Transcript of Al Gore's speech
at the Sierra Summit, September 9, 2005

I know that you are deeply concerned, as I am, about the direction in which 
our country has been moving. About the erosion of social capital. About the 
lack of respect for a very basic principle, and that is that we, as 
Americans, have to put ourselves and our ability to seek out the truth 
because we know it will make us free. And then on the basis of truth, as we 
share it to the best of our abilities with one another, we act to try to 
form a more perfect union and provide for the general welfare and make this 
country worthy of the principles upon which it was founded.

My heart is heavy for another reason today, and many have mentioned this, 
but I want to tell you personally that my heart is heavy because of the 
suffering that the people of the gulf coast have been enduring. The losses 
that they've suffered in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New Orleans in 
particular, but other cities as well, and rural areas. We are here thinking 
of them, thinking as well of the many brave men and women who have exceeded 
the limits of exhaustion as they do their duty in responding to this crisis, 
to the families of those responders and the families of the victims.

When I received the invitation that you generously extended for me to come 
and speak to you, I did not at first accept, because I was trying to resolve 
a scheduling conflict. The Fifty State Insurance Commissioners were meeting 
in New Orleans, and asked me to speak about global warming and hurricanes.

I was supposed to be there today and tomorrow morning. And of course as we 
all watch this tragedy unfold, we had a lot of different thoughts and 
feelings. But then all those feelings were mixed in with puzzlement at why 
there was no immediate response, why there was not an adequate plan in 
place. We are now told that this is not a time to point fingers, even as 
some of those saying "don't point fingers" are themselves pointing fingers 
at the victims of the tragedy, who did not - many of whom could not - 
evacuate the city of New Orleans, because they didn't have automobiles, and 
they did not have adequate public transportation.

We're told this is not a time to hold our national government accountable 
because there are more important matters that confront us. This is not an 
either/or choice. They are linked together. As our nation belatedly finds 
effective ways to help those who have been so hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, 
it is important that we learn the right lessons of what has happened, lest 
we are spoon-fed the wrong lessons from what happened. If we do not absorb 
the right lessons, we are, in the historian's phrase, doomed to repeat the 
mistakes that have already been made. All of us know that our nation - all 
of us, the United States of America - failed the people of New Orleans and 
the gulf coast when this hurricane was approaching them, and when it struck. 
When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic floodwaters five 
days after a hurricane strikes, it is time not only to respond directly to 
the victims of the catastrophe but to hold the processes of our nation 
accountable, and the leaders of our nation accountable, for the failures 
that have taken place. [applause]

The Bible in which I believe, in my own faith tradition, says, "Where there 
is no vision, the people perish."

Four years ago in August of 2001, President Bush received a dire warning: 
"Al Qaeda determined to attack inside the US." No meetings were called, no 
alarms were sounded, no one was brought together to say, "What else do we 
know about this imminent threat? What can we do to prepare our nation for 
what we have been warned is about to take place?" If there had been 
preparations, they would have found a lot of information collected by the 
FBI, and CIA and NSA - including the names of most of the terrorists who 
flew those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon and the field in 
Pennsylvania. The warnings of FBI field offices that there were suspicious 
characters getting flight training without expressing any curiosity about 
the part of the training that has to do with landing. They would have found 
directors of FBI field offices in a state of agitation about the fact that 
there was no plan in place and no effective response. Instead, it was 
vacation time, not a time for preparation. Or protecting the American 
people.

Four years later, there were dire warnings, three days before Hurricane 
Katrina hit NOLA, that if it followed the path it was then on, the levees 
would break, and the city of New Orleans would drown, and thousands of 
people would be at risk. It was once again vacation time. And the 
preparations were not made, the plans were not laid, the response then was 
not forthcoming.
In the early days of the unfolding catastrophe, the President compared our 
ongoing efforts in Iraq to World War Two and victory over Japan. Let me cite 
one difference between those two historical events: When imperial Japan 
attacked us at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt did not invade Indonesia. 
[applause]

I personally believe that the very fact that there has been no 
accountability for the horrendous misjudgments and outright falsehoods that 
laid the basis for this horrible tragedy that we have ongoing in Iraq, the 
fact that there was no accountability for those mistakes, misjudgments and 
dissembling, is one of the principal reasons why there was no fear of being 
held accountable for a cavalier, lackluster, mistaken, inadequate response 
to the onrushing tragedy that was clearly visible - for those who were 
watching television, for those who were reading the news - what happened was 
not only knowable, it was known in advance, in great and painstaking detail. 
They did tabletop planning exercises, they identified exactly what the 
scientific evidence showed would take place. Where there is no vision, the 
people perish.

It's not only that there is no vision; it's that there has been a misguided 
vision. One of the principle philosophical guides for this administration 
has been the man who said famously that he wants to render the government of 
the United States so weak and helpless that you can drown it in a bathtub. 
There were warnings three years ago from the last director in the 
Clinton-Gore Administration of FEMA that FEMA was being rendered weak and 
helpless, unable to respond in the event of a catastrophe. The budget was 
cut, the resources sent elsewhere.

