Al Gore's Captivating Message

The introductory phase of Al Gore's Speech.

 When I heard that former vice president Al Gore would be speaking at COP this year, I jumped at the opportunity to see him. I remember watching his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," in school last year and I loved it, so the chance to hear him speak live was very intriguing to me. We went to the plenary about two hours before he was set to speak in order to get some good seats. Soon enough, the large conference hall was filled with observers, delegates, and security.

Gore's speech began with the famous "blue marble" image of the Earth, a profound reminder of what we are fighting for. He stated that he was optimistic because of the people like us sitting here, willing to put in the work to make a change, as well as technology trends that continue progressing to combat climate change. He then stated that we have the "single most important moral choice" to make. The decision was clear, we either push aside evidence and pretend it isn't real, or we use our capacity to make the necessary changes to combat climate change. Clearly, we should be going with the latter. Before getting into the negative affects of climate change, he touched on the current US administration and their views on the matter in a comedic way, a common thread throughout his talk.

His speech allowed me to learn about a whole new side of climate change. It allowed me to see not only the direct environmental affects of climate change, but how it affects people from all corners of the Earth. He not only spoke about rising sea levels, longer and stronger storms, and increasing global temperatures, he gave stories of how people are directly impacted by these things. He described record temperatures recorded globally in the last year. A record temperature of 124° F was recorded in Kuwait, and 129° F in Pakistan. He shared the story of people in Helsinki, Finland, "people sleeping in grocery stores by the cooling units to sleep in comfortable temperatures at night." He showed videos of roads and glaciers melting and stated that the last 4 years have been the hottest recorded years in history. Gore said that "It is hard to imagine someone looking at this and choosing to ignore it."

Because climate change causes jet streams to become more and more unorganized, storms become locked in place for longer periods of time. Gore spoke about many of the most disastrous hurricanes to hit the United States recently. He detailed Hurricane Harvey, the storm that hovered over Texas for 5 days, dumping over 5 feet of rain during its stay. He mentioned Hurricane Maria, and its devastating affects on the island of Puerto Rico. The pictures and clips he showed were disturbing, and he referred to the response to this event as "A vivid example of environmental racism," because it is more often than not the poorest people who suffer the worst affects of climate change, and the people of Puerto Rico are still recovering from this natural disaster. Cities around the world are being destroyed due to these events, and Gore questioned, "Are we gonna let this become the new normal and not wake up?"

Despite explaining in detail the negative impacts of climate change, Gore began to conclude his speech by touching on how he is optimistic for the future. He shared examples from around the world that show movement in the right direction. Countries around the world such as Germany, and Australia are converting to wind energy, and solar energy as they become cheaper and more popular. Electric vehicles are becoming more mainstream. Coal has become virtually dead in the US, and in fact, the national coal museum in Kentucky just installed solar panels. He spoke about the growing field of careers in renewables, and mentioned companies working toward becoming greener. He even mentioned Minnesota and how Xcel Energy pledged to be using 100% carbon free energy by 2050. These examples, Gore stated, "Give me hope," he also announced that "This movement is unstoppable."

It was an incredible opportunity to hear Gore's speech. It was unbelievably inspiring to sit in a room and hear someone who is so deeply passionate speak about the hope for the future. He was a very profound, emotional, and confident speaker. To end his speech, Gore left us with a hopeful message, "Politicians come and go. This is a movement. We do not have time for despair, too much is at stake. The winds are at our back, and the favorable prospects are very real."