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We Must Quickly Mobilize Our Civilization With The Urgency And Resolve That Has Previously Been Seen Only When Nations Mobilized For War. These Prior Struggles For Survival Were Won When Leaders Found Words At The 11th Hour That Released A Mighty Surge Of Courage, Hope And Readiness To Sacrifice For A Protracted And Mortal Challenge.

-Al Gore

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We Must Quickly Mobilize

Al Gore

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We Must Quickly Mobilize Our Civilization With The Urgency And Resolve That Has Previously Been Seen Only When Nations Mobilized For War. These Prior Struggles For Survival Were Won When Leaders Found Words At The 11th Hour That Released A Mighty Surge Of Courage, Hope And Readiness To Sacrifice For A Protracted And Mortal Challenge.

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[t]he Scientific Enterprise Will Never Be Completely Free Of Mistakes. What Is Important Is That The Overwhelming Consensus On Global Warming Remains Unchanged.

We Must Also Promote Global Access To The Internet. We Need To Bridge The Digital Divide Not Just Within Our Country. But Among Countries. Only By Giving People Around The World Access To This Technology Can They Tap Into The Potential. Of The Information Age.

Our Planet Has A Rising Fever. If The Crib Catches Fire You Don't Say: 'hmmm, How Fast Is That Crib Going To Burn? Has It Ever Burned Before? Is My Baby Flame Retardant?'

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The Struggle To Save The Global Environment Is In One Way Much More Difficult Than The Struggle To Vanquish Hitler, For This Time The War Is With Ourselves. We Are The Enemy, Just As We Have Only Ourselves As Allies.

I'm A Big Fan Of Bitcoin ... Regulation Of Money Supply Needs To Be Depoliticized.

The Survival Of The United States Of America As We Know It Is At Risk. And Even More — If More Should Be Required — The Future Of Human Civilization Is At Stake.

One Tragic Example Of The Loss Of Forests And Then Water Is Found In Ethiopia. The Amount Of Its Forested Land Has Decreased From 40 To 1 Percent In The Last Four Decades. Concurrently, The Amount Of Rainfall Has Declined To The Point Where The Country Is Rapidly Becoming A Wasteland.

My Parents Were True Believers In The Efficacy Of American Constitutional Democracy, And I Was Thoroughly Inculcated With Reverence For What We The People Are Capable Of Doing. The Complication In That Simple Narrative Is That As I Got Older, The Vietnam War Shook My Confidence In How Our Democracy Was Working. I Ended Up Serving In That War, But It Started With A Lie, And I Was Very Proud Of My Father For Being One Of Its Earliest Opponents.

Politics Has Become A Game Of Meaningless, Mindless Battles, Conducted By Unscrupulous Methods And People, Designed To Transform Even The Most Serious Policy Debates Into Sport.

The Task Of Saving The Earth's Environment Must And Will Become The Central Organizing Principle Of The Post-cold War World.

We Know That He Has Stored Secret Supplies Of Biological And Chemical Weapons Throughout His Country.

Mass Destruction

Junkies Find Veins In Their Toes When The Veins In Their Arms Collapse. Developing Tars Sands Is The Equivalent.

Co2 Is The Exhaling Breath Of Our Civilization, Literally... Changing That Pattern Requires A Scope, A Scale, A Speed Of Change That Is Beyond What We Have Done In The Past.

When It Comes To Climate, We Can All Make A Big Difference.

I Think That We Should Ban So-called Junk Guns. I Think We Should Ban Assault Weapons Like The Weapons Used Here [in Fort Worth], Yes. I Think That The Kinds Of Weapons That Have No Legitimate Use For Hunting Or The Kind Of Weapon That A Homeowner Would Use, I Think They Should Be Banned, Yes, Those Kind Of Weapons.

I Drive A Hybrid. Tipper And I Got A Lexus Hybrid. And We Have A Couple Of Priuses In The Family With Our Children. And I Encourage People To Make Environmentally Conscious Choices Because We All Have To Solve This Climate Crisis.

In A Time Of Darkness, You Don't Curse The Darkness, You Light A Candle.

Capitalism Is The Best Way Of Organizing Economic Activity For A Lot Of Reasons. It Unlocks A Higher Fraction Of Human Potential, It Balances Supply And Demand, It's More Consistent With Higher Levels Of Freedom. But The Way We're Pursuing It Now, Focuses On Such Short-term Horizons, That A Lot Of Businesses And Investors Are Tempted To Look At Investments In Terms Of What's Gonna Happen In The Next 90 Days, What's Gonna Happen In One Year. But The Old Phrase, "good Things Take Time," Is True Of Successful Businesses As Well.

The Heart Of The Security Agenda Is Protecting Lives, And We Now Know That The Number Of People Who Will Die Of Aids In The First Decade Of The 21st Century Will Rival The Number That Died In All The Wars In All The Decades Of The 20th Century.

As I Have Said For Many Years Throughout This Land, We're Borrowing Money From China To Buy Oil From The Persian Gulf To Burn It In Ways That Destroy The Future Of Human Civilization. Every Bit Of That Has To Change.

Surveillance Technologies Now Available - Including The Monitoring Of Virtually All Digital Information - Have Advanced To The Point Where Much Of The Essential Apparatus Of A Police State Is Already In Place.

...it Is Appropriate To Have An Over Representation Of Factual Presentations On How Dangerous It Is, As A Predicate For Opening Up The Audience To Listen To What The Solutions Are, And How Hopeful It Is That We Are Going To Solve This Crisis.

If The Only Tool We Use To Analyse What's Valuable Is A Price Tag, Then Those Things That Don't Have Price Tags Begin To Look Like They Have No Value.

