

What's even more interesting,
I think, is

they can measure the different
isotopes of oxygen

and figure out
a very precise thermometer

and tell you what
the temperature was

the year that, uh,
that bubble was trapped
in the snow as it fell.

When I was in Antarctica,
I saw cores like this.

And a guy looked at it.
He said,

"Right here is where
the US Congress passed
the Clean Air Act."

And I couldn't believe it.

But you can see the difference
with the naked eye.

Just a couple of years
after that law was passed,

it's very clearly
distinguishable.

They can count back
year by year

the same way a forester reads
tree rings.

And you can see
each annual layer from
the melting and re-freezing,

so they can go back
in a lot of these
mountain glaciers 1,000 years.

And they constructed
a thermometer
of the temperature.

The blue is cold
and the red is warm.

Now, uh, I show this
for a couple of reasons.

Number one,
the so-called skeptics
will sometimes say,

"Oh, this whole thing,
this is a cyclical phenomenon.

"There was a medieval
warming period, after all."

Well, yeah, there--there was.
There--There it is,
right there.

There are two others.

But compared to
what's going on now,

there's just no comparison.

So if you look at 1,000 years'
worth of temperature

and compare it to
1,000 years of CO2,

you can see how closely
they fit together.

Now, 1,000 years of CO2
in the mountain glaciers,

that's one thing.

But in Antarctica, they can
go back 650,000 years.

This incidentally, uh,
is the first time

anybody outside of a
small group of scientists
has seen this image.

This is the present day,
uh, era,

and that's the last ice age.

Then it goes up. That...
We're going back in time
now 650,000 years.

That's the period of warming
between the last two ice ages.

That's the second
and third ice age back.

Fourth, fifth, sixth

and seventh ice age back.

Now, an important point.

In all of this time,
650,000 years,

the CO2 level
has never gone above

300 parts per million.

Now, as I said, they can
also measure temperature.

Here's what the temperature
has been on our earth.

Now, one thing that kind
of jumps out at you is...

Well, let me put it this way.
If my classmate
from the sixth grade

that talked about Africa
and South America were here,

he would say,
"Did--did--did--
did they ever fit together?"

"Most ridiculous thing
I've ever heard."

But they did, of course.

And the--the relationship
is actually very complicated.

But there is one relationship
that is far more powerful

than all the others
and it is this.

When there is
more carbon dioxide,
the temperature gets warmer

because it traps more heat
from the sun inside.

In the parts
of the United States
that contain the modern cities

of Cleveland,
Detroit, New York,
in the northern tier,

this is the difference
between a nice day

and having a mile
of ice over your head.

Keep that in mind
when you look at this fact.

Carbon dioxide,

having never gone above
300 parts per million,

here is where CO2 is now.

Way above where it's ever been

as far back as this record
will measure.

Now, if you'll bear with me,
I wanna really emphasize
this point.

The--The crew here

has tried to teach me how to
use this contraption here.

So, if I don't
kill myself, I'll...

(MACHINERY HUMMING)

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

It's already right here.

Look how far above
the natural cycle this is,

and we've done that.

But, ladies and gentlemen,
in the next 50 years,

really, in less than 50 years,

it's gonna continue to go up.

When some of these children
who are here are my age,

here is what it's going to be
in less than 50 years.

(MACHINERY HUMMING)

You've heard of
off the charts.

Within less than 50 years,
it'll be here.

There's not a single fact
or date or number

that's been used
to make this up
that's in any controversy.

The so-called skeptics
look at this and they say,

"So? That seems
perfectly okay."

Well,

again, if on the
temperature side,

if this much on the cold side
is a mile of ice
over our heads,

what would that much
on the warm side be?

Ultimately this is really
not a political issue

so much as a--a moral issue.

If we allow that to happen,

it is deeply unethical.

GORE: I had such faith
in our democratic system,

our self-government.

I actually thought
and believed

that the story would be
compelling enough to cause
a real sea change

in the way the Congress
reacted to that issue.

I thought they would
be startled, too.

And they weren't.

The struggles,

the victories that aren't
really victories, the defeats
that aren't really defeats.

They can serve to magnify
the significance

of some trivial step forward,

exaggerate the seeming
importance

of some massive setback.

GORE: April 3, 1989.

My son pulled loose
from my hand

and chased his friend
across the street.

He was six years old.

The machine
was breathing for him.

We were possibly
going to lose him.

He finally, uh, took a breath.

We stayed in the hospital
for a month.

It was almost as if, uh,

you could look at that
calendar and just go...

(BLOWING)
And everything just flew off.

Seemed trivial, insignificant.

He was so brave.
He was such...

Uh, he was such
a--a brave guy.

It just turned my whole world
upside down

and then shook it
until everything fell out.

My way of being in the world,
it just changed everything
for me.

How should I spend my time
on this earth?

I really dug in,

trying to learn about it
much more deeply.

I went to Antarctica.

Went to the South Pole,
the North Pole, the Amazon.

Went to places
where scientists could
help me understand

parts of the issue that

I didn't really understand
in depth.

