By Tom Kleckner
GEORGETOWN, Texas — He came armed with his traveling slideshow, a sequel to his Oscar-winning documentary, homespun wisdom, and warnings of what human activity is doing to our planet.
And what better place than in Georgetown, Texas, a community north of Austin that last year became the first U.S. city to draw all its power from renewable resources, and where a local brewery proudly markets its beer as being produced with 100% wind power?
Al Gore, former vice president and current environmental activist, has drawn praise and scorn for his efforts to raise awareness of the threats posed by climate change. On Monday afternoon, speaking before the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Alliance’s GridNEXT conference, he pointed to Georgetown’s diminutive mayor, Republican Dale Ross, and thanked him for “spreading the gospel of renewable energy.”
Earlier this year, Ross had teased Gore about inventing the internet, saying he himself had invented green energy.
“You better be careful about that,” Gore kidded Ross at the conference. “What you said could be interpreted as being somewhat friendly to the environment.”
It was all in good fun. Both realize environmental concerns cross political lines.
“Congratulations, Georgetown,” Gore said. “You are really an amazing city, and others are joining you.”
The Need to Change
In delivering the first of two slideshow presentations Monday — he would repeat his performance that night in Houston at Rice University — Gore asked three questions:
- Do we really have to change?
- Can we change?
- Will we change?
Gore, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, is unequivocal about the need to change. He reeled off record temperatures that have scorched parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East in recent years. He showed videos of California wildfires, melting asphalt streets in India and raging floodwaters, all the result of climate change, he said.
“We can’t treat the world like an open sewer,” Gore said. “Every day we’re dumping 110 million tons of CO2 in the sky, and it traps heat.”
In fact, he said, humans are trapping as much heat as would be produced by 400 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs, leading to ocean warming that has produced global catastrophic rain events. He used Hurricane Harvey as an example, noting it crossed Gulf of Mexico waters that were 7 F warmer than normal as it blew up almost overnight into a major storm.
Most scientists agree there is a link between climate change and extreme weather, droughts, wildfire, famine and other socioeconomic upheavals. A 2006-2010 drought in Syria destroyed 60% of the country’s farmland, wiped out 80% of its livestock and forced 1.5 million refugees to move into the already crowded cities — events that many, including Gore, say led directly to civil war.
“There was a social explosion,” Gore said. “Some of these countries have trouble governing themselves just in the best of times. You overlay these extra burdens, and some of them just crack under the burden.
“The Defense Department has been warning about this,” he said. “It hasn’t mattered to the department whether the president in power is a Democrat or a Republican. For the last four administrations, the generals have been saying, ‘Hey, wake up folks! This is going to be an international crisis, because we’re going to have refugees, we’re going to have food shortages, we’re going to have water shortages, pandemic disease, so get ready for this.’”
Signs of Progress
The good news, Gore said, is that global carbon dioxide emissions have stayed flat three years in a row, and are likely to remain so again in 2017. He pointed to the closing of coal plants in the U.S., drawing applause from the friendly crowd when he updated a map to include Vistra Energy’s recent announced closures. (See Vistra Energy to Close 2 More Coal Plants.)
“We are shifting away from coal very, very rapidly,” Gore said.
“You want to get our economy growing? You want to make America great?” he asked. “Let’s build solar and wind plants, batteries and the renewable energy economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the single fastest-growing job in the country is wind turbine technician. There are 565 solar employers in Texas.”
Gore’s slides highlighted data showing the growth of wind and solar energy in Texas, currently the largest producer of wind power in the U.S. They also took note of China’s reduced of coal use, the growth of electric vehicles worldwide, and other initiatives that have slowed the release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
“We’re starting to see a decline [in global emissions], but we have to have a steep decline,” Gore said. “If we had started this 20 years ago, we could have skied down a bunny slope. Now, we gotta go down the double black diamond. It’s not going to be the easiest thing, but we have got to do it. We have to do it. We now know we can do it, but will we do it?”
Calling the Paris Agreement a “historic breakthrough,” Gore said the U.S. is still technically in the agreement, although it has joined with Syria as the only two countries not committed to the agreement. He pointed out that India and China, two of the world’s leading polluters, are on track to reach the commitments they have made in Paris.
So, too, he said, is the U.S., “regardless of what President Trump has announced.”
“With the commitment of cities like Georgetown and all the other cities that have made plans to do the same and follow Georgetown’s lead,” and with commitments made by “thousands” of business leaders, Gore said, “The U.S. is on track to exceed the commitments it made under the Paris agreement.”
Gore closed with a quote from Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Well Dressed Man With A Beard”:
“After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.”
“Every great social and technological advance that has bettered humanity has met with a lot of opposition and a lot of noes, but ultimately, we get to a yes,” Gore said. “Will we change? I believe we will. Will we change in time? I believe we will. And for those who believe we don’t have the political will, [remember] political will is a renewable resource.”
