Gore's plea on climate change wins ovation
James Randerson, science correspondent
Tuesday May 30, 2006
The Guardian
Al Gore addresses a capacity audience at the Hay festival. Photograph: PA
"We're running the planet like a company in liquidation," the former US vice-president Al Gore told an audience at the Hay festival, in an impassioned plea to act on climate change before it is too late. "For some reason we have now convinced ourselves, too many of us, that we don't have to care about the future," he said.
His lecture - part promotion of his new film, An Inconvenient Truth, part environmental rallying cry and part self-deprecating stand-up routine - earned him a standing ovation from the sell-out crowd.
Referring to the urgency of the "planetary emergency", he urged his audience to take their own action to combat climate change. "I want you to arm yourselves with knowledge. I want you to learn it in your own words. I want you to make the changes in your own lives," he said. "Become an activist as a consumer, as a voter, as a citizen."
Describing the threat posed by global warming, he said there had been "an utter transformation in the relationship between the human species and our planet", which gave humankind the capacity to do lasting damage. "We now have the capacity to literally change the relationship between the Earth and the sun."
He warned that action or inaction would be judged by future generations. They would ask, he said: "What were they thinking? Didn't they see this coming? Were they too distracted? Were they too busy? Didn't they care?"
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