WORLD LEADERS should meet several times during 2009 to ensure the Copenhagen climate change summit next December produces a treaty to protect the planet, former US vice-president Al Gore said yesterday.
Referring to “sclerotic” political systems in the developed world, Mr Gore urged politicians to “focus clearly and unblinkingly” on the climate crisis, “rather than on spending so much time on OJ Simpson, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith”.
Our common home, the Earth, was in danger, he said.
“We cannot negotiate with the facts, we cannot negotiate with the truth about our situation or with the consequences of dumping 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere every 24 hours.”
Politicians could not “sit on their hands and do nothing” because climate change was ultimately a moral, even spiritual issue.
“It is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of future generations,” he said.
Mr Gore’s inspirational speech filled a large hall at the Poznan congress centre to overflowing with a rapturous audience of delegates, environmental activists and journalists, all of whom gave the Nobel laureate a prolonged standing ovation.
Mr Gore said this was “a moment of fateful decision” for countries all over the world.
“There is a sharp contrast between two notional rates of change – how soon is it to point of no return, on the one hand, and the slower rate at which these talks are proceeding.”
History, he said, would not “award us a good try – we will either succeed or we will fail”.
But he was hopeful that countries would “put pettiness aside to embrace a generational moral mission” and the “truth force” about which Mahatma Gandhi had spoken.
Mr Gore was cheered by environmentalists when he urged that the target of limiting CO2 in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm) should be reduced to the safer level of 350ppm. The steps to achieve either goal would be the same; all it needed was momentum.
Before travelling to Poznan, Mr Gore said he had gone to Chicago to meet US president-elect Barack Obama.
“He emphasised that the climate crisis would be a top priority . . . and said he would engage vigorously in these negotiations and help to lead the world,” said Mr Gore.
The former vice-president rejected claims that the global recession would make the task more difficult or that powerful business lobbies would prevent progress. Rather, there was an emerging consensus that a “green new deal” was the best stimulus.
He hailed progress in China, where $600 billion (€450 billion) is to be spent over the next two years on CO2 reduction initiatives, including “the biggest tree-planting programme the world has ever seen”. Brazil had also unveiled a plan to halt deforestation.
In the US, binding laws to reduce CO2 had been made in California and 884 US cities had embraced the principles of the Kyoto Protocol. And, to loud cheers, Mr Gore said several plans for new coalfired power stations had been scrapped due to public opposition.
“The road to Copenhagen is now clear,” he said. “To those who are fearful that it is too difficult to conclude this process with a new treaty by the deadline, which has been established one year from now, I say it can be done, it must be done, let’s finish the process.”
Mr Gore quoted at length from recent speeches by Mr Obama pledging an entirely new approach to climate change from that of the outgoing Bush administration, and ended his own speech with Mr Obama’s oft-repeated rallying call, “Yes we can”.