[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 195 (Wednesday, December 19, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2618-E2619]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMENDING THE STATEMENT OF VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE AT THE U.N. CLIMATE
CHANGE CONFERENCE IN BALI
______
HON. TOM LANTOS
of california
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Mr. LANTOS. Madam Speaker, at a watershed moment in global diplomacy
last week, our distinguished former Vice President, Al Gore, stepped in
to fill an enormous U.S. vacuum in leadership. At the world summit on
global warming in Bali, Indonesia, this new Nobel laureate once again
took on the necessary role of the nation's conscience in the effort to
save our planet from a looming climate catastrophe. With a candid and
clear-eyed address, Vice President Gore provided a powerful bridge of
hope to world leaders who were struggling to make real progress in
setting a roadmap toward a treaty designed to stave off the most
devastating impacts of global warming.
In his speech, Vice President Gore courageously confronted the
``inconvenient truth'' that right now, at this moment in history; the
principal obstruction to progress in the global effort to confront the
Earth's greatest existential threat is the United States of America. He
urged the assembled delegates in Bali to overcome their anger and
frustration at this obstacle, vowing that ``over the next two years,
the United States is going to be in a place it is not now.'' The Vice
President also offered a solution, suggesting that rather than trying
to move the Bush Administration, the climate summit simply should
circumvent it by leaving ``a large open space'' in the document to be
filled in when U.S. leadership is finally restored.
Inspired by the Vice President's address, the U.N. delegates finally
and resolutely rebuffed the administration's effort to block consensus
on a ``Bali Roadmap'' by reaching a consensus that commits all nations
to negotiate a new, scientifically valid deal to fighting global
warming by 2009. The resolve to face down the White House was best
perhaps best articulated by the delegate from Papua New Guinea--who,
addressing the U.S. delegation in the final diplomatic showdown,
declared, ``If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get
out of the way.''
Madam Speaker, our distinguished former congressional colleague, Al
Gore, has provided our Nation and our global community with great
leadership. At a time when our own Administration has let us down, Vice
President Gore has reminded the world that, in his words, ``political
will is a renewable resource.''
I commend the text of the Vice President's historic address to my
colleagues. To date, this landmark in the global climate discussion has
not been published in its entirety anywhere, but I am honored now to
place a verbatim transcript of it in the Congressional Record. Al
Gore's words should inspire all of us to work to fill in the ``large
open space'' that our current administration has left in the place
where U.S. leadership normally resides.
Speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Bali,
Indonesia, December 13, 2007
(By Al Gore)
I am not an official of the United States, and I am not
bound by the diplomatic niceties. So, I am going to speak an
inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is
principally responsible for obstructing progress here in
Bali. We all know that.
We all know that. But, my country is not the only one that
can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with
progress, and with hope. Those of you who applauded when I
spoke openly about the diplomatic truth here have a choice to
make. You can do one of two things here. You can feel anger
and frustration and direct it at the United States of
America, or you can make a second choice. You can decide to
move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to
be done and save a large open blank space in your document
and put a footnote by it. And when you look at the footnote,
write the description of the footnote. This document is
incomplete, but we are going to move forward anyway on the
hope--and I am going to describe for you why I think you can
also have the realistic expectation--that that blank will be
filled in.
This is the beginning of a process designed to culminate in
Copenhagen two years from now. Over the next two years, the
United States is going to be somewhere it is not now. You
must anticipate that. Targets must be a part of the treaty
that is adopted in Copenhagen. And the treaty, by the way,
should not only be adopted in 2009: I urge you in this
mandate to move the target for full implementation of this
treaty to a point two years sooner than presently
contemplated. Let's have it take effect fully in 2010, and
not 2012. We can't afford to wait another five years in order
to replace the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol.
So we must leave here with a strong mandate. This is not
the time for business as usual. Somehow we have to summon,
and each of you must summon a sense of urgency here in Bali.
These are not political problems, they are moral imperatives.
But our capacity to strip away the disguise and see them for
what they really are and then find the basis to act together
to successfully address them is what is missing.
The greatest opportunity inherent in this climate crisis is
not only to quickly deploy the new technologies that will
facilitate sustainable development, to create the new jobs
[[Page E2619]]
and to lift standards of living. The greatest opportunity is
that in rising to meet the climate crisis, we in our
generation will find the moral authority and capacity for
long term vision to get our act together in this world and
take on these other crises, not political problems, and solve
them. We are one people, on one planet. We have one future,
one destiny. We must pursue it together, and we can.
The great Spanish poet from Sevilla Antonio Machado wrote,
``Path walker, there is no path. You must make the path as
you walk.''
There is no path from Bali to Copenhagen unless you make
it. It's impossible given the positions of the powerful
countries, including my own, and the instructions from which
they are not going to depart. But you can make a new path.
You can make a path that goes around that blank spot. And you
can go forward.
There are two paths you can choose. They lead to two
different futures. Not too long from now, when our children
assess what you did here in Bali, what we in our generation
did here in this world. As they look backward, at 2007, they
will ask one of two questions. I don't know which one they
will ask, I know which one I prefer they ask, but trust me,
they will ask one of these two questions.
They'll look back and either they will ask, ``What were you
thinking? Didn't you hear the IPCC four times unanimously
warning the world to act? Didn't you see the glaciers
melting? Didn't you see the North Polar ice cap disappearing?
Didn't you see the deserts growing and the droughts deepening
and the crops drying up? Didn't you see the sea level rising,
didn't you see the floods, didn't you pay attention to what
was going on? Didn't you care? What were you thinking?''
Or they will ask a second question, one that I much prefer
them ask. I want them to look back on this time and ask,
``How did you find the moral courage to successfully address
a crisis that some many have said was impossible to address?
How were you able to start the process that unleashed the
moral imagination of humankind to see ourselves as a single
global civilization?'' And when they ask that question, I
want you to tell them that you saw it as a privilege to be
alive at a moment when a relatively small group of people
could control the destiny of all generations to come. Instead
of shaking our heads at the difficulty of this task and
saying, ``Woe is us, this is impossible, how can we do
this?'' We're so mad at the ones that are making it harder;
we ought to feel a sense of joy that we have work that is
worth doing, that is so important to the future of all
humankind. We ought to feel a sense of exhilaration that we
are the people alive at a moment in history when we can make
all the difference. That's who you are. You have everything
you need. We have everything we need, save perhaps political
will. but political will is a renewable resource.
Thank you very much.
____________________