He gave this talk as his environmental activism was starting to grow - around the time his film "An Inconvienent Truth" was coming out.
He strikes a humorous tone, letting the audience in on how awful it feels to go from having motorcades and flying on Air Force II to sitting at a chain restaurant in the middle of Tennessee hearing someone in the next booth over whisper "he's come down a long way, hasn't he?"
The theme of the talk is "what can you do?" I appreciated the fact that he said he updates the talk every time he gets it with new data and information. But I was a little perplexed by the chart he showed next.
Gore flashed a diagram of some recent data he got comparing the average global temperature in January 2006 - 39.0 degrees Farenheit - to the historical average - which is 31.0 degrees.
This is a shocking data point - but is it useful? It was an unusually warm January for the globe. Does this mean every January from here on out will be 8 degrees higher? Most climate scientists predict a few degrees average global temperature rise over the next decades.
So, what can you do to reduce fossil fuel emissions?
"Efficiency in end-use electricity and all energy is the low hanging fruit," he said.
How could anyone disagree with the goals of making things more efficient and reducing pollution? I remember hearing about some anti-Earth day movement last year. People were so fed up with leftist environmentalism and Earth Day as the ultimate expression of it, that they wanted to create their own holiday where they left all the lights on and kept their Humvees running. It is a supreme failure of communication when people like that are so disgusted and feel so oppressed by the environmental movement that they have an instinct to rebel against it.
As Gore said, energy efficiency is "not a cost, it's a profit." Obviously! But somehow it's not obvious to people - they want the freedom that comes with using resources as much as they want.
Other tips from Gore:
-reduce energy use in home
-green electricity
-hybrid/light rail
-green consumerism
-live a carbon neutral life
(It's easier than you think)
Katie Peek wrote an article on the carbon footprint calculators Gore suggests people use.
He also wants you to make your business carbon neutral.
But I can't help but wonder about his own carbon footprint. I imagine it's gone down significantly since he stepped down from the vice presidency - no more private jet, no more extraneous motorcade cars.
I wonder how many residences and offices he has, and what the carbon footprints are of them. No matter how green they all are, it seems like the best solution would be to simply reduce the number of resources - homes, offices, and vehicles, that he has.
Al Gore's carbon footprint, whatever it is, doesn't invalidate all of his work on raising awareness about climate change.
Finally, probably the most important issue around climate change is the branding of it - which Gore was wildly successful at.
Ultimately, he says, it shouldn't be a political issue.
We are one!
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