The Center Of The Earth Is About A Million Degrees.

The Founders Of The U.s. Gave The Senators A Term Of Office Three Times Longer Than That Of A Representative Precisely To Encourage A Reflective Frame Of Mind, A Distance From The Passions Of The Voters, And A Capacity For Deliberative Consideration.

Today I Challenge Our Nation To Commit To Producing 100 Percent Of Our Electricity From Renewable Energy And Truly Clean Carbon-free Sources Within 10 Years.

When Fear Displaces Reason, The Result Is Often Irrational Hatred And Division.

A Majority Of Trump's Voters Were In Favor Of Staying In The Paris Agreement. And If You Look At What's Really Happening In The Economy, The Economic Argument Actually Is Very Strongly In Favor Of The Paris Agreement. There Are Now Twice As Many Jobs In The Solar Industry As In The Coal Industry. Solar Jobs Are Growing 17 Times Faster Than Other Jobs In The U.s.

There's An Old African Proverb That Says "if You Want To Go Quickly, Go Alone. If You Want To Go Far, Go Together." We Have To Go Far - Quickly. And That Means We Have To Quickly Find A Way To Change The World's Consciousness About Exactly What We're Facing, And Why We Have To Work To Solve It.

This Is By Far The Most Serious Crisis Civilisation Has Ever Faced.

I Feel Passionate About Solving The Climate Crisis.

For A Free Country To Continue Thriving, There Have To Be Regular Reforms, Because Any Society, Any Economy That Stays In Place, You're Going To See Repeated Attempts To Exploit The Openings For Twisting Policy To The Advantage Of Those Who Already Have Wealth And Power.

The Gay Rights Movement Of Recent Years Has Been An Inspiring Victory For Humanity And It Is In The Tradition Of The Civil Rights Movement When I Was A Young Boy In The South, The Women's Suffrage Movement When My Mother Was A Young Woman In Tennessee, The Abolition Movement Much Farther Back, And The Anti-apartheid Movement When I Was In The House Of Representatives. All Of These Movements Have One Thing In Common: The Opposition To Progress Was Rooted In An Outdated Understanding Of Morality.

I Doubt Nuclear Power Will Play A Much Larger Role Than It Does Now.

Earlier In This Century, The Heisenberg Principle Established That The Very Act Of Observing A Natural Phenomenon Can Change What Is Being Observed. Although The Initial Theory Was Limited In Practice To Special Cases In Subatomic Physics, The Philosophical Implications Were And Are Staggering.

All Of Us Can Make Changes, But The Changes That Are Most Needed Are Not Light Bulbs And Windows But Laws And Policies And Treaties. So, Yes, We Are In A Phase Of This (climate Protection) Struggle Where Civic And Political Action Is At The Top Of The List.

America's Political System Has Evolved Over The Last 50 Years In Ways That Have Enhanced The Power Of Business Lobbies.

...2009 Saw The Eighth 'ten-year Flood' Of Fargo, North Dakota, Since 1989. In Iowa, Cedar Rapids Was Hit Last Year By A Flood That Exceeded The 500-year Flood Plain. All-time Flood Records Are Being Broken In Areas Throughout The World.

Now We Have Things That Are Obviously False, Leading Us To War, Leading Us To Deny People Health Care, Leading Us To Ignore The Climate Crisis. We Have To Restore The Integrity Of The Democratic Conversation.

The Global Environment Crisis Is, As We Say In Tennessee, Real As Rain, And I Cannot Stand The Thought Of Leaving My Children With A Degraded Earth And A Diminished Future.

I'm Still Trying To Figure Out Exactly What President Trump Represents In American Politics. But, If Nothing Else, He Represents A Way For Tens Of Millions Of People Who Were Desperate For Change To Just Turn The Table Over And Say, We Want To Start Over Again. But It Is A Challenge For Our Democracy. It Definitely Is. But, Again, The Remedy Has To Be Devoting Enough Attention To Restoring The Way We Make Collective Decisions In This Country.

I’ve Chosen Not To Challenge The Rule Of Law, Because In Our System There Really Is No Intermediate Step Between A Supreme Court Decision And Violent Revolution. When The Supreme Court Makes A Decision, No Matter How Strongly One Disagrees With It, One Faces A Choice –are We, In John Adams’ Phrase, A Nation Of Laws, Or Is It A Contest Made On Raw Power?

American Troops And American Taxpayers Are Shouldering A Huge Burden With No End In Sight Because Mr. Bush Took Us To War On False Premises And With No Plan To Win The Peace.

In An Economic Recession, Naturally, When You Ask People To List Their Priorities, They're Going To Place A Higher Priority On The Immediate Economic Situation.

Economic Recession

The Cumulative Amount Of Man-made Global Pollution That's In The Atmosphere Now Traps As Much Extra Heat Energy Every Day As Would Be Released By 400,000 Hiroshima-class Atomic Bombs Exploding Every Day. It's A Big Planet, But That's An Awful Lot Of Energy.

We're Operating This Planet Like A Business In Liquidation.

Airplane Travel Is Nature's Way Of Making You Look Like Your Passport Photo.

Those Who Are Quick To Feel Disrespected Often Have A Spiritual Vacuum In Their Lives, Because They Feel Disconnected To The Love Of Their Father In Heaven.

It's Not At All New For Wealthy And Powerful Interests To Try To Hide The Ball And Ignore Independent Analyses Of Relevant Facts.

I Think I May Have A Future As A Disembodied Head.

