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Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech today at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. I live blogged the event here.
Headlines across the press, and the internet, focused on his proposal to move America to carbon neutrality by 2018. This attention is not without merit; the task of replacing our energy sources with clean technologies like wind, solar and geothermal, which in turn requires replacing the national grid, is similar in scale to Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System and Social Security -- watershed projects, each.
Gore compared his program to JFK's ambition to land a man on the moon. This comparison is helpful, not merely to the what-coulda-been Gore sentimentality, but to our understanding of the scope of his program.
I say this because Gore's proposal is not simply about energy, or the national grid. It was an argument that tried to reposition Americans' understanding of the growing climate crisis to the center of their mainstream concerns over national security, sovereignty and solvency, as well as personal well-being and independence.
Solving the climate crisis, Gore argued, is not merely about saving the climate, but about saving our American way of life.
He said so much in his opening remarks. "The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," Gore said, ending his opening paragraph. "And even more -- if more should be required -- the future of human civilization is at stake."
He then hit upon a series of mainstream concerns: the economy is slumping; gasoline prices are at historic highs; jobs are being outsourced; mortgages are troubled; the war in Iraq continues. Meanwhile, the climate is changing more rapidly than people thought -- a development that raises new national security concerns.
"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change," Gore said.
There's no question that the kind of transition Bush proposes will be immensely costly, resource intensive, and logistically complex in the extreme. Merely replacing the grid is a Gordian knot. But the solution is not to expect slow, incremental change to an immediate crisis, nor is it, as Gore suggested, to apply old, ineffectual solutions to new, awful problems.
Instead his suggestion was the transition to a low carbon economy will address the climate crisis as one in series of mainstream concerns. Climate solutions are, in this sense, a lynchpin that provide solutions and social benefits beyond those traditionally associated with the environment.
The crowd stood in ovation when he read this series of statements:
I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.
Our American way of life depends on the next 10 years being different than the previous 10. It's about our economy, our security, our public health, and our happiness.
But are Americans ready for climate change to enter their already crowded field of mainstream concerns?
As I pointed out yesterday, some polls suggest that while Americans concern over climate change is growing alongside a growing acceptance of human responsibility, there is little consensus regarding what policies the US should pursue. The suggestion is that while Americans are concerned, they are confused about what to do.
In response to a poll conducted recently in Britain -- which showed a surprising proportion of the population skeptical about global warming -- Phil Downing, the head of environment research for Ipsos MORI, the company that conducted the poll, put it well:
"People are broadly concerned, but not entirely convinced," said Downing. "Despite many attempts to broaden the environment movement, it doesn't seem to have become fully embedded as a mainstream concern." The same could easily be said about the American public.
And so my question is this: What will it take for our climate crisis -- and it is a crisis -- to keep up with established issues like Medicare, Social Security and national security?
I'm afraid that Milton Friedman may have been right when he said, "Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change."
Gore framed his speech today as though that were the case. His call to the American public was motivated, in his words, by a need to save our way of life. But most Americans don't yet believe that about climate change.
With that thought in mind, Gore may have contributed something in between a real policy and a vision. James Gustav Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry, put it this way in his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World:
When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
Unfortunately, bold solution to climate change still trade in the world of political idealism. We will have to wait another costly year, if not more, for politicians to accept Gore's challenge, if they ever do.
In the meantime, we are as Gore was as he stood, watching the Saturn 5 rocket lift Apollo 11 into the air with his father, almost forty years ago.
We are curious. And we are hopeful. But we -- as a nation -- are not yet certain.
(Note: photo courtesy of MatthewBradley. This photo is from another event.)
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