 |
First, he warmed up the crowd with some jokes, describing himself as a “recovering politician.”
Gore then outlined three major crises: economic (credit and global recession), security (instability in oil rich regions), and environmental, and declared that the common link was our “absurd” over-dependence on carbon-based fuels. We need a global stimulus, he said, which the United States must lead.
Gore’s audience, a group of scientists, many of whom specialize in earth sciences and oceanography, didn’t need much convincing on this topic. He talked about the scientific data and compared the public’s current misperceptions about the science behind global warming to the public’s misperceptions centuries ago about the theories of Copernicus and Galileo, that the earth orbits the sun.
And then the lights dimmed and the PowerPoint presentation began, an updated version of the presentation immortalized in the documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth.” In his introduction, Gore thanked AAAS President James McCarthy for his scientific tutelage over the years — many of Gore’s slides were more graphically pleasing versions of the data McCarthy showed in his lecture Thursday night.
 |
“We have a full blown political struggle to communicate the truth about our situation,” Gore said. Scientists should use their clout and authority to speak out and educate the public about climate change. Invoking an African proverb, “if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together,” Gore told the crowd that we need to go far, quickly.
Gore ended his talk by telling us to “start getting involved in politics…but keep your day job.”
He left the ballroom as he entered, to a thundering standing ovation. For security reasons, we had to wait to leave the ballroom, and when we were allowed to depart, it took some time to funnel the tightly packed crowd up a single escalator. This unexpected inconvenience meant that I missed the ‘Dance Your Ph.D.‘ performance.
Why would a promising young scientist leave the lab to spend a year working for the United States government? Daniel Gorelick is here at the State Department trying to figure that out.