I Never Like The Question About Letter Grades, But I Think Trump Is Failing. I Think That Every Day There's Another Set Of Tweets And Another Set Of Controversies, And Nothing Seems To Be Getting Done That's Any Good. And There Seems To Be Kind Of A Policy Paralysis In Washington. Even The Appointments He's Supposed To Make As A New President, So I Focus Most Of All On Climate, And So My Opinion Of His Time As President Is Certainly Influenced By My Opinion Of The Job He's Done On Climate. He's Tried To Move The Country In The Wrong Direction.

I Have Always Been Fascinated With Those Who Try To Look Over The Horizon And See Things That Are Coming At Us.

The Age Of Printed Pamphlets And Political Essays Has Long Since Been Replaced By Television, A Distracting And Absorbing Medium Which Seems Determined To Entertain Itself More Than It Informs And Educates.

I Am Old Enough To Know That A Red Carpet Is Just A Rug.

I Understand That Being Optimistic In This Age Is Challenging, But I Am Optimistic Nonetheless.

Consider What Kind Of Car You Get. Buy Cars And Other Products That Have The Least Impact Environmentally.

I Was Honored To Serve As An Elected Official For Twenty-four Years Of My Life. But Right Now, I Believe Our Democratic Processes Have Been Hacked. They Are Not Serving The Best Interests Of The American Public.

You Can Push Your Local Communities To Adopt More Sustainable Sources Of Energy And Environmentally-friendly Practices.

If Youre A Young Person Looking At The Future Of This Planet And Looking At What Is Being Done Right Now, And Not Done, I Believe We Have Reached The Stage Where It Is Time For Civil Disobedience To Prevent The Construction Of New Coal Plants That Do Not Have Carbon Capture And Sequestration.

We All Know The Leopard Can't Change His Stripes.

There Are Skeptics Who Do Not Come To Their View Because They Have A Source Of Income From Carbon Polluters. I Don't Mean To Imply That They're All In That Category At All. There Are Also Those Who Are Also Not Motivated By Ideological Resistance For Any Role Of Government. But I Don't Know Of Any Arguments Or Any Presenters Of Arguments That Overturn The Consensus That I Think Have Gained Any Legitimacy.

We Can Build A Collective Civic Space Large Enough For All Our Separate Identities, That We Can Be E Pluribus Unum - Out Of One, Many.

I Affirm My Faith When I'm Asked About It. But I Always Try To Do So In A Way That Communicates Absolute Respect, Not Only For People Who Worship In A Different Way, But Just As Much Respect For Those Who Do Not Believe In God And Who Are Atheists.

We Sometimes Emphasize The Danger In A Crisis Without Focusing On The Opportunities That Are There. We Should Feel A Great Sense Of Urgency Because It Is The Most Dangerous Crisis We Have Ever Faced, By Far. But It Also Provides Us With Opportunities To Do A Lot Of Things We Ought To Be Doing For Other Reasons Anyway. And To Solve This Crisis We Can Develop A Shared Sense Of Moral Purpose.

The Era Of Procrastination...is Coming To A Close...we Are Entering A Period Of Consequences - Winston Churchill (warning About The Danger Of Appeasement

Procrastination

Believe In The Power Of Your Own Voice.

The Crisis Is A Concrete Threatening Reality Today. It Stands To Get Catastrophically Worse Unless We Take Action Before The Accumulation [of] This Global Warming Pollution Reaches Such Toxic Levels That The Problem Becomes Bigger Than We Can Solve.

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.

From Wherever The Emissions Come, They Have The Same Effect: They Trap Much More Heat From The Sun, Melt The Ice, Raise The Sea Level, Cause Stronger Storms, Floods, Drought, Bigger Fires, Generate Millions Of Climate Refugees, Destabilize Political Systems, Threaten The Growing Of Food Crops And Cause A Number Of Other Catastrophic Consequences Which, Taken Together, Threaten The Basis For The Future Of Human Civilization On The Earth.

When We Respond To Threats Immediately And Take Action Right Away, It's Usually The Threats That We're Hard-wired To Respond To, The Kinds Of Things That Our Ancestors Survived.

Most People Talk As If Miami And Bangladesh Still Have A Chance Of Surviving: Most Of The Scientists I Spoke With Assume We'll Lose Them Within The Century, Even If We Stop Burning Fossil Fuel In The Next Decade.

I Think The Ethical Standards Established In This White House Have Been The Highest In The History Of The White House.

Ethical Standards

We Are Running Out Of Time, We Must Have A Planetary Solution To A Planetary Crisis.

Because These Consequences Are Distributed Globally, The Problem Masquerades As A Distraction. Because The Length Of Time Between Causes And Consequences Stretches Out Longer Than We're Used To Dealing With, It Gives Us The Illusion That We Have The Luxury Of Time. Neither Of Those Things Is True.

I Would Distinguish Between Donald Trump And The United States Of America. Although He Is President, He Does Not Speak For The Country On The Climate Change, And That Was Vividly Illustrated In The Aftermath Of His Speech Pulling The Us Out Of The Paris Agreement. Almost Immediately, Not Only Did The Rest Of The World Double Down On Its Commitments, But Also Here In This Country, Governors, Mayors, Business Leaders, They Said, We're Still In The Paris Agreement, And They're Doubling Down. A Lot Of Cities Have Now Made A Decision To Go 100% Renewable Energy.

There's No Such Thing As Clean Coal. It's Non-existent. Theoretically, It Might Be Possible, Many Years From Now, To Come Up With A Way To Clean It As It's Burnt. But There's Not A Single Demonstration Project In The United States. [...] Clean Coal Doesn't Exist.

