The Case for Optimism on Climate Change,by Al Gore, Founder and Chairman of The Climate Reality Project
I'm going to propose three questions, and the answer to the first one necessarily involves a little bad news. But — hang on, because the answers to the second and third questions really are very positive.
So the first question is, "Do we really have to change?"
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[image] As this picture illustrates, the sky is not the vast and limitless expanse that appears when we look up from the ground. It is a very thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet.
That right now is the open sewer for our industrial civilization as it's currently organized. We are spewing 110 million tons of heat-trapping global warming pollution into it every 24 hours, free of charge, go ahead.
And there are many sources of the greenhouse gases, I'm certainly not going to go through them all. I'm going to focus on the main one, but agriculture is involved, diet is involved, population is involved. Management of forests, transportation, the oceans, the melting of the permafrost.
But I'm going to focus on the heart of the problem, which is the fact that we still rely on dirty, carbon-based fuels for 85 percent of all the energy that our world burns every year.
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Fourteen of the 15 hottest years ever measured with instruments have been in this young century. The hottest of all was last year. Last month was the 371st month in a row warmer than the 20th-century average.
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The warmer oceans are evaporating much more water vapor into the skies. Average humidity worldwide has gone up more than four percent. And it creates these atmospheric rivers. The Brazilian scientists call them "flying rivers." And they funnel all of that extra water vapor over the land where storm conditions trigger these massive record-breaking downpours.
This is from Montana. [image] Take a look at this storm last August as it moves over Tuscon, Arizona. [video] It literally splashes off the city. These downpours are really unusual.
Last July in Houston, Texas, it rained for two days, 162 billion gallons. That represents more than two days of the full flow of Niagara Falls in the middle of the city, which was, of course, paralyzed.
These record downpours are creating historic floods and mudslides. [video of a river-like flood] This one is from Chile last year. And you'll see that warehouse going by. There are oil tanker cars going by. This is from Spain last September [video of vehicles floating down a narrow street], you could call this the running of the cars and trucks, I guess.
Every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.
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The same extra heat pulls the soil moisture out of the ground and causes these deeper, longer, more pervasive droughts and many of them are underway right now. It dries out the vegetation and causes more fires in the western part of North America. There's certainly been evidence of that, a lot of them.
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The US Defense Department has long warned of consequences from the climate crisis, including food and water shortages and pandemic disease.
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We're in danger of losing 50 percent of all living species on Earth by the end of this century, and already land-based plants and animals are now moving toward the poles at an average rate of 15 feet per day.
Speaking of the North Pole, last December 29th, the same storm that caused historic flooding in the American Midwest raised temperatures at the North Pole 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, causing the thawing of the North in the middle of the long, dark, winter, polar night.
And when the land-based ice of the Arctic melts, it raises sea level.
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I was in Miami last fall during the supermoon, one of the highest high-tide days. And there were fish from the ocean swimming in some of the streets of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderale and Del Rey. And this happens regularly during the highest-tide tides now. Not with rain — they call it "sunny-day flooding." It comes up through the storm sewers.
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So the answer to the first question, "Must we change?" is "yes, we have to change." Second question, "Can we change?"
This is the exciting news!
The best projections in the world 16 years ago were that by 2010, the world would be able to install 30 gigawatts of wind capacity. We beat that mark by 14 and a half times over.
We see an exponential curve for wind installations now. We see the cost coming down dramatically.
Some countries — take Germany, an industrial powerhouse with a climate not that different from Vancouver's, by the way — one day last December got 81 percent of all its energy from renewable sources, mainly solar and wind.
A lot of countries are getting more than half on an averge basis.
More good news: storage, from batteries particularly, is now beginning to take off, because the cost has been coming down very dramatically to solve the intermittency problem.
With solar, the news is even more exciting! The best projections 14 years ago were that we would install one gigawatt per year by 2010. When 2010 came around, we beat that mark by 17 times over.
Last year, we beat it by 58 times over. This year, we're on track to beat it 68 times over.
We're going to win this. We are going to prevail.
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So the answer to the second question, "Can we change?" is clearly "Yes." And it's an ever-firmer "yes."
Last question, "Will we change?"
Paris really was a breakthrough. Some of the provisions are binding, and the regular reviews will matter a lot. But nations aren't waiting, they're going ahead.
China has already announced that starting next year, they're adopting a nation-wide cap and trade system. They will likely link up with the European Union.
The United States has already been changing. All of these coal plants [graphic] were proposed in the next 10 years and cancelled. All of these existing coal plants were retired. All of these coal plants have had their retirement announced. All of them. Cancelled.
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One of the greatest poets of the last century in the US, Wallace Stevens, wrote a line that has stayed with me: "After the final 'no,' there comes a 'yes,' and on that 'yes' the future world depends."
When the abolitionists started their movement, they met with 'no' after 'no' after 'no,' and then came a 'yes.' The Women's Suffrage and Women's Rights Movement met endless 'no's, until finally, there was a 'yes.' The Civil Rights Movement, the movement against apartheid, and more recently, the movement for gay and lesbian rights here in the United States and elsewhere. After the final 'no' comes a 'yes.'
When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is fore-ordained because of who we are as human beings, ninety-nine percent of us. That is where we are now, and it is why we're going to win this. We have everything we need.
Some still doubt that we have the will to act, but I say the will to act is itself a renewable resource. Thank you very much.
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from a February 2016 TED Talk in Vancouver, British Columbia