The possibility of losing
what was most precious to me.

I gained a-an ability

(SIGHING)

that maybe I didn't have
before.

But when I felt it,

I felt that we could
really lose it,

that what we take for granted
might not be here
for our children.

These are actual measurements
of atmospheric temperatures

since our Civil War.

In any given year,
it might look like
it's going down,

but the overall trend
is extremely clear.

And in recent years,

it's uninterrupted
and it is intensifying.

In fact, if you look at
the 10 hottest years
ever measured

in this atmospheric record,

they've all occurred
in the last 14 years.

And the hottest of all
was 2005.

We have already seen
some of the heat waves

that are similar
to what scientists are saying

are gonna be
a lot more common.

Couple of years ago
in Europe

they had
that massive heat wave

that killed 35,000 people.

India didn't get
as much attention,

but the same year
the temperature there went

to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

This past summer
in the American West,

there were a lot of cities
that broke all-time records
for high temperatures

and number of consecutive days
with 100 degree temperature
or more.

Two hundred cities
and towns in the west
set all-time records.

And in the east there were
a lot of cities that did
the same thing.

Including, incidentally,
New Orleans.

So the temperature increases
are taking place
all over the world,

including in the oceans.

This is the natural range
of variability for temperature
in the oceans.

You know, people say,
"Oh, it's just natural.

"It goes up and down,
so don't worry about it."

This is the range
that would be expected
over the last 60 years,

but the scientists who
specialize in global warming
have computer models

that long ago
predicted this range
of temperature increase.

Now I'm gonna show you,
recently released,

the actual ocean temperatures.

And, of course,
when the oceans get warmer,
that causes stronger storms.

We have seen
in the last couple of years

a lot of big hurricanes.

Hurricane Jeanne and Frances
and Ivan were among them.

And the same year that we had
that string of big hurricanes,

we also set an all-time record
for tornadoes
in the United States.

Japan again didn't get
as much attention
in our news media,

but they set an
all-time record for typhoons.

Previous record was seven.

Here are all 10 of the ones
they had in 2004.

The science textbooks have had
to be rewritten

because they say that it's
impossible to have a hurricane
in the South Atlantic.

But the same year
the first one ever hit Brazil.

Summer of 2005 has been
one for the books.

The first one was Emily
that socked into Yucatan.

Then Hurricane Dennis
came along and it did
a lot of damage,

including to the oil industry.

This is the largest
oil platform in the world
after Dennis went through.

This one was driven
into the bridge at Mobile.

And then, of course,
came Katrina.

It's worth remembering
that when it hit Florida,
it was a Category One.

But it killed a lot of people
and caused billions of
dollars' worth of damage.

And then what happened?

Before it hit New Orleans,

it went over warmer waters.

As the water temperature
increases,

the wind velocity increases

and the moisture content
increases.

And you'll see
Hurricane Katrina
form over Florida.

And then as it comes
into the gulf
over that warm water,

it picks up that energy
and gets stronger and
stronger and stronger.

Look at that hurricane's eye.

And, of course,
the--the consequences
were so horrendous,

there are no words,
uh, to describe it.

(BABY WAILING)

MAN ON RADIO: Yeah, we're
getting reports and calls that
are just breaking my heart.

From people saying,
"I've been in my attic.
I can't take it anymore.

"The water is up to my--
up to my neck.
I don't think I can hold out."

And that's happening
as we speak.

We told-- We told everybody
the importance of the
17th Street Canal issue.

We said, "Please, please,
take care of this.

"We don't care what you do.
Figure it out."

GORE:
Something new for America.

But how in God's name
could that happen here?

There had been warnings
that hurricanes
would get stronger.

There were warnings
that this hurricane,

days before it hit,
would breach the levees,

would cause the kind of damage
that it ultimately did cause.

And one question
we as a people need to decide

is how we react
when we hear warnings

from the leading scientists
in the world.

There was another storm
in the 1930s
of a different kind.

A horrible,
unprecedented storm
in continental Europe,

and Winston Churchill warned
the people of England

that it was different
from anything that had
ever happened before

and they had to
get ready for it.

And he...
A-And--And a lot of people
did not want to believe it.

And he got real impatient
with all the dithering.

And he said this,

(GORE READING)

GORE: Making mistakes in
generations and centuries past

would have consequences
that we could overcome.

We don't have
that luxury anymore.

We didn't ask for it,

but here it is.

MALE ANNOUNCER 1:
Al Gore is the winner
of the national popular vote.

But the state of Florida,
whomever wins there
wins the White House.

FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
We call Florida,
in the Al Gore column...

MALE ANNOUNCER 2: Bulletin:
Florida pulled back
into the undecided column.

George Bush is the president
elect of the United States.
He is...

MALE ANNOUNCER 2:
Florida goes Bush. The
presidency is Bush. That's it.

GORE: And at 2:18
this morning, we project...

All right, we're officially
saying that Florida
is too close to call.

While I strongly disagree
with the court's decision,

I accept it.

I accept the finality
of this outcome.