For A Long Time, The Scientists Have Been Telling Us Global Warming Increases The Temperature Of The Top Layer In The Ocean, And That Causes The Average Hurricane To Become A Lot Stronger. So, The Fact That The Ocean Temperatures Did Go Up Because Of Global Warming, Because Of Man-made Global Warming, Starting Around In The '70s, And Then We Had A String Of Unusually Strong Hurricanes Outside The Boundaries Of This Multi-decadal Cycle That Is A Real Factor; There Are Scientists Who Point That Out, And They're Right, But We're Exceeding Those Boundaries Now.

Fear Is The Most Powerful Enemy Of Reason.

The Planet Is In Distress And All Of The Attention Is On Paris Hilton.

There Are Good People, Who Are In Politics - In Both Parties - Who Hold This At Arm's Length, Because If They Acknowledge It And Recognize It, Then The Moral Imperative To Make Big Changes Is Inescapable.

A President Who Breaks The Law Is A Threat To The Very Structure Of Our Government.

The Truth Is That Climate Change Is Presenting The Greatest Challenge Humanity Has Ever Faced.

Consider A Clock Thermostat, And Set It So That You're Not Using Energy When You Don't Need It, When You're Out Of Your House.

If We Did Not Take Action To Solve This Crisis, It Could Indeed Threaten The Future Of Human Civilization. That Sounds Shrill. It Sounds Hard To Accept. I Believe It's Deadly Accurate. But Again, We Can Solve It.

The Answer Is To End Our Reliance On Carbon-based Fuels... If We Succeed, We Create Booming New Industries, Wealth, Clean Secure Energy And Maybe We Prevent The Greatest Disaster So Far In Human History, Saving Millions Of Lives While Improving Billions More. If We Fail, Basically It's Business As Usual While Things Slowly Get Worse All Around Us.

The Science Linking The Increased Frequency And Severity Of Extreme Weather To The Climate Crisis Has Matured Tremendously In The Last Couple Of Years.

In The Age Of The Internet, With All Of Its Problems, Over Time, The Very Fact That Individuals Can Join The Conversation Creates The Opportunity For The Emergence Of - For The Re-emergence Of A Genuine Conversation Of Democracy.

I Didn't Realize I Was In A Buddhist Temple.

I Support The Death Penalty. I Think That It Has To Be Administered Not Only Fairly, With Attention To Things Like Dna Evidence, Which I Think Should Be Used In All Capital Cases, But Also With Very Careful Attention. If The Wrong Guy Is Put To Death, Then That's A Double Tragedy. Not Only Has An Innocent Person Been Executed But The Real Perpetrator Of The Crime Has Not Been Held Accountable For It, And In Some Cases May Be Still At Large. But I Support The Death Penalty In The Most Heinous Cases.

I Wrote Newspaper Articles Professionally For Seven Years, And I Love Newspapers. I'm Hopeful That New Business Models Will Emerge That Allow The Newspaper Culture To Genuinely Thrive In The Digital Age.

Global Warming Is Real And Human Activity Is The Main Cause. The Consequences Are Mainly Negative And Headed Toward Catastrophic, Unless We Act. However, The Good News Is That We Can Meet This Challenge. It Is Not Too Late, And We Have Everything We Need To Get Started.

Making Consumer Choices That Reward Eco-friendly Products And Companies Is A Great Way To Start.

And Just As The False Assumption That We Are Not Connected To The Earth Has Led To The Ecological Crisis, So To The Equally False Assumption That We Arenot Connected To Each Other That Has Led To Our Social Crisis.

The Truth About The Climate Crisis Is Still Inconvenient To The Large Carbon Polluters. And So They Want To Bob And Weave And Dodge The Truth, And Pretend Like It's Still A Big Controversy, And It's Not. They Want To Pretend That This Is Up For Debate. Like, Whether Or Not The World Is Round Is Up For Debate, Or Whether The Moon Landing Really Took Place.

I Will Tell You That What Gives Me A Sense Of Joy Is Having Work To Do That Justifies Pouring Every Ounce Of Energy I Have Into It. That's Really A Blessing To Have In Your Life. And It Gives You Energy Back When You Have The Privilege Of Doing Work That Makes You Feel That Way.

Future Generations May Well Have Occasion To Ask Themselves, "what Were Our Parents Thinking? Why Didn't They Wake Up When They Had A Chance?" We Have To Hear That Question From Them, Now.

At Some Point, A False Belief Collides With Physical Reality.

For Me, The Most Disturbing Aspect Of The Republican Political Culture Is How It Puts Its Unquenchable Thirst For Power, Domination And A Radical Ideology Above Facts, Reason And The Truth.

The Scientific Evidence Of How Serious This Climate Crisis Is Becoming Continues To Amass Week After Week After Week.

When Energy Prices Go Up, The Difficulty Of Projecting Demand Also Goes Up - Uncertainty Goes Up.

The Will To Act Is A Renewable Resource.

Renewable Resources

I Am Concerned About The Economy. I Was The First One Laid Off.

Where Solar Energy Is Concerned - And Wind Energy And Battery Storage And Electric Vehicles And Efficiency Technologies - That Is What We Are Now Seeing. So, Yes, I'm Very Optimistic, But Anyone Who Works On The Climate Crisis Has An Internal Struggle Between Hope And Despair. I Won't Deny That, But Hope Has Always Prevailed In My Outlook.

Sri Chinmoy Was A Once In A Lifetime Spiritual Leader Who Touched The Lives Of Millions Of People Through His Teachings, Art, Athletics, And Music. He Was A Student Of Peace And He Embodied Peace. Sri Chinmoy Was A Great Man And His Life's Work Significantly Helped To Build World Harmony And Will Continue To Do So.

The Day I Made That Statement, About The Inventing The Internet, I Was Tired Because I'd Been Up All Night Inventing The Camcorder.

