"What Is Wrong With Us?"

By Albert Gore

If the steps needed to save the environment are well known and feasible, then why are they not taken? In a speech at the conference, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, one of the most ardent environmentalists in Congress, explored this crucial question. Excerpts from his remarks:

When I announced I was running for President, I said the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer and the global ecological crisis will, by the end of this election year, be recognized as the most serious issue facing this country and the world. Three days later, a George Will column ridiculed the naivete of a politician who could imagine that issues of this kind would be politically salable.

I guess he was partly right and partly wrong. I was right in that the issue has, during this year, attained enormous importance and new recognition. But he was right, since it didn't do me any good politically. There are still barriers to political action. Let me discuss five of them.

-- Number one, there are areas of uncertainty about the greenhouse effect and the dire nature of the ecological crisis we face, which are seized upon as excuses for inaction. This is a psychological problem common to all humanity. If strong responses are needed and yet there is some residual uncertainty about whether you are going to have to make those responses, the natural psychological tendency is to magnify the uncertainty and say, "Well, maybe we won't really have to face up to it."

But the fact that we face an ecological crisis without any precedent in historic times is no longer a matter of any dispute worthy of recognition. And those who, for the purpose of maintaining balance in debate, take the contrarian view that there is significant uncertainty about whether it's real are hurting our ability to respond.

-- The second barrier to political action is an unwillingness to believe that something so far outside the bounds of historical experience can, in fact, be occurring. To put it another way, this set of problems sounds like the plot of a bad science-fiction movie. People automatically assume it can't be real.

-- The third political barrier is the assumption that it will be easier and more sensible to adapt to whatever climate change occurs than it will be to prevent the crisis. But the change could come so swiftly that adaptation will be all but impossible.

-- The fourth barrier is the lack of widespread awareness among the peoples of the world about the nature of the problem. Most political leaders, let alone their public, are unaware of what is happening and how severe it is. That must be changed.

-- The fifth barrier to political action is the knowledge that many of the ultimate solutions are almost unimaginably difficult. And since they are harder than anything we have done before, and the efforts may all come to naught anyway, why mess with them? Why not conserve our energy and just not even try? That is a formidable barrier, not least because the solutions require international cooperation on a scale that is totally unprecedented in history.

Those five barriers must be overcome before the political system reacts. The role of leadership is critical in spreading awareness, in framing solutions, in offering a vision of the future we want to create, as well as a vision of the nightmare we wish to avoid.

There is an old science experiment in which a frog is put into a pan of water, and the water is slowly heated to the boiling point. The frog sits there and boils because its nervous system will not react to the gradual increase. But if you boil the water first and then put the frog in, it immediately jumps out.

We are at an environmental boiling point right now. Is the destruction of one football-field's worth of forest every second enough to make the frog react and jump out of the pan? What will it take? If, as in a science-fiction movie, we had a giant invader from space clomping across the rain forests of the world with football field-size feet -- going boom, boom, boom every second -- would we react? That's essentially what is going on right now.

We saw the two whales trapped in the Arctic ice, struggling for air, and the world responded. The U.S. and the Soviet Union cooperated. Yet we see 40,000 babies starving every day, and we don't react. What is wrong with us?

There used to be a debate in the '70s about appropriate technology. Now the question is: Did God choose an appropriate technology when he gave human beings dominion over the earth? The jury is still out. And the answer has to come in our lifetime from the political system.

There are precedents. We made human sacrifice, once commonplace, obsolete. We made slavery obsolete. These things, just like changes in weather patterns, took a long period of time. But now, just as climate changes are telescoped into a very short period of time, changes in human thinking of a magnitude comparable to the changes that brought about the abolition of slavery must take place in one generation.

We know how to solve the problem. It will be unimaginably difficult. The cooperation required will be unprecedented. But we know what to do. What is required is a change in thinking and a change in the equilibrium of the world's political system.

Right now the political equilibrium is characterized by short-term policies at the expense of long-term policies. It is characterized by actions to confer national advantage at the expense of actions designed to promote global advantage. It is characterized by preparations for war, ignorance and starvation.

Our challenge as political leaders is to come up with an agenda of solutions, which we are doing. But the larger challenge for all of us is to shift the world's political system into a new state of equilibrium, characterized by more cooperation, global agendas and a focus on the future. As General Omar Bradley said at the end of World War II, "It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of each passing ship."