Author News and Book Reports
Al Gore heats up discussion of climate change crisis
Acknowledging friends and colleagues in the audience, Nobel Prize-winning former U.S. Vice President Al Gore took the stage at the 2009 Miami Book Fair International eighteen years after his last appearance at the fair (to promote Earth In The Balance) and just two weeks before the critical Copenhagen Climate Summit, where he hoped an accord would be reached. Citing the 90 million tons of pollution humans put into the atmosphere every day, Gore detailed the extent of the climate change crisis and blasted the oil industry's opposition to solving the problem. In response to 'deniers' who argue there is no climate change crisis, Gore laid out an overview of overwhelming scientific evidence, warning that the perils of political delay in solving the problem could be catastrophic to civilization. After weighing the pros and cons of the major energy resource choices--solar, wind, coal, and oil, Gore pointed to the urgent need for a state-of-the-art supergrid to harvest and distribute solar and wind energy efficiently and examined prospects for geothermal energy solutions before tackling the more controversial alternative energy solutions, such as nuclear power and carbon capture/sequestration technologies. While emphasizing the impact of climate change on trees, soil, and farming, Gore also noted that the population explosion of the last century, during which time population quadrupled to over 6.5 billion people today, is stabilizing. Despite the powerful political, psychological, and business interests resisting the necessary changes, Gore concluded his appearance by expressing his optimism that the crisis can be solved with another kind of renewable energy--political willpower.