Is There Some Magic Wand They Can Wave On It And Presto! - Physics Is Overturned And Carbon Dioxide Doesn't Trap Heat Anymore? And When We See All These Things Happening On The Earth Itself, What In The Hell Do They Think Is Causing It? The Scientists Have Long Held That The Evidence In Their Considered Word Is "unequivocal," Which Has Been Endorsed By Every National Academy Of Science In Every Major Country In The Entire World.

It Should Be Lifted Above Partisanship Because It's A Question Of Survival. It's A Moral Issue.

We Are In An Unusual Predicament As A Global Civilization. The Maximum That Is Politically Feasible, Even The Maximum That Is Politically Imaginable Right Now, Still Falls Short Of The Minimum That Is Scientifically And Ecologically Necessary.

Humanity Is Sitting On A Time Bomb. If The Vast Majority Of The World's Scientists Are Right, We Have Just Ten Years To Avert A Major Catastrophe That Could Send Our Entire Planet's Climate System Into A Tail-spin Of Epic Destruction Involving Extreme Weather, Floods, Droughts, Epidemics And Killer Heat Waves Beyond Anything We Have Ever Experienced - A Catastrophe Of Our Own Making.

American Democracy Is In Grave Danger From The Changes In The Environment In Which Ideas Either Live And Spread Or Wither And Die.

The Entire North Polar Ice Cap Is Disappearing Before Our Very Eyes. It's Been The Size Of The Continental United States For The Last 3 Million Years And Now 40 Percent Is Gone And The Rest Of It Is Going.

I Put All My Sighs In A Lockbox

You Can Say The Earth Is Flat, But It Doesn't Mean You're Going To Fall Off The Edge.

I Flew On Air Force Two For Eight Years, And Now I Have To Take Off My Shoes To Get On An Aeroplane.

There's No Doubt That In The Last Two To Three Decades, American Democracy Has Been Hacked. It Was Based On The Regular Harvesting Of The Wisdom Of Crowds, But Now Big Sources Of Special Interest Money Are Able To Prevent The Passage Of Almost Any Meaningful Reform That's Aimed At The Public Interest.

Democracies Have

We Face The Gravest Threat That Civilization Has Ever Confronted. It's Global In Nature And Requires A Global Solution. Increased Co2 Emissions Anywhere, Whether From China Or The United States Or From One Of The Countries That Is Burning Its Forests Like Brazil Or Indonesia.

I Was Recently On A Tour Of Latin America, And The Only Regret I Have Was That I Didn't Study Latin Harder In School So I Could Converse With Those People.

I Think The Cost Of Energy Will Come Down When We Make This Transition To Renewable Energy.

The Misconception That There Is Serious Disagreement Among Scientists About Global Warming Is Actually An Illusion That Has Been Deliberately Fostered By A Relatively Small But Extremely Well-funded Cadre Of Special Interests, Including Exxon Mobil And A Few Other Oil, Coal, And Utilities Companies. These Companies Want To Prevent Any New Policies That Would Interfere With Their Current Business Plans That Rely On The Massive Unrestrained Dumping Of Global Warming Pollution Into The Earth's Atmosphere Every Hour Of Every Day.

Throughout Most Of My Life, I Raised Tobacco. I Want You To Know That My Own Hands, All Of My Life, I Put In The Plant Beds And Transferred It! I Hoed It! I've Dug In It! I've Sprayed It! I've Chopped It! I've Shredded It, Spiked It, Put It In The Barn And Stripped It And Sold It!

The Climate, Financial And National Security Crises Are All Connected. They Share The Same Cause: Our [the Usa's] Absurd Dependency On Foreign Oil. As Long As We Need To Spend Billions Of Dollars Each Year To Buy Foreign Oil From State-run Oil Companies In The Persian Gulf, Our Problems Of A Trade Deficit, A Budget Deficit And A Climate Crisis Will Persist.

Believe In The Power Of Your Own Voice. The More Noise You Make, The More Accountability You Demand From Your Leaders, The More Our World Will Change For The Better.

The Ability Of Big Money To Shape Perceptions - Where You Have Four Anti-climate Lobbyists For Every Single Member Of The House And Senate - Is A Big Factor.

The United States Has An Absolute, Uncompromising Commitment To Israel's Security And An Absolute Conviction That Israel Alone Must Decide The Steps Necessary To Ensure That Security. That Is Israel's Prerogative. We Accept That. We Endorse That. Whatever Israel Decides Cannot, Will Not, Will Never, Not Ever, Alter Our Fundamental Commitment To Her Security.

There Are People Who Say, "god Is In Complete Control Of Everything That Happens, And If The Earth Is Getting Warmer, Then Maybe God Intends That." Well, No. God Intends For Us To Take Responsibility For How We Treat God's Creation, And If We Choose To Use The Thin Shell Of Atmosphere Surrounding Our Planet As An Open Sewer For 110-million Tons Of Global-warming Pollution Every Day, The Consequences Are Attributable To Us. And If You Are A Believer, As I Am, I Think God Intends For Us To Open Our Eyes And Take Responsibility For The Moral Consequences Of Our Actions.

We Face A Climate Crisis Now That Is The Most Serious Challenge Our Civilization Has Ever Confronted. And The Greatest Country In The World [america] Has To Remain A Part Of This Unprecedented Global Agreement To Deal With It.

George Bush Taking Credit For The Wall Coming Down Is Like The Rooster Taking Credit For The Sun Rising.

A Leapord Never Changes His Stripes.

Like An Audience Entertained By A Magician, We Allow Ourselves To Be Deceived By Those With A Stake In Persuading Us To Ignore Reality.