MAN: ...do solemnly swear...

BUSH: I, George Walker Bush,
do solemnly swear...

MAN: ...that I will faithfully
execute the office of...

GORE: Well, that was
a hard blow, but...

What do you do? You...

You make the best of it.

It brought into clear focus

the mission that
I had been pursuing

for all these years, and

(SIGHING)

I started, uh, giving
the slide show again.

(APPLAUSE)

One often unnoticed effect
of global warming

is it causes
more precipitation,

but more of it coming
in one-time big storm events.

Because the evaporation
off the oceans puts
all the moisture up there,

when storm conditions
trigger the downpour,
more of it falls down.

The insurance industry has
actually noticed this.

Their recovered losses
are going up.

You see the damage
from these severe
weather events?

And 2005 is not even
on this yet.

When it does,
it'll be off that chart.

Europe has just had
a year very similar
to the one we've had

where they say
nature's been going crazy.

All kinds of unusual
catastrophes,

like a nature hike through
the Book of Revelations.

Flooding in Asia.

Mumbai, India this past July.

Thirty-seven inches
of rain in 24 hours.

By far, the largest downpour

that any city in India
has ever received.

Lot of flooding
in China, also.

Global warming, paradoxically,
causes not only more flooding,

but also more drought.

This neighboring province
right next door

had a severe drought
at the same time
these areas were flooding.

One of the reasons for this
has to do with the fact

that global warming
not only increases
precipitation worldwide,

but it also relocates
the precipitation.

And focus most of all
on this part of Africa

just on the edge
of the Sahara.

Unbelievable tragedies
have been unfolding there,

and there are a lot
of reasons for it.

But Darfur and Niger are
among those tragedies.

And one of the factors
that has been compounding them

is the lack of rainfall
and the increasing drought.

This is Lake Chad, once
one of the largest lakes
in the world.

It has dried up over the last
few decades to almost nothing,

vastly complicating
the other problems
that they also have.

The second reason

why this is a paradox.

Global warming creates
more evaporation
off the oceans

to seed the clouds,

but it sucks moisture
out of the soil.

Soil evaporation
increases dramatically

with higher temperatures.

And that has consequences
for us in the United States,
as well.

So this is the Carthage exit.

When I was 14 years old,
I totaled the family car

right there.

Went off that shoulder,
turned it over.

And see this Black Angus bull?

We raised Black Angus.

GORE: My father was named
Breeder of the Month.

(CHUCKLING)

He grew up on a farm.

All through his career
in the Senate,

he continued to come back here
and raise cattle.

Learning it from your dad
on the land,

that's really
something special.

My, uh, childhood upbringing
was a little unusual
in the sense that

I spent eight months
of each year
in Washington DC

in a--a small little
hotel apartment.

And then the other four months
were spent here on
this big, beautiful farm.

I had a dog here.

I had a pony here.

I could, uh,
shoot my rifle here.

I could-- I could go swimming
in the river here.

Go out and lay down
in the grass.

As a kid, it took me a while

to learn the difference
between fun and work.

The places where people live
were chosen

because of the climate pattern

that has been pretty much
the same on Earth

since the end of the last
ice age 11,000 years ago.

Here, on this farm,
the patterns are changing.

And it seems gradual in the
course of a human lifetime

but in the course of time,
as defined by this river,

it's happening
very, very quickly.

Two canaries in the coal mine.

First one is in the Arctic.

This, of course,
is the Arctic Ocean,
the floating ice cap.

Greenland, on its side there.

I say canary in the coal mine

because the Arctic is
one of the two regions
of the world

that, uh, is experiencing
faster impacts

from global warming.

This is the largest ice shelf
in the Arctic,

the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf.

It just cracked in half
three years ago.

The scientists
were astonished.

These are called drunken trees
just going every which way.

This is not caused
by wind damage
or alcohol consumption.

These trees
put their roots down
in the permafrost,

and the permafrost is thawing.

And so they just go
every which way now.

This building was built
on the, uh, permafrost

and has collapsed
as the permafrost thaws.

This woman's house, uh,
has had to be abandoned.

The pipeline is suffering
a great deal
of structural damage.

And incidentally,
the oil that they want to
produce in that protected area

in Northern Alaska,
which I hope they don't,

they have to depend on trucks
to go in and out of there.

And the trucks go over
the frozen ground.

This shows the number of days
that the tundra in Alaska is

frozen enough to drive on it.

Thirty-five years ago,
225 days a year.

Now it's below 75 days a year

because the spring
comes earlier
and the fall comes later

and the temperatures
just keep on going up.

I went up to the North Pole.

I went under that ice cap
in a nuclear submarine

that surfaced through the ice
like this.

Since they started
patrolling in 1957,

they have gone under the ice

and measured with their
radar looking upwards

to measure how thick it is

because they can
only surface in areas

where it's three and a half
feet thick or less.

So they have kept
a meticulous record

and they wouldn't release it
because it was
national security.

I went up there
in order to persuade them
to release it, and they did.

And here's what
that record shows.