Carl [Pope] said he was embarrassed. The word is a tricky word. What did you 
feel after the invasion of Iraq when you saw American soldiers holding dog 
leashes attached to helpless prisoners, 99% of whom, by the way, were 
innocent of any connection to violence against our troops, much less 
terrorism - innocent prisoners who were being tortured in our name - what 
did you feel? I don't know the words. I don't know the words but I want you 
to draw a line connecting the feelings you had when you saw the visual 
images providing evidence that our soldiers, acting in our name, with our 
authority, were torturing helpless people and that it was a matter of policy 
- now, they pointed fingers at the privates and corporals that were in 
charge - but I want you to draw a line between the emotions that you felt 
when you absorbed that news, and the emotions that you felt over the last 
ten days when you saw those corpses in the water, when you saw people 
without food, water, medicine - our fellow citizens left helpless. And of 
course in both cases the story is complex and many factors are involved, but 
I want you draw a line connecting the feelings that you had then and now. 
And I want you to draw another line, connecting those responsible for both 
of those unbelievable tragedies that embarrassed our nation in the eyes of 
the world.

There are scientific warnings now of another onrushing catastrophe. We were 
warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda; we didn't respond. We were warned 
the levees would break in New Orleans; we didn't respond. Now, the 
scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue 
to get stronger because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published 
a study well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in 
both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in 
intensity, by about 50 %. The newscasters told us after Hurricane Katrina 
went over the southern tip of Florida that there was a particular danger for 
the Gulf Coast of the hurricanes becoming much stronger because it was 
passing over unusually warm waters in the gulf. The waters in the gulf have 
been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting warmer. And the 
pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have predicted for twenty 
years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most 
elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of 
humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string 
of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with 
the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn 
the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative 
warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and 
not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the 
face of those threats that are facing us right now. [applause]

The president says that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. 
He says that he is not ready to do anything meaningful to prepare us for a 
threat that he's not certain is real. He tells us that he believes the 
science of global warming is in dispute. This is the same president who said 
last week, "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break." It's 
important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work. 
And the uncertainty and lack of resolution, the willful misunderstanding of 
what the scientific community is saying, the preference for what a few 
supporters in the coal and oil industry - far from all, but a few - want him 
to do: ignore the science. That is a serious problem. The President talked 
about the analogies to World War II - let me give another analogy to World 
War II.

Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, 
provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the 
government then in power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was 
real, he said, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, 
resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all 
powerful to be impotent." He continued, "The era of procrastination, of half 
measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a 
close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

Ladies and gentlemen, the warnings about global warming have been extremely 
clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is 
deepening. We are entering a period of consequences. Churchill also said 
this, and he directed it at the people of his country who were looking for 
any way to avoid having to really confront the threat that he was warning of 
and asking them to prepare for. He said that he understood why there was a 
natural desire to deny the reality of the situation and to search for vain 
hope that it wasn't really as serious as some claimed it was. He said they 
should know the truth. And after the appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, he 
sad, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This only the first sip, 
the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by 
year - unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we 
rise again and take our stand for freedom."

It is time now for us to recover our moral health in America and stand again 
to rise for freedom, demand accountability for poor decisions, missed 
judgments, lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful denial of the 
obvious truth about serious and imminent threats that are facing the 
American people. [applause]

Abraham Lincoln said, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we 
must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act 
anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

We must disenthrall ourselves with the sound-and-light show that has 
diverted the attentions of our great democracy from the important issues and 
challenges of our day. We must disenthrall ourselves from the Michael 
Jackson trial and the Aruba search and the latest sequential obsession with 
celebrity trials or whatever relative triviality dominates the conversation 
of democracy instead of making room for us as free American citizens to talk 
with one another about our true situation, and then save our country. We 
must resist those wrong lessons.

Some are now saying, including in the current administration, that the 
pitiful response by government proves that we cannot ever rely on the 
government. They have in the past proposed more unilateral power for 
themselves as the solution for a catastrophe of their own creation, and we 
should not acquiesce in allowing them to investigate themselves and giving 
them more power to abuse and misuse, the way they have so recently done. The 
fact that an administration can't manage its own way out of a horse show 
doesn't mean that all government programs should be abolished. FEMA worked 
extremely well during the previous administration. [applause]

A hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to 
understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding." 
Here's what I think we here understand about Hurricane Katrina and global 
warming. Yes, it is true that no single hurricane can be blamed on global 
warming. Hurricanes have come for a long time, and will continue to come in 
the future. Yes, it is true that the science does not definitively tell us 
that global warming increases the frequency of hurricanes - because yes, it 
is true there is a multi-decadal cycle, twenty to forty years that 
profoundly affects the number of hurricanes that come in any single 
hurricane season. But it is also true that the science is extremely clear 
now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger, not only makes 
the winds stronger, but dramatically increases the moisture from the oceans 
evaporating into the storm - thus magnifying its destructive power - makes 
the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger.