The Global Warming Deniers Persist In This Air Of Unreality. After All, The Entire North Polar Icecap, Which Has Been There For Most Of The Last 3 Million Years, Is Disappearing Before Our Eyes. Forty Percent Is Already Gone. The Rest Is Expected To Go Completely Within The Next Decade. What Do They Think Is Causing This?

A Lot In The Faith-based Community, A Lot Of Fundamentalist Groups Are - Are Now Saying, You Know, The Earth Is The Lord And The Fullness There Of, And We Have An Obligation To Be Good Stewards Of The Planet.

As Long As The Government's Actions Are Secret, It Cannot Be Held Accountable. A Government For The People And By The People Should Be Transparent To The People.

The Cost Reductions For Renewable Energy Continue Downward In A Very Dramatic Way. We're In The Early Stages Of A Sustainability Revolution In The Globe That Has The Scale Of The Industrial Revolution But The Speed Of The Digital Revolution. And You See It With Renewable Energy And You See It With Led Lighting, Which Takes A Fraction Of The Energy For The Existing Bulbs. All New Lights Are Going To Be Led. Electric Vehicles. There Are A Lot Of Changes Underway Right Now. I'm Excited By The Prospect, And I Look Forward To Working In The Months And Years To Come To Accelerate This Transition.

Unless We Stop Dumping 70 Million Tons Of Global Warming Pollution Into The Atmosphere Every 24 Hours, Which We Are Doing Right Now ... The Continued Acceleration Of This Pollution Would Destroy The Future Of Human Civilization.

When People Flirt With Despair About The Future, They Are Less Likely To Take The Actions Necessary To Safeguard It, Focusing Instead On The Short-term.

Remember America, I Gave You The Internet And I Can Take It Away.

There's Such A Wide Variation In Tax Systems Around The World, It's Difficult To Imagine A Harmonized Co2 Tax That Every Country Agrees To. That's Not In The Cards In The Near Term. But The Countries That Are Doing The Best Job, Like Sweden, Are Already Doing Both Of These. I Think That Eventually We'll Use Both Of Them But We Need To Get Started Right Away And The Cap-and-trade Is A Proven And Effective Tool.

In Physics There's The Old Law For Every Action There's A Equal Amount Of Reaction. Sometimes That's True In Politics. If Somebody's Out There Making Nonsensical Statements, But Wielding Power Behind Them A Lot Of People Say, "well, I Need To React To That." Another Reason For The Increased Prominence Of The Climate-change Issue Is The Paris Agreement Itself. It's Not A Small Thing When Just About Every Nation In The Entire World Comes Together And Makes An Historic Agreement Like This. It's A Big Deal. And The Old Cliché "the Train Is Leaving The Station" Kind Of Applies.

A Free Press Is The Immune System Of Representative Democracy.

Representatives

I'm Not Trying To Top Anything. I'm Trying To Be Useful, To Play A Positive Role, To Serve The Public Interest.

The Uk Is One Of The Only Nations On Earth That Has Actually Met And Even Exceeded Its Goals Under The Kyoto Protocol.

I Have A Personal Staff That Helps Me Scour The Internet And Other Media For The Latest Scientific Peer-reviewed Findings, The Latest Examples Of Climate-related Extreme Weather Events, And The Latest Examples Of Progress. The World Is In The Midst Of A Sustainability Revolution That Has The Scope Of The Industrial Revolution, But With The Speed Of The Digital Revolution. That's Not Enough Without New Laws And The Right Kind Of Political Leadership. But It Does Give Us A Base From Which To Build A Movement That Will Save Us From The Most Catastrophic Consequences Of The Climate Crisis.

If You Want Your Energy Bills To Go Up, You Should Support An Ever Greater Dependence On Foreign Oil, Because The Rate Of New Discoveries Is Declining As Demand In China And India Is Growing, And The Price Of Oil And Thus The Price Of Coal Will Go Sky High.

Humankind Has Suddenly Entered Into A Brand New Relationship With Our Planet. Unless We Quickly And Profoundly Change The Course Of Our Civilization, We Face An Immediate And Grave Danger Of Destroying The Worldwide Ecological System That Sustains Life As We Know It.

New Relationship

Speaking From My Own Religious Tradition In This Christmas Season, 2,000 Years Ago A Homeless Woman Gave Birth To A Homeless Child In A Manger Because The Inn Was Full.

The Truth Is That We're At A Critical Juncture In The History Of Our Species And If We Don't Act Soon, We Could Inhabit A World We Don't Recognize Anymore.

There Are People Who Are Genuinely Upset In The Tea Party. I Understand That. But That Movement Was Funded With Seed Money From Right-wing Billionaires, The Koch Brothers, And Promoted On Fox News, And Turned Into A Stocking Horse For The Right-wing Agenda That A Lot Of People Have Been Trying To Push On The Country For A Long Time.

A Zebra Can Not Change It's Spots.

Remember That The Problem Is Bigger Than The Car You Drive Or The Types Of Lightbulbs In City Hall. We Need A Fundamental Shift Away From Dirty Fossil Fuels That Spew Carbon Pollution. To Make That Happen, We Need To Put Pressure On Our Leaders To Take The Bold Actions Necessary To Move Us Off Dirty Sources Of Energy.

The Bush-cheney Administration Had Betrayed Some Basic American Values. So There Was Hunger For Change.

You Can't Be Value Free When It Comes To Marriage

The More Deeply I Search For The Roots Of The Global Environmental Crisis, The More I Am Convinced That It Is An Outer Manifestation Of An Inner Crisis That Is, For Lack Of A Better Word, Spiritual... What Other Word Describes The Collection Of Values And Assumptions That Determine Our Basic Understanding Of How We Fit Into The Universe?