Starting in 1970, there was
a precipitous drop-off

in the amount and extent
and thickness
of the Arctic ice cap.

It has diminished
by 40 percent in 40 years.

And there are now
two major studies showing

that within the next
50 to 70 years,

in summertime
it will be completely gone.

Now, you might say,
"Why is that a problem?"

And "How could
the Arctic ice cap
actually melt so quickly?"

When the sun's rays
hit the ice,

more than 90 percent of it
bounces off right back
into space like a mirror.

But when it hits
the open ocean, more than
90 percent of it is absorbed.

And so, as the surrounding
water gets warmer,

it speeds up
the melting of the ice.

Right now, the Arctic ice cap
acts like a giant mirror.

All the sun's rays bounce off,
more than 90 percent.

It keeps the earth cooler.

But as it melts

and the open ocean receives
that sun's energy instead,

more than 90 percent
is absorbed.

So there is a faster
buildup of heat here,

at the North Pole,
in the Arctic Ocean,

and the Arctic generally
than anywhere else
on the planet.

That's not good for
creatures like polar bears
who depend on the ice.

A new scientific study
shows that

for the first time
they're finding polar bears
that have actually drowned,

swimming long distances,
up to 60 miles,
to find the ice.

And they didn't
find that before.

But what does it mean to us?

To look at a vast expanse
of open water

at the top of our world
that used to be
covered by ice.

We ought to care a lot

because it has
planetary effects.

The earth's climate
is like a big engine
for redistributing heat

from the equator to the poles.

And it does that by means
of ocean currents
and wind currents.

They tell us,
the scientists do,

that the earth's climate
is a nonlinear system.

Just a fancy way
they have of saying

that the changes are not
all just gradual.

Some of them come suddenly,
in big jumps.

On a worldwide basis,
the annual average
temperature is

about 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

If we have an increase
of five degrees,

which is on the low end
of the projections,

look at how that translates
globally.

That means an increase of only
one degree at the equator,

but more than 12 degrees
at the pole.

And so all those wind
and ocean current patterns

that have formed since
the last ice age and
have been relatively stable,

they're all up in the air
and they change.

And one of the ones
they're most worried about,

where they've
spent a lot of time, uh,
studying the problem,

is in the North Atlantic

where the Gulf Stream comes up
and meets the cold winds

coming off the Arctic
over Greenland.

And that evaporates
so that the heat
out of the Gulf Stream

and the steam is carried over
to Western Europe

by the prevailing winds
and the earth's rotation.

But isn't it interesting that
the whole ocean current system

is all linked together
in this loop?

They call it the
ocean conveyor.

And the red are
the warm surface currents.

The Gulf Stream is
the best known of them.

But the blue represent
the cold currents

running in the opposite
direction,

and we don't see them at all
because they run along
the bottom of the ocean.

Up in the North Atlantic,
after that heat is pulled out,

what's left behind is
colder water and saltier water

because the salt
doesn't go anywhere.

And so that makes it
denser and heavier.

And so that cold, dense,
heavy water sinks

at the rate of five billion
gallons per second.

And then that pulls
that current back south.

At the end of
the last ice age,

as the last glacier was
receding from North America,

the ice melted
and a giant pool
of fresh water

formed in North America.

And the Great Lakes
are the remnants
of that huge lake.

An ice dam
on the eastern border
formed and one day it broke.

And all that fresh water
came rushing out,

ripping open
the St. Lawrence there,

and it diluted the salty,
dense, cold water,

made it fresher and lighter,
so it stopped sinking.

And that pump

(SNAPS FINGERS)
shut off.

And the heat transfer stopped.

And Europe went back into
an ice age for another
900 to 1,000 years.

And the change from conditions
like we have here today

to an ice age

took place in perhaps
as little as 10 years' time.

So that's a sudden jump.

Now, of course that's
not gonna, uh, happen again

because the glaciers
of North America
are not there, and...

Is there any other
big chunk of ice
anywhere near there?

Oh, yeah.

We'll come back to that one.

It's extremely frustrating
to me

to--to communicate
over and over again,
as clearly as I can.

And we are still, by far,

the worst contributor
to the problem.

And I look around

and look for really
meaningful signs

that we're about
to really change.

I don't see it right now.

REAGAN: A number
of very reputable scientists
have said

that
one factor of air pollution

is oxides of nitrogen
from decaying vegetation.

This is what causes the haze
that gave the big Smoky
Mountains their name.

Thank you very much, okay.

This guy is so far off
in the environmental extreme,

we'll be up to our neck
in owls and out of work
for every American.

This guy is crazy.

Even if humans were causing
global warming,
and--and we are not,

this could be maybe
the greatest hoax
ever perpetrated

on the American people.

INHOFE: We're dealing
with something
that's highly emotional.

GORE: If an issue is not

on the tips of their
constituents' tongues,

it's easy for them
to ignore it.

To say, "Well, we'll deal
with that tomorrow."

So the same phenomena
of changing all these patterns

is also affecting the seasons.

Here is a study
from the Netherlands.

