Gore Urges Climate-Change Action Regardless of U.S.
By Kim Chipman and Gemma Daley
Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore urged countries to aggressively move ahead on a new global climate change treaty in the face of opposition from his home country.
Nations pushing to set tough new mandatory limits on global warming pollution must ``find the grace to navigate around this enormous obstacle,'' Gore told delegates on the Indonesian island of Bali at United Nations-sponsored talks on climate change.
Gore's criticism of the U.S. received applause from delegates. The Bush administration's refusal to accept specific emissions-reduction targets is spurring division at the UN talks, with the European Union and China insisting on targets. The Bali meeting is aimed at starting negotiations for a climate accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.
``I'm not an official of the U.S. and not bound by official niceties,'' said Gore, 59, who earlier this week received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising awareness of climate change. ``I'm going to speak an inconvenient truth: my own country --the U.S. -- is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali.''
Gore urged delegates to move past their anger at the U.S. and forge ahead with the understanding that Bush will be leaving office in almost a year. A new administration, whether Democrat or Republican, probably will embrace more climate-friendly policies, he said.
`Blank Space'
``Do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large, open, blank space in your document and put a footnote by it,'' Gore said. Negotiators should write: ``This doc is incomplete, but we are going to move forward anyway.''
Gore also stressed that mandatory emissions targets must be part of a climate treaty that takes effect in 2010, two years before the current pact expires.
``We can't afford to wait another five years to replace Kyoto,'' Gore said, adding that some scientists say the world may have less than 10 years to start curbing emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.
Gore cited recent floods throughout Africa, fires in the U.S., droughts in Australia and ``massive flooding'' in Mexico, unexpected melting in Antarctica and the disappearing polar ice cap as signs of what he calls a ``planetary emergency.''
``That phrase still sounds shrill to some ears but it's deadly accurate,'' Gore said. ``These and other challenges are getting more difficult to ignore.''
Climate Research
More than a century of climate change research, including this year's findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, says that the burning of fossil fuels through cars, power plants and other human activities is causing the world's temperatures and sea levels to rise.
The IPCC said earlier this year that humans are very likely contributing to climate change, and the planet's warming emissions must peak in 2015 and then begin to decline to avoid large scale, irreversible climate shifts.
``Why haven't we yet reacted?'' Gore asked. He later compared what he considers the passivity of some nations in the face of the ``climate crisis'' to world leaders in 1938 who didn't take seriously the threat of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Gore's appearance at the UN climate talks put him back in a familiar arena. As former President Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore spearheaded efforts to persuade countries to reach agreement on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which came close to collapsing several times.
Gore's Influence
``When Gore came to Kyoto as vice president, he gave a speech that turned the negotiations around,'' David Doniger, former head of climate policy at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, said in an interview after Gore's speech today.
``He also did a lot of work in the back rooms that turned the negotiations around, and I think he's doing that again,'' said Doniger, now policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. ``I'm sure he's working face- to-face in the back rooms to give people the fortitude and the courage to do this.''
The UN meeting, which is set to end tomorrow, has attracted politicians including Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spoke in Bali today.
Shifting Attitudes
Like Gore, Bloomberg stressed the shifting attitudes in the U.S. toward climate change, exemplified by legislation in Congress to cap national carbon emissions. The climate bill was approved by a Senate committee last week.
``The fact that our Congress is seriously debating cap-and- trade legislation shows just how far America has come in just the last year,'' Bloomberg said in a speech at a Bali event sponsored by Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group.
Bloomberg called for ``robust public debate'' on caps and a tax on all U.S. oil, natural gas and coal producers to encourage reduced use of fuels that contribute the most to air pollution and global warming. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, at kchipman@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: December 13, 2007 11:55 EST
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