Al Gore How to make radical climate action the new normal TED Countdown
So the climate crisis,
in my way of thinking about it,
is the most serious manifestation
of an underlying collision
between human civilization
as we’ve presently organized it
and the Earth’s ecological systems.
And the system most in jeopardy
is the very thin shell of atmosphere
surrounding our planet,
because we’re spewing 162 million tons
of human-caused global warming pollution
into it every single day,
as if this is an open sewer.
It’s not an open sewer.
It’s so thin that if you could drive
an automobile at autobahn speeds
to the top of that blue shell,
you’d reach it in about five minutes.
And that’s where all
the greenhouse gases are.
The accumulated amount,
coming from the burning
of fossil fuels primarily, CO2 –
fastest-growing source of methane
is from fossil fuels as well,
also, agriculture as you have heard –
the accumulated amount
traps as much heat now
as would be released by 600,000
Hiroshima-class atomic bombs
exploding every day.
So the temperatures are going up
at almost record levels every year.
Last year was the hottest year
in recorded history,
according to NASA,
and the scientists say it’s absolutely
unequivocal that we are the cause of that.
And we’re hearing Mother Nature
and seeing the extreme events.
The most anomalous extreme event
since records began 200 years ago
was in the Pacific Northwest
of North America.
Forty nine and a half degrees,
121 degrees Fahrenheit
in British Columbia.
In the tropics and subtropics,
the combination
of temperature and humidity
is now making larger
areas literally uninhabitable,
the area so described
is relatively small now,
but if we continue
over the next few decades,
these areas are predicted to expand,
and billions of people will be in areas
where it is not safe to stay outside
for more than a couple of hours.
Already, the climate refugees and migrants
are four times more
from the climate crisis
than from all the wars
and conflicts going on right now.
And the respected “Lancet” commission
has predicted as many as a billion
climate refugees in this century.
That’s one of the reasons
why we are seeing this wave
of populist authoritarianism.
Sea level rise is also
contributing, and of course,
93 percent of the extra heat
is absorbed in the oceans,
and the ocean temperatures are reaching
record levels as well.
And that means more water vapor
comes off the oceans,
and the warmer ocean temperature
makes the cyclonic storms,
like hurricanes and typhoons
much stronger.
Hurricane Ida struck the Gulf Coast
as a category four,
and as is so often the case,
communities of color and poor people
were disproportionately victimized.
This storm continued on
north and northeast
across North America to New York,
New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
killed a lot of people
and dropped rain bombs.
And in New York City
some basement apartments were flooded.
And I appreciate this family giving me
the right to show this video.
(Screams)
He’s safe, the guy is screaming
for his mother.
He and his mother were both
rescued by his brother,
who punched a hole through the roof
from the floor above.
These rain bombs are becoming much more
frequent and much more extreme.
And actually the water
coming off the oceans
is held in much greater volumes
by the warmer air.
Atmospheric rivers are becoming larger.
Here’s one, from Hawaii in the lower left
to Silicon Valley in the upper right,
2,300 kilometers.
What was happening in Silicon Valley
when this satellite picture was made?
Well, that’s what happens
when these rain bombs drop,
and the average atmospheric river
now contains as much moisture
as 25 Mississippi Rivers.
They’re creating what you could call
“atmospheric tsunamis” in some areas.
The downpours get much bigger
and much more frequent,
four times more frequent now than in 1980.
One of them dropped on Germany
and neighboring countries in July,
killed more than 200 people.
Look at the before and after.
This is an example
of what we’re doing to our planet.
Ten days ago, in part of Italy,
there were 74 centimeters
that fell in 12 hours,
29 inches of rain in 12 hours.
One year ago, October 3rd,
as much rain fell here in the UK
as there is water in Loch Ness.
And as a result, the insurance industry
is now seeing record recoveries,
and those recoveries I showed you
from last year may get a tiny bit larger,
depending on the outcome of this lawsuit.