The peak arrival date
for migratory birds

25 years ago was April 25th,

and their chicks hatched
on June the 3rd.

Just at the time
when the caterpillars
were coming out.

Nature's, uh, plan.

But 20 years of warming later,

the caterpillars peaked
two weeks earlier,

and the chicks tried
to catch up with it,
but they couldn't.

And so, they're in trouble.

And there are millions
of ecological niches

that are affected
by global warming
in just this way.

This is the number of days
with frost in Southern
Switzerland

over the last 100 years.

It has gone down rapidly.
But now watch this.

This is the number
of invasive exotic species

that have rushed in
to fill the new ecological
niches that are opening up.

That's happening here
in the United States, too.

You've heard
of the pine beetle problem?

Those pine beetles used to be
killed by the cold winters,

but there are fewer days
of frost,

and so the pine trees
are being devastated.

This is part of
14 million acres
of spruce trees in Alaska

that have been
killed by bark beetles.
The exact same phenomenon.

There are cities
that were founded

because they were just above
the mosquito line.

Nairobi is one,
Harare is another.
There are plenty of others.

Now the mosquitoes,
with warming, are
climbing to higher altitudes.

There are a lot of vectors
for infectious diseases
that are worrisome to us

that are also
expanding their range.

Not only mosquitoes,
but all of these others
as well.

And we've had 30 so-called
new diseases

that have emerged just
in the last quarter century.

And a lot of them, like SARS,
have caused tremendous
problems.

The resistant forms
of tuberculosis.
There are others.

And there's been
a re-emergence
of some diseases

that were once under control.

The avian flu, of course,
quite a serious matter,
as you know.

West Nile Virus.

It came to the eastern shore
of Maryland in 1999.

Two years later,
it was across the Mississippi.

And two years after that,
it had spread
across the continent.

But these are
very troubling signs.

Coral reefs
all over the world,

because of global warming
and other factors,

are bleaching
and they end up like this.

And all the fish species
that depend on the coral reefs

are also in jeopardy
as a result.

Overall, species loss
is now occurring

at a rate 1,000 times
greater than the natural
background rate.

This brings me to the second
canary in the coal mine.

Antarctica.

The largest mass of ice
on the planet by far.

A friend of mine said in 1978,

"If you see the
breakup of ice shelves
along the Antarctic peninsula,

"watch out,

"because that should be seen
as an alarm bell
for global warming."

And actually, if you look
at the peninsula up close,

every place where you see
one of these green blotches
here

is an ice shelf larger
than the state of Rhode Island

that has broken up just
in the last 15 to 20 years.

I want to focus
on just one of them.

It's called Larsen B.

I want you to look
at these black pools here.

It makes it seem
almost as if we're
looking through the ice

to the ocean beneath.
But that's an illusion.

This is melting water
that forms in pools,

and if you were flying over it
in a helicopter,

you'd see it's 700 feet tall.

They are so majestic,
so massive.

In the distance
are the mountains
and just before the mountains

is the shelf
of the continent, there.

This is floating ice,

and there's land-based ice
on the down slope
of those mountains.

From here to the mountains
is about 20 to 25 miles.

Now they thought this would be
stable for at least 100 years,

even with global warming.

The scientists who study
these ice shelves

were absolutely astonished

when they were looking
at these images.

Starting on January 31, 2002

in a period of 35 days,

this ice shelf
completely disappeared.

They could not figure out
how in the world
this happened so rapidly.

And they went back
to try to figure out
where they'd gone wrong.

And that's when they
focused on those pools
of melting water.

But even before
they could figure out
what had happened there,

something else
started going wrong.

When the floating
sea-based ice cracked up,

it no longer held back
the ice on the land,

and the land-based ice
then started falling
into the ocean.

It was like letting the cork
out of a bottle.

And there's a difference
between floating ice
and land-based ice.

That's like the difference
between an ice cube
floating in a glass of water,

which when it melts
doesn't raise the level
of water in the glass,

and a cube that's sitting atop
a stack of ice cubes

which melts and flows
over the edge.

That's why the citizens
of these Pacific nations

have all had to evacuate
to New Zealand.

But I want to focus
on West Antarctica

because it illustrates two
factors about land-based ice
and sea-based ice.

It's a little of both.
It's propped up
on tops of islands,

but the ocean comes up
underneath it.

So as the ocean gets warmer,
it has an impact on it.

If this were to--to go,

sea level worldwide
would go up 20 feet.

They've measured disturbing
changes on the underside
of this ice sheet.

It's considered relatively
more stable, however,

than another big body of ice
that's roughly the same size.

Greenland would also raise
sea level almost 20 feet

if it went.

A friend of mine just
brought back some pictures

of what's going on
on Greenland right now.

Dramatic changes.
These are the same
kinds of pools

that formed here,
on this ice shelf
in Antarctica.

And the scientists thought

that when that water
seeped back into the ice,
it would just refreeze.

But they found out
that actually what happens

is that it just
keeps on going.
It tunnels to the bottom

and makes the ice
like Swiss cheese,

sort of like termites.

