[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.

                          ____________________