The owners and operators of this giant
replica of Noah’s Ark have
sued their insurance company
for a million dollars in flood damages.
Hard to make some of this stuff up.
(Laughter)
The same extra heat
is pulling the moisture out
of the first meter of the soil,
creating the worst droughts in memory.
93 percent of the American West
is in drought now,
100 percent of California,
half of California is in the most
extreme form of drought,
and the same heat is also
draining the reservoirs,
evaporating the reservoirs.
Lake Mead is down to levels
not seen since they started filling it
in the 1930s.
In Brazil, the same thing is happening.
In Eastern Europe,
the Czech Republic has been going through
the worst drought in at least 500 years.
And in the southern cone of Africa,
100 million people
are experiencing food insecurity
primarily because of
the extended droughts.
And when the temperatures go up,
the fires get a lot worse
and the worst fires in California
and western US history
have been in the last two years.
Also in Siberia, in Australia,
in southern Europe.
It doesn’t have to ruin your golf game.
And this is a serious point,
because we can’t let these conditions
become the new normal.
It’s not fine.
And this is an example
of why it’s not fine.
A lightning strike
hitting a natural gas leak
in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
Lightning gets more common
with the climate crisis.
We’re relying on dead plants and animals,
leaving their residue in the atmosphere
to threaten the species
that are still alive,
and 50 percent of them are in danger
of extinction in this century.
And as we push into previously
wild areas of the world,
we encounter millions of new viruses
that we have not dealt with in the past.
Five new infectious diseases
every year, emerging,
three quarters of them from animals,
like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Which raises some of the same questions
that are raised by the climate crisis.
When the world’s leading scientists
are setting their hair on fire
to get our attention,
should we listen to them?
Check.
Can our interconnected global civilization
suddenly be turned upside down?
Check.
Are the poor and marginalized populations
of the world the most affected?
Check.
Can science and technology give us nearly
miraculous solutions in record time?
Check.
Will we deploy those solutions in time?
That is the question.
We have inequitable vaccine
distribution in the world,
and it threatens everyone in the world.
We also have solutions
to the climate crisis,
but they’re not equitably distributed.
Worldwide, 90 percent of all
of the new electricity generation
installed last year was renewables.
Almost all of it from solar and wind.
Just one year before the Paris Agreement,
solar and wind electricity
was cheaper than fossil electricity
in only one percent of the world.
Five years later, two thirds of the world.
Three years from now,
it will be the cheapest source
in 100 percent of the world.
Coal is not getting cheaper.
Gas is not getting cheaper.
Nuclear has been getting more expensive.
Wind is cheaper than all three,
and solar is continuing to plummet in cost
and is the cheapest of all now
because the cost of making
the solar panels and the windmills
continues to come down.
By the way, the famous
coal museum in Kentucky
just installed solar panels on its roof
in order to save in its operating budget.
(Applause)
Now we’re getting battery storage.
I’ll rescale this graph to show you
the predicted emergence
of a new one-trillion-dollar
industry in the next few decades
and green hydrogen on top of that.
The car batteries are getting cheaper
as demand continues to increase.
And within less than two years
in some model categories,
the EVs will be cheaper
than their internal combustion
engine counterparts
and within four years
in all model categories.
So, the oil and gas industry
has been the worst investment
in global markets for more than a decade,
while the clean energy companies
are really becoming more profitable.
Now the oil and gas companies say
that they’re going to invest a lot more
in renewables and CCS.
Yes, it’s the fastest-growing –
they’ve tripled their investments
all the way up to four percent.
Ninety-six percent
of the money they’re spending
is still going into oil and gas and coal.
(Applause)
The impression they’ve given us
is not an honest impression,
not for the first time.
And they’re telling a different
story to Wall Street.
They still have planes, trains,
a few automobiles and ships,
but they’re telling Wall Street
and financial markets
they’re going to make it up in plastics,
which is 75 percent
of their third-largest market,
petrochemicals.