This shows what happens
to the crevasses,

and when lakes form,
they create
what are called moulins.

The water goes down
to the bottom

and it lubricates
where the ice
meets the bedrock.

See these people here
for scale.

This is not on the edge
of Greenland,

this is in the middle
of the ice mass.

This is a massive
rushing torrent

of fresh melt water

tunneling straight down
through the Greenland ice

to the bedrock below.

Now, to some extent,
there has always been
seasonal melting

and moulins have formed
in the past, but not like now.

In 1992, they measured
this amount of melting
in Greenland.

Ten years later,
this is what happened.

And here is the melting
from 2005.

Tony Blair's scientific
advisor has said that

because of what's happening
in Greenland right now,

the maps of the world
will have to be redrawn.

If Greenland broke up
and melted,

or if half of Greenland
and half of West Antarctica

broke up and melted,

this is what would happen
to the sea level in Florida.

This is what would happen
to San Francisco Bay.

A lot of people
live in these areas.

The Netherlands,
one of the low countries.

Absolutely devastating.

The area around Beijing
that's home to tens
of millions of people.

Even worse, in the area
around Shanghai,

there are 40 million people.

Worse still, Calcutta,
and to the east, Bangladesh,

the area covered includes
60 million people.

Think of the impact
of a couple hundred
thousand refugees

when they're displaced
by an environmental event.

And then imagine the impact
of a hundred million or more.

Here's Manhattan.

This is the World Trade Center
memorial site.

And after the horrible
events of 9/11,

we said, "Never again."

But this is what would happen
to Manhattan.

They can measure
this precisely,

just as the scientists could
predict precisely

how much water would breach
the levees in New Orleans.

The area where the
World Trade Center Memorial
is to be located

would be underwater.

Is it possible that we should
prepare against other threats
besides terrorists?

Maybe we should be concerned
about other problems as well.

1.3 billion people.

An economy that's surging.

More and more energy needs.

Massive coal reserves.

The coal belt
in Northern China,

er, Inner Mongolia.
Right.

Then there's Shaanxi province.
Uh-huh.

And also biggest
coal mine here.
Up here.

Yeah.
Now, is that
an open pit mine?

Yes.
Yes.

GORE:
Every time I've visited China,

I've learned from their
scientists. They're
right on the cutting edge.

Give me some sense
of the numbers of

new coal fire
generating plants.

Well, I have to say
that the number is enormous

because it's so profitable.

GORE: This issue is really
the same for China
as it is for the US.

We are both using
old technologies that are
dirty and polluting.

...more flooding
and more drought

and stronger storms
is going up,

and global warming
is implicated in the pattern.

And if you were to give some
suggestions to everybody here

about, like, what we can do
for the, um, situation now.

Separating the truth
from the fiction

and the accurate connections
from the misunderstandings

is part of what
you learn here.

But when the warnings
are accurate and based
on sound science,

then we as human beings,
whatever country we live in,

have to find
a way to make sure

that the warnings are heard
and responded to.

We both have a hard time
shaking loose
the familiar patterns

that we've relied on
in the past.

We both face completely
unacceptable consequences.

(FLASHBULBS POPPING)

(PEOPLE CHEERING)

(READING)

And there are three factors
that are causing
this collision,

and the first is population.

When my generation,
the baby boom generation,
was born after World War II,

the population had just
crossed the two billion mark.

Now, I'm in my 50s,

and it's already gone to
almost six and a half billion.

And if I reach
the demographic expectation
for the baby boomers,

it'll go over nine billion.

So if it takes
10,000 generations
to reach two billion

and then in one
human lifetime, ours,

it goes from two billion
to nine billion,

something
profoundly different's
going on right now.

We're putting more pressure
on the earth.

Most of it's in the poorer
nations of the world.

This puts pressure
on food demand.

It puts pressure
on water demand.

It puts pressure on vulnerable
natural resources,

and this pressure's
one of the reasons

why we have seen
all the devastation
of the forest,

not only tropical,
but elsewhere.

It is a political issue.

This is the border
between Haiti and the
Dominican Republic.

One set of policies here,
another set of policies here.

Much of it comes not only
because of cutting,
but--but also burning.

Almost 30 percent of all
the CO2 that goes up each year
into the atmosphere

comes from forest burning.

This is a time-lapse picture
of the earth at night
over a six-month period

showing the lights
of the cities in white

and the burning forests
and brush fires in red.

The yellow areas
are the gas flares,
like these in Siberia.

And that brings me
to the second factor

that has transformed
our relationship to the earth.

The scientific and
technological revolution
is a great blessing,

in that it has given us
tremendous benefits

in areas like medicine
and communications.

But this new power
that we have also
brings a responsibility

to think about
its consequences.

Here's a formula
to think about.

Old habits plus old technology
have predictable consequences.

Old habits that are
hard to change
plus new technology

can have dramatically
altered consequences.

Warfare with spears
and bows and arrows

and rifles and machine guns,
that's one thing.

But then
a new technology came.