Many Of The Green Places And Open Spaces That Need Protecting Most Today Are In Our Own Neighborhoods. In Too Many Places, The Beauty Of Local Vistas Has Been Degraded By Decades Of Ill-planned And Ill-coordinated Development.

The Very First Words That We, The American Nation, Spoke Were Right Here In Philadelphia. You Know Those Words: "we The People." It Wasn't, "we The Conglomerates." It Wasn't, "we The Corporations." It Was, "we The People."

Clouds Of A Different Sort Signal An Environmental Holocaust Without Precedent. Once Again, World Leaders Waffle, Hoping The Danger Will Dissipate. Yet Today The Evidence Is As Clear As The Sounds Of Glass Shattering In Berlin.

Iraq Does Pose A Serious Threat To The Stability Of The Persian Gulf And We Should Organize An International Coalition To Eliminate His Access To Weapons Of Mass Destruction. Iraq's Search For Weapons Of Mass Destruction Has Proven Impossible To Completely Deter And We Should Assume That It Will Continue For As Long As Saddam Is In Power.

Mass Destruction

If We Walk Down The Sidewalk Of Any Street In America A Significant Number Of The People We Pass By, If We Dug Into What They're Going Through In Their Lives, They're Carrying Burdens That They Don't Talk About But They're Extremely Heavy And Painful. And So, One Of The Secrets Of The Human Condition Is That Suffering Binds People Together. And When You Go Through Something Agonizing, Others Who Know What You're Feeling Because They've Been Through It Will So Often Reach Out To You And Connect With You, And Give You Strength And Lift You Up.

I'm Passionate About Restoring The Efficacy Of American Democracy, Making Capitalism Sustainable, Prioritizing Advances In Technology, And Seizing The Opportunities To Use That Kind Of Innovation To Help Usher In A New Economy That Doesn't Rely On Carbon-spewing Fossil Fuels.

Unless We Act Boldly And Quickly To Deal With The Underlying Causes Of Global Warming, Our World Will Undergo A String Of Terrible Catastrophes.

I'm Asking You In Your Sermons To Do The Work Of The Lord Here On Earth. I Ask For Your Help In Getting That Message Out Urgently Tomorrow.

When You Talk About President Trump, The Cable Networks Turned Over So Many Hours Of Prime Time To Him. Why? Because He Was Entertaining, But Also Because It Drove Ratings. And That Is Different From What The News Media Is Supposed To Focus On.

Eventually We'll Use A Co2 Tax Offset By A Reduction In Taxes Elsewhere Alongside A Cap-and-trade Plan, But The Degree Of Difficulty Associated With A Co2 Tax Far Exceeds That With A Cap-and-trade Plan. We're Seeing It's Hard To Get A Cap-and-trade Plan And It's Much Easier To Use As A Basis For A Global Agreement Than A Co2 Tax.

You Know, In Physics There's The Old Law For Every Action There's A Equal Amount Of Reaction. Sometimes That's True In Politics. If Somebody's Out There Making Nonsensical Statements, But Wielding Power Behind Them A Lot Of People Say, "well, I Need To React To That." I Think That's Happening.

We Can Believe In The Future And Work To Achieve It And Preserve It, Or We Can Whirl Blindly On, Behaving As If One Day There Will Be No Children To Inherit Our Legacy. The Choice Is Ours; The Earth Is In Balance.

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.... But We Should Not Wait, We Cannot Wait, We Must Not Wait.

It Took Me A Bit To Realize How Big The Changes Have Been In The Last Decade. In So Many Places - Electricity From Solar And Wind Is Cheaper Than Electricity From Fossil Fuels, And Now The Batteries Are Coming Down In Costs Very Quickly. So It's Very Exciting News That Needed To Be Told.

The Existence Of The Epa Regulation Will Require Large Carbon Polluters To Look At Their Hole Cards, And Some Of Them Have Decided That They Much Prefer Legislation.

Science Has A Culture That Is Inherently Cautious And That Is Normally Not A Bad Thing. You Could Even Say Conservative, Because Of The Peer Review Process And Because The Scientific Method Prizes Uncertainty And Penalises Anyone Who Goes Out On Any Sort Of A Limb That Is Not Held In Place By Abundant And Well-documented Evidence.

The Oil Industry Has Outpaced The Building Of A Public Consensus Of The Implications Of Climate Science.

...the Debate Among The Scientists If Over. There Is No More Debate. We Face A Planetary Emergency. There Is No More Scientific Debate Among Serious People Who've Looked At The Science...well, I Guess In Some Quarters, There's Still A Debate Over Whether The Moon Landing Was Staged In A Movie Lot In Arizona, Or Whether The Earth Is Flat Instead Of Round.

Although I Have A Variety Of Obligations, The Climate Crisis Is My Central Concern.

All I Have To Do Is Be The Best Al I Can Be, Because I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough And, Doggone It, People Like Me.

Feb. 9, 1999 Dear Friend, Without Your Previous Support, Bill Clinton And I Would Not Have Won Our Victories For The American People In 1992 And 1996. ... And To Win In 2000, I Need You By My Side.

I Just Think That A Much More Important Part Of The Problem We Face, Which Was Evident 10 Years Ago And Is Even More Evident Now, Is That The Way We Share Information Among Ourselves As American Citizens Has Been Radically Transformed. The Line Between News And Entertainment Has Almost Dissolved, Where Ratings Now Have A Big Impact On What Kinds Of Stories Are Covered And Not Stories.

