Gore Challenges Congress on Climate
Committees Implored to Combat Warming With Unprecedented Controls
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A04
Environmental activist (and former vice president) Al Gore descended on Capitol Hill yesterday, telling two congressional panels that global climate change represents the most dangerous crisis in American history and that the measures needed to fix the problem -- such as an immediate freeze on new emissions from cars and power plants -- are far more drastic than anything currently on the table.
Gore, whose documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award last month, testified before both House and Senate committees in an appearance that drew international media attention and lines of would-be spectators trailing through congressional hallways.
In both hearings, he had testy exchanges with lawmakers who doubted his scientific evidence or the feasibility of his solutions. Much of his day, though, was spent basking in an odd spotlight: Gore and his cause have Washington's full attention. But his message, of a feverish planet and dwindling time in which to cure it, made for a grim homecoming.
"This is not a normal time. We are facing a planetary emergency," Gore said in the afternoon Senate hearing. "I'm fully aware that that phrase sounds shrill to many people's ears. But it is accurate."
Gore, who served a combined 16 years in the House and Senate before being elected vice president in 1992, had not made such a public appearance on Capitol Hill since he lost the 2000 presidential election.
In both hearings, Gore took criticism from Republican lawmakers. The toughest sparring was with Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has said he believes that climate change is a hoax.
Inhofe, during the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, criticized Gore for using too much energy in his Tennessee home, and he also listed a number of scientists who he said had broken with Gore about the reality -- or the danger -- of rising temperatures.
"Are they all wrong, and you're right?" he asked.
Inhofe also dismissed Gore's list of proposed solutions, which include taxation of polluters, by saying he thinks they would offer little environmental benefit.
"It's something that we just can't do to America," Inhofe said. "And we're not going to do it."
Outside of those exchanges, many legislators greeted Gore warmly, recalling committee assignments they had shared with him or sharing news of new grandchildren. Gore was hailed as the country's loudest voice on climate change, the instigator of a movement gaining momentum around the country and in Washington.
"You have acted for us," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the Senate committee chairman. "You have acted more than anyone else."
Gore Challenges Congress on Climate
In his talk before the Senate panel and before a joint hearing of Energy's energy and air quality subcommittee and Science and Technology's energy and environment subcommittee, Gore described briefly the scientific consensus on climate change's causes. Scientists say emissions of "greenhouse gases," primarily carbon dioxide emitted by cars and power plants burning fossil fuels, are accumulating in the atmosphere at an unsustainable rate and trapping more of the sun's heat.
A United Nations report in February concluded it was "very likely" that man-made gases were behind most of the increase in global temperatures over the past 50 years, which has worked out to about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
Gore told the panels yesterday that these temperature increases could cause polar ice to melt, sea levels to rise, and increase the likelihood of droughts, wildfires and intense hurricanes. Seeking a metaphor to describe the scale of the problem, he listed several pivotal events in American and world history -- World War II, the Marshall Plan, the Cold War -- and the battle of Thermopylae, in 480 B.C.
In that battle, depicted in the current movie "300," a small force of Spartans held back the Persian Empire and saved the beginnings of Western culture in Greece. Gore said that if climate change could be solved, today's lawmakers could "say to the future generations . . . 'This was our Thermopylae. We defended civilization's gate.' "
Gore's solutions were as sweeping as his metaphors. His recommendations began with the immediate national freeze on new emissions of carbon dioxide -- which could affect everything from cars to lawn mowers to coal-fired power plants -- and included an overhaul of the tax code. Payroll taxes should go down, Gore said, and taxes on polluters, especially those who emit carbon dioxide, should go up.
Beyond that, Gore recommended a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which activists say are far less energy-efficient than new compact fluorescent bulbs; raising the fuel-efficiency standards for cars; and a "carbon-neutral mortgage association." The last would allow homeowners to more easily finance renovations to improve energy efficiency, he said.
Gore acknowledged that almost all of these measures go well beyond anything lawmakers have contemplated so far.
"This is a challenge to our moral imagination," he said.
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