(EXPLOSION RUMBLING)

We have to think
differently about war

because the new technologies
so completely transformed

the consequences
of that old habit

that we can't just
mindlessly continue
the patterns of the past.

In the same way,
we have always exploited
the earth for sustenance.

For most of our existence,
we used relatively
simple tools.

The plow, the tractor.

But even tools like shovels
are different now.

Shovel used to be this.

Shovels have gotten bigger.

And every year,
they get more powerful.

So our ability to have
an effect, in this case
on the surface of the earth,

is utterly transformed.

You can say, uh, the
same thing about irrigation,
which is a great thing.

But when we divert rivers
without considering
the consequences,

then sometimes
rivers no longer
reach the sea.

There were two rivers
in Central Asia

that were used by the former
Soviet Union for irrigating
cotton fields unwisely.

The Aral Sea
was fed by them.

It used to be
the fourth largest inland sea
in the world.

When I went there,
I saw this strange sight

of an enormous fishing fleet
resting in the sand.

This is the canal
that the fishing industry
desperately tried to build

to get to the receding
shoreline.

Making mistakes in our
dealings with nature can have

bigger consequences now

because our technologies
are often bigger
than the human scale.

When you put them
all together, they've
made us a force of nature.

And this is also
a political issue.

This is a computer map
of the world

that distorts to show
the relative contributions
to global warming.

In our country, we are
responsible for more than
all of South America,

all of Africa,
all of the Middle East,

all of Asia, all combined.

The per capita average
in Africa, India, China,
Japan, EU, Russia.

There's where we are.
Way, way above everyone else.

If you take
population into account,
it's a little bit different.

China's playing a bigger role,
so is Europe.

But we are still by all odds
the largest contributor.

And so it is up to us to look
at how we think about it,

because our way of thinking
is the third and final factor

that transforms
our relationship to the earth.

(CROAKING)
If a frog jumps into, uh,
a pot of boiling water,

it jumps right out again
because it senses the danger.

But the very same frog,

if it jumps into a pot
of lukewarm water

that is slowly
brought to a boil,

will just sit there
and it won't move.

It'll just sit there,
even as the temperature
continues to go up and up.

It'll stay there, until...
Until it's rescued.

(LAUGHTER)
It's important
to rescue the frog.

(APPLAUSE)

But the point is this.

Our collective nervous system
is like that frog's
nervous system.

It takes a sudden jolt
sometimes before we
become aware of a danger.

If it seems gradual,
even if it really is
happening quickly,

we're capable
of just sitting there
and not responding.

And not reacting.

I don't remember a time
when I was a kid

when summertime didn't mean
working with tobacco.

It was just...
I used to love it.
It was during that period

when working with
the guys on the farm

seemed like fun to me.

Starting in 1964, with the
Surgeon General's report,

the evidence was laid out
on the connection

between smoking cigarettes
and lung cancer.

We kept growing tobacco.

Nancy was, uh, almost 10 years
older than me,

and there were only
the two of us.

She was my protector

and my friend
at the same time.

She started smoking
when she was a teenager

and, uh, never stopped.

She died of lung cancer.

That's one of the ways
you don't want to die.

The idea that, uh, we had been

part of that economic pattern

that produced the cigarettes,

that produced the cancer,

it was so...

It was so painful
on so many levels.

My father, he had grown
tobacco all his life.
He stopped.

Whatever explanation

had seemed
to make sense in the past,
just didn't cut it anymore.

He stopped it.

It's just human nature
to take time to connect
the dots. I know that.

But I also know
that there can be
a day of reckoning

when you wish
you had connected
the dots more quickly.

There are three
misconceptions in particular
that bedevil our thinking.

First, isn't there a
disagreement among scientists

about whether the problem
is real or not?

Actually, not really.

There was a massive study
of every scientific article

in a peer-reviewed journal
written on global warming
for the last 10 years.

And they took a big sample
of 10 percent, 928 articles.

And you know the number
of those that disagreed
with the scientific consensus

that we're causing
global warming and
that it's a serious problem?

Out of the 928, zero.

The misconception that there's
disagreement about the science

has been deliberately
created by a relatively
small group of people.

One of their internal memos
leaked.

And here's, uh, what it said,
according to the press.

Their objective is to
reposition global warming

as theory rather than fact.

This has happened before.

(LAUGHTER)

After the Surgeon General's
report.

One of their memos
leaked 40 years ago.
Here's what they said.

"Doubt is our product,

"since it is the best means
of creating a controversy
in the public's mind."

But have they succeeded?

You'll remember
that there were 928
peer-reviewed articles.

Zero percent disagreed
with the consensus.

There was another study
of all the articles
in the popular press.

Over the last 14 years,
they looked at a sample
of 636.

More than half of them said,

"Well, we're not sure.
It could be a problem,
may not be a problem."

So no wonder
people are confused.

(TELEPHONE RINGING)

Hey.

What did you find out?

Working for who?

Chief of Staff?

I'm gonna...

That's the White House
environment office.