The Great Norwegian Playwright, Henrik Ibsen, Wrote, "one Of These Days, The Younger Generation Will Come Knocking At My Door." The Future Is Knocking At Our Door Right Now. Make No Mistake, The Next Generation Will Ask Us One Of Two Questions. Either They Will Ask: "what Were You Thinking; Why Didn't You Act?" Or They Will Ask Instead: "how Did You Find The Moral Courage To Rise And Successfully Resolve A Crisis That So Many Said Was Impossible To Solve?

During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet.

Today We're Dumping 70 Million Tons Of Global-warming Pollution Into The Environment, And Tomorrow We Will Dump More, And There Is No Effective Worldwide Response. Until We Start Sharply Reducing Global-warming Pollution, I Will Feel That I Have Failed.

Environmental Pollution

I Think That Asserting That Former President Obama Wasn't Born In The United States Was Just The Height Of Irresponsibility, Of Course. And Donald Trump Corrected That One. There Are Others That Have Yet To Be Corrected.

The Scientists Are Virtually Screaming From The Rooftops Now. The Debate Is Over! There's No Longer Any Debate In The Scientific Community About This. But The Political Systems Around The World Have Held This At Arm's Length Because It's An Inconvenient Truth, Because They Don't Want To Accept That It's A Moral Imperative.

The Climate Crisis Is The Greatest Challenge Humanity Has Ever Faced. From Not Only The Warming Of The Earth With Higher Global Temperatures, But Also From Strengthening Storms And Expanding Droughts To Melting Ice And Rising Seas, The Costs Of Carbon Pollution Are Already Being Felt By Governments, Corporations, Taxpayers And Families Around The World. The Climate Crisis Will Affect Everything That We Love And Alter The Course Of Our Future. Now, More Than Ever, We Must Come Together To Solve This Global Crisis. We Must Act Decisively, Rise To The Occasion And Solve This Monumental Challenge.

The Mountain Glaciers In Every Region Of The World Are Melting, Many Of Them At An Accelerated Rate, Threatening Drinking Supplies - Drinking Water Supplies And Agricultural Water Supplies. We Have These Record Storms, Drought, Floods, Fires, Three Deaths (ph) In The American West, Climate Refugees Beginning Now, Expected To Rise To The Hundreds Of Millions Unless We Take Action.

Pollution Should Never Be The Price Of Prosperity.

When Politics Is Too Slow, Change Has To Come From Culture.

The Signs That The World Is Spinning Out Of Kilter Are Increasingly Difficult To Misinterpret. The Question Is How To Convince Enough People To Join A Critical Mass Of Urgent Opinion, In The U.s. And The Rest Of The World.

The 'well-informed Citizenry Is In Danger Of Becoming The 'well-amused Audience'.

My Fellow Americans, People All Over The World, We Need To Solve The Climate Crisis, It's Not A Political Issue, It's A Moral Issue. We Have Everything We Need To Get Started, With The Possible Exception Of The Will To Act, That's A Renewable Resource, Let's Renew It.

I Have Felt For A Long Time That The Pathway To Solving The Climate Crisis Is Through The Building Of A Massive Grassroots Army Of Men And Women Who Will Go Out There And Win The Conversation On Climate, And Persuade Businesses, And Universities, And Towns To Switch To Renewable Energy And To Reduce Emissions. And The Big Change From Ten Years Ago Is That People Are Way More Receptive, Not Only To The Message That We Have To Act, Not Only To The Message That Now We Can Act, We Have The Solutions Now - That's The Biggest Change - But Also Willing To Make A Commitment That We Will Act.

I Have Absolutely No Plans And No Expectations Of Ever Being A Candidate Again.

Political Will Is A Renewable Resource, And Everyone Can Have It In Abundance If They So Choose.

Renewable Resources

I'm Sorry I Ever Invented The Electoral College.

Take It From Me: Elections Matter.

(george Bush) Betrayed This Country! He Played On Our Fears. He Took America On An Ill-conceived Foreign Adventure Dangerous To Our Troops, An Adventure Preordained And Planned Before 9/11 Ever Took Place!

When It Comes To Climate, We Can All Make A Big Difference. At The Most Basic Level, Don't Let Denial Go Unchallenged And Win The Conversation On Climate.

What We've Often Seen Is That When We Americans Say, Look, We've Got To Reduce Pollution, Business - Some Businesses Complain About It, But Almost Every Time, It's Turned Out To Be Easier And Cheaper And Accomplished Faster, And They've Gained Confidence, And Then We Go Farther.

Each And Every One Of Us Can Make Changes In The Way We Live Our Lives And Become Part Of The Solution [to Climate Change]

My Plan To Put Social Security In An Ironclad Lockbox Has Gotten A Lot Of Attention Recently, And I'm Glad About That. But I'm Afraid That It's Overshadowing Some Vitally Important Proposals. For Instance, I'll Put Medicaid In A Walk-in Closet. I'll Put The Community Reinvestment Act In A Secured Gym Locker. I'll Put Nasa Funding In A Hermetically Sealed Ziploc Bag.

In A Time Of Social Fragmentation, Vulgarity Becomes A Way Of Life. To Be Shocking Becomes More Important - And Often More Profitable - Than To Be Civil Or Creative Or Truly Original.

I Wrote Newspaper Articles Professionally For Seven Years, And I Love Newspapers.

If There Is No Cost To Be Paid For The Indiscriminate Dumping Of Pollution Into The Earth's Atmosphere, Then It Should Be A Surprise To No One That Today We Will Dump Another 70 Million Tons Of Global Warming Pollution Into The Thin Shell Of Atmosphere Surrounding Our Planet. ... We Have To [act] This Year, Not Next Year. Mother Nature Does Not Do Bailouts.

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Carson McCullers

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