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Al Gore: Optimist?
Al Gore: Optimist?
by Michael Grunwald
Politico
In a Miami conference center the size of a football field, 1,200 climate activists are getting ready to watch a slide show....
...Snip....
.....The former vice president still begins and ends his presentation with photos of the earth from space, iconic reminders of what’s at stake. He still lectures in that much-mocked wooden style, with sporadic flashes of passion detectable more by changes in volume than delivery. The big difference in the updated version of the slide show is that a decade ago, Gore mostly warned about what could happen. Now he shows what’s already happening.
It’s scary stuff, and it’s supposed to be. Some of it is visually scary, like a downpour that looks like an airborne tidal wave descending on Tucson, Arizona, or a helicopter rescuing residents of an apartment complex floating down a Japanese street. Some of it is intellectually scary, like charts illustrating how 14 of the 15 hottest years ever recorded have been recorded since 2000, how extremely hot days have become 100 times more common in just three decades, how climate change is driving unprecedented droughts, floods, wildfires and mudslides. Gore constantly updates his presentation: At least a dozen of his slides in Miami were from the previous few months, including news footage of Biscayne Bay flooding local streets the previous night.
...Big huge Snip...worth reading at link....
....IT’S DEPRESSING STUFF, and Gore knows it. In fact, before he began his presentation, he warned the trainees that when they delivered their own versions, they would have to work within a time budget, for obvious reasons; a complexity budget, because there are only so many tough concepts an audience can digest; and a “hope budget,” because audiences also have limited tolerance for doom and gloom.
“Despair is paralyzing,” he told the crowd. “When people feel like there’s no hope—well, might as well party on; let’s not worry about the problem. We need to deliver the message that we’re winning. The hope is real. It’s not a forced smile.”
Gore gives his audiences plenty of reasons to hope—the decline of coal in the U.S., the global solar boom, the upcoming climate talks in Paris, the vocal support of Pope Francis. He cites Wall Street reports on how clean energy is getting cheaper than coal in much of the world. He notes that Costa Rica was powered entirely by renewables for 100 straight days, and that Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican who is a top United Nations official, was a graduate of his slide-show training.
At times, though, his smile seemed a bit forced. I told him later that I think of him as a glass-half-empty guy. On the campaign trail, it always looked like his handlers had to remind him 10 times a day that America loves optimists, and after his wrenching defeat in 2000, he seemed even more like a missionary who was spreading the gospel because he knew it was the right thing to do even though he doubted the heathen would get the message. But he told me no, he’s very much an optimist. I mentioned the hope budget, and he said that’s just a tactic for building political will because unrelenting bad news can create a feeling of futility.
“That doesn’t mean I’m prone to that feeling,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I’m not vulnerable to that.”
A moment later, though, he revised and extended his remarks.
“I guess I would modify that slightly,” he said. “Anyone who works on the climate issue has an internal dialogue, the struggle between hope and despair. All my colleagues struggle with that. But I’ve always come down on the side of hope.”...
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/al-gore-optimist-000295
by Michael Grunwald
Politico
In a Miami conference center the size of a football field, 1,200 climate activists are getting ready to watch a slide show....
...Snip....
.....The former vice president still begins and ends his presentation with photos of the earth from space, iconic reminders of what’s at stake. He still lectures in that much-mocked wooden style, with sporadic flashes of passion detectable more by changes in volume than delivery. The big difference in the updated version of the slide show is that a decade ago, Gore mostly warned about what could happen. Now he shows what’s already happening.
It’s scary stuff, and it’s supposed to be. Some of it is visually scary, like a downpour that looks like an airborne tidal wave descending on Tucson, Arizona, or a helicopter rescuing residents of an apartment complex floating down a Japanese street. Some of it is intellectually scary, like charts illustrating how 14 of the 15 hottest years ever recorded have been recorded since 2000, how extremely hot days have become 100 times more common in just three decades, how climate change is driving unprecedented droughts, floods, wildfires and mudslides. Gore constantly updates his presentation: At least a dozen of his slides in Miami were from the previous few months, including news footage of Biscayne Bay flooding local streets the previous night.
...Big huge Snip...worth reading at link....
....IT’S DEPRESSING STUFF, and Gore knows it. In fact, before he began his presentation, he warned the trainees that when they delivered their own versions, they would have to work within a time budget, for obvious reasons; a complexity budget, because there are only so many tough concepts an audience can digest; and a “hope budget,” because audiences also have limited tolerance for doom and gloom.
“Despair is paralyzing,” he told the crowd. “When people feel like there’s no hope—well, might as well party on; let’s not worry about the problem. We need to deliver the message that we’re winning. The hope is real. It’s not a forced smile.”
Gore gives his audiences plenty of reasons to hope—the decline of coal in the U.S., the global solar boom, the upcoming climate talks in Paris, the vocal support of Pope Francis. He cites Wall Street reports on how clean energy is getting cheaper than coal in much of the world. He notes that Costa Rica was powered entirely by renewables for 100 straight days, and that Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican who is a top United Nations official, was a graduate of his slide-show training.
At times, though, his smile seemed a bit forced. I told him later that I think of him as a glass-half-empty guy. On the campaign trail, it always looked like his handlers had to remind him 10 times a day that America loves optimists, and after his wrenching defeat in 2000, he seemed even more like a missionary who was spreading the gospel because he knew it was the right thing to do even though he doubted the heathen would get the message. But he told me no, he’s very much an optimist. I mentioned the hope budget, and he said that’s just a tactic for building political will because unrelenting bad news can create a feeling of futility.
“That doesn’t mean I’m prone to that feeling,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I’m not vulnerable to that.”
A moment later, though, he revised and extended his remarks.
“I guess I would modify that slightly,” he said. “Anyone who works on the climate issue has an internal dialogue, the struggle between hope and despair. All my colleagues struggle with that. But I’ve always come down on the side of hope.”...
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/al-gore-optimist-000295
Click here to read the author's full interview with Al Gore.
I thought this article & Gore's words was so apropos for our group here. We have a struggle it seems with that concept of hopelessness vs hope. I'll always fall on the side of hope. We have to at least try. Mother Nature is extremely resilient.
16 replies
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That's what matters. So many people around the world are doing so many wonderful things to lower our carbon output. And its our hope & support & belief that we can save sustainable life on earth that will save future generations.
If we give up, we are doomed for certain.