American Petroleum Institute.
It's fair to say
that's oil and--

and the oil and gas lobby.

Is that fair?

Totally fair.

Do a little bit more and see,
uh, who his clients were?

So he was defending
the Exxon Valdez thing.

Mmm-hmm.

Uh, very. Thank you.

GORE: Scientists have
an independent obligation

to respect and present
the truth as they see it.

Why do you directly
contradict yourself

in the testimony
you're giving about
this scientific question?

The last paragraph
in that section was not
a paragraph which I wrote.

That was added
to my testimony.

If they force you to change
a scientific conclusion,

it's a form of science fraud
by them.

You know, in the Soviet Union,
ordering scientists

to change their studies
to conform
with the ideology...

GORE: I've seen scientists

who were persecuted,

ridiculed,

deprived of, uh, jobs, income,

simply because the facts
they discovered

led them to
an inconvenient truth

that they insisted on telling.

He worked for the
American Petroleum Institute.

And in January of 2001,

he was put by
the president in charge
of environmental policy.

He received a memo
from the EPA

that warned
about global warming

and he edited.
He has no scientific training
whatsoever.

But he took it upon himself
to overrule the scientist.

I said, "I want to see
what this guy's handwriting
looks like."

This is the memo from the EPA.
These are his actual
pen strokes.

He says,
"No, you can't say this.
This is just speculation."

This was embarrassing
to the White House,

so this fellow resigned
a few days later.

And the day after he resigned,
he went to work
for Exxon Mobil.

You know,
more than 100 years ago,
Upton Sinclair wrote this.

That it's difficult
to get a man to
understand something

if his salary depends upon
his not understanding it.

The second misconception.

Do we have to choose
between the economy
and the environment?

This is a big one.

Lot of people say we do.

I was trying to convince, uh,
the previous administration,

the first Bush administration,
to go to the Earth Summit.

And they organized
a big White House conference

to say,
"Oh, we're on top of this."

And one of these view graphs
caught my attention.

And I want to talk to you
about it for a minute.

Now here is, uh, the choice
that we have to make

according to this group.

We have here
a--a scale that balances
two different things.

On one side,
we have gold bars.

Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Don't they look good?

I'd just like to have
some of those gold bars.

Mmm. Mmm.

On--On the other side
of the scales, uh,
the entire planet.

Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm.

I think this is a false choice
for two reasons.

Number one,
if we don't have a planet...

(LAUGHTER)

The other reason is that
if we do the right thing,

then we're gonna create
a lot of wealth

and we're gonna create
a lot of jobs.
WOMAN: Yes.

Because doing the right thing
moves us forward.

I've probably given this
slide show 1,000 times.

I would say,
at least 1,000 times.

Nashville to Knoxville
to Aspen and Sundance.

Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Portland, Minneapolis.

Boston, New Haven, London,
Brussels, Stockholm, Helsinki,

Vienna, Munich,
Italy and Spain

and China, South Korea, Japan.

Thank you.

I guess the thing I've spent
more time on than anything
else in this slide show

is trying to identify

all those things
in people's minds

that serve as obstacles
to them understanding this.

A-And whenever I feel like
I've identified an obstacle,

I try to take it apart,
roll it away. Move it.

Demolish it, blow it up.

I set myself a goal.

Communicate this real clearly.

The only way I know to do it

is city by city,

person by person,

family by family.

GORE: Bye-bye.
Thank you again.
WOMAN: Bye.

GORE: And I have faith
that pretty soon

enough minds are changed

that we cross a--a threshold.

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, uh,
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,
11 years from now

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.

(CHEERING)

MAN: Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Al Gore.

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."

(HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING)

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.

** (I NEED TO WAKE UP
BY MELISSA ETHERIDGE PLAYING)

* Have I been sleeping? *

* I've been so still,
afraid of crumbling *

* Have I been careless? *

* Dismissing all the
distant rumblings *

* Take me where
I am supposed to be *

* To comprehend the things
that I can't see *

* 'Cause I need to move *

* I need to wake up *

* I need to change *

* I need to shake up *

* I need to speak out *

* Something's got to
break up *

* I've been asleep *

* And I need to wake up *

* Now *

* And as a child *

* I danced like it was 1999 *

* My dreams were wild *

* That the promise of this
new world would be mine *

* Now I am throwing off
the carelessness of youth *

* To listen to
an inconvenient truth *

* That I need to move *

* I need to wake up *

* I need to change *

* I need to shake up *

* I need to speak out *

* Something's got to
break up *

* I've been asleep *

* And I need to wake up *

* Now *

* I am not an island *

* I am not alone *

* I and my intentions *

* Trapped here
in this flesh and bone*

* And I need to move *

* I need to wake up *

* I need to change *

* I need to shake up *

* I need to speak out *

* Something's got to
break up *

* I've been asleep *

* And I need to wake up *

* Now *

* I wanna to change *

* I need to shake up *

* I need to speak out *

* Oh, something's
gotta break up *

* I've been asleep *

* And I need to wake up *

* Now *

* I've been asleep *

* I need to wake up **