How’s that working out for us?
Not so well.
Banning single-use plastics is one
of the many things that we have to do.
We have to shift to sustainability.
And here’s the good news,
the sustainability revolution
is the single biggest business opportunity
in the history of the world.
It has the scale
of the industrial revolution
coupled with the speed
of the digital revolution.
And what we’re seeing
is that we have to seize this opportunity,
but we need reforms in the current
version of capitalism.
Capitalism does a lot of things great.
It balances supply and demand
and allocates resources efficiently
and often unlocks a higher fraction
of the human potential.
And by the way, the alternatives
on the left and right
explored in the 20th century
didn’t work out very well.
But in order to see how we need
to change capitalism,
we have to pull out our focus.
And let me present an analogy.
The electromagnetic spectrum
from the long radio waves
to the short gamma rays
and all the things in between,
the portion of visible light
that we can see with our eyes
makes up only 0.1 percent of the total.
For the eight years I worked
in the White House,
I got a daily report
from the intelligence community
that collected from all parts
of the spectrum,
and it was a much more accurate picture.
Here’s the analogy.
The value spectrum is something
we too frequently look at
through the very narrow aperture
of short-term profits
for one stakeholder, the shareholders.
But this leaves out
negative externalities,
as the economists call them,
like the pollution.
That’s why we need a price on carbon
and a price on plastic pollution.
It also leaves out positive externalities.
So we’re chronically underinvesting
in education and health care
and environmental protection,
pandemic preparedness.
We’re ignoring the depletion
of resources like topsoil
and underground water aquifers.
And we’re ignoring the distribution
of incomes and net worths
to the point where one
percent of the people
have almost half of the world’s wealth.
That’s one of the other factors
that’s driving populist authoritarianism.
We have to take account
of the environmental effects
and the effects on people
and their families
and the communities where they live
and the communities in their supply chain
and the ethics in the C-suites.
And we have to realize
that hyper inequality
is a threat to both capitalism
and to democracy.
There is an emergent form
called multistakeholder capitalism,
and it is driving a lot of new decisions.
For example, in asset management,
almost half of all the assets
in the world under management
are now in portfolios
committed to net-zero.
One reason is that the Paris Agreement
set the direction of travel,
where every country in the world
committed to net-zero.
So just last May,
the G7 nations banned financing
of coal plants overseas.
And just three weeks ago,
China did, which is good,
because they were financing most of them.
I hope that they will cut down
on the coal chain
in China domestically as well.
And now more than half of all
the greenhouse gas emissions
and two thirds of global GDP
is coming from countries
that have set net-zero targets.
So here’s the hope.
Once we reach net-zero,
then with a lag time
of as little as three to five years,
the temperatures in the world
will stop going up.
And once we reach net-zero
within as little as 25 to 30 years,
half of the human-caused CO2
will fall out of the atmosphere.
It is as if we have a switch
that we can flip in order to stop
the climate crisis.
Regrettably, some damage has been done,
but we can stop
the temperatures from going up
and start the healing process.
But we all have to flip this switch
known as reaching net-zero.
The young people
are telling us that we have to,
and they’re marching
in every country in the world.
And what’s the response?
As recently as this morning we heard,
“Well, it may be impossible.”
Well, it’s not impossible.
Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems
impossible until it’s done.”
That’s what they told the abolitionists.
“It’s impossible to eliminate slavery.”
That’s what they told
the women’s suffragettes.
“It’s impossible to have
equal rights for women.”
In the civil rights movement in my country
and the anti-apartheid movement
in South Africa and more recently,
the lesbian and gay liberation
and equal rights movement.
We can do this.
This is the biggest emergent
social movement in all of history.
We can do this.
And if anybody thinks
that we don’t have the political will,
remember, political will
is itself a renewable resource.
Thank you very much.
(Cheers and applause)
Thank you.