Last year we had a lot of hurricanes. Last year, Japan set an all-time 
record for typhoons: ten, the previous record was seven. Last year the 
science textbooks had to be re-written. They said, "It's impossible to have 
a hurricane in the south Atlantic." We had the first one last year, in 
Brazil. We had an all-time record last year for tornadoes in the United 
States, 1,717 - largely because hurricanes spawned tornadoes. Last year we 
had record temperatures in many cities. This year 200 cities in the Western 
United States broke all-time records. Reno, 39 days consecutively above 100 
degrees.
The scientists are telling us that what the science tells them is that this 
- unless we act quickly and dramatically - that Tucson tied its all-time 
record for consecutive days above 100 degrees. this, in Churchill's phrase, 
is only the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by 
year until there is a supreme recover of moral health. We have to rise with 
this occasion. We have to connect the dots. When the Superfund sites aren't 
cleaned up, we get a toxic gumbo in a flood. When there is not adequate 
public transportation for the poor, it is difficult to evacuate a city. When 
there is no ability to give medical care to poor people, its difficult to 
get hospital to take refugees in the middle of a crisis. When the wetlands 
are turned over to the developers then the storm surges from the ocean 
threaten the coastal cities more. When there is no effort to restrain the 
global warming pollution gasses then global warming gets worse, with all of 
the consequences that the scientific community has warned us about.

My friends, the truth is that our circumstances are not only new; they are 
completely different than they have ever been in all of human history. The 
relationship between humankind and the earth had been utterly transformed in 
the last hundred years. We have quadrupled the population of our planet. The 
population in many ways is a success story. The demographic transition has 
been occurring more quickly than was hoped for, but the reality of our new 
relationship with the planet brings with it a moral responsibility to accept 
our new circumstances and to deal with the consequences of the relationship 
we have with this planet. And it's not just population. By any means, the 
power of the technologies now at our disposal vastly magnifies the average 
impact that individuals can have on the natural world. Multiply that by six 
and a half billion people, and then stir into that toxic mixture a mindset 
and an attitude that says its okay to ignore scientific evidence - that we 
don't have to take responsibility for the future consequences of present 
actions - and you get a collision between our civilization and the earth. 
The refugees that we have seen - I don't like that word when applied to 
American citizens in our own country, but the refugees that we have seen 
could well be the first sip of that bitter cup because sea-level rise in 
countries around the world will mobilize millions of environmental refugees. 
The other problems are known to you, but here is what I want to close with:

This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate 
or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings. It 
is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations. To rise to this new 
occasion. To see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented 
response that is now called for. To disenthrall ourselves, to shed the 
illusions that have been our accomplices in ignoring the warnings that were 
clearly given, and hearing the ones that are clearly given now.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. And Lincoln said at another 
moment of supreme challenge that the question facing the people of the 
United States of America ultimately was whether or not this government, 
conceived in liberty, dedicated to freedom, of the people, by the people, 
and for the people - or any government so conceived - would perish from this 
earth.
There is another side to this moral challenge. Where there is vision, the 
people prosper and flourish, and the natural world recovers, and our 
communities recover. The good news is we know what to do. The good news is, 
we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global 
warming. We have all the technologies we need, more are being developed, and 
as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, 
they will make it easier to respond. But we should not wait, we cannot wait, 
we must not wait, we have every thing we need - save perhaps political will. 
And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource. [sustained 
applause]
I know that you are debating as an organization and talking among yourselves 
about your own priorities. I would urge you to make global warming your 
priority. I would urge you to focus on a unified theme. I would urge you to 
work with other groups in ways that have not been done in the past, even 
though there have been Herculean efforts on your part and the part of 
others. I would urge you to make this a moral moment. To make this a moral 
cause.

There are those who would say that the problem is too big and we can't solve 
it. There are many people who go from denial to despair without pausing on 
the intermediate step of actually solving the problem. To those who say it's 
too big for us, I say that we have accepted and successfully met such 
challenges in the past. We declared our liberty, and then won it. We 
designed a country that respected and safeguarded the freedom of 
individuals. We freed the slaves. We gave women the right to vote. We took 
on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured great diseases, we have landed on the 
moon, we have won two wars in the Pacific and the Atlantic simultaneously. 
We brought down communism, we brought down apartheid, we have even solved a 
global environmental crisis before - the hole in the stratospheric ozone 
layer - because we had leadership and because we had vision and because 
people who exercise moral authority in their local communities empowered our 
nation's government "of the people by the people and for the people" to take 
ethical actions even thought they were difficult. This is another such time. 
This is your moment. This is the time for those who see and understand and 
care and are willing to work to say this time the warnings will not be 
ignored. This time we will prepare. This time we will rise to the occasion. 
And we will prevail. Thank you. Good luck to you, God bless you. [sustained 
applause]

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