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Al Gore’s Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2007
（Excerpt)
Your Majesties,Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have a purposehere today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayedthat God would show me a way to accomplish it.
Sometimes, withoutwarning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision ofwhat might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read hisown obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believingthe inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’swork, unfairly labeling him “the Merchant of Death”because of his invention－dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, theinventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.
Seven years later,Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.
Seven years agotomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harshand mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought aprecious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to servemy purpose.
Unexpectedly, thatquest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment,I pray that what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enoughthat those who hear me will say, “We must act.”
We, the humanspecies, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival ofour civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as wegather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solvethis crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if weact boldly, decisively and quickly.
However, despite agrowing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders arestill best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those whoignored Adolf Hitler’s threat. And I quote: “They go on in strange paradox,decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift,solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”
So today, wedumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shellof atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. Andtomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulativeconcentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.
As a result, theearth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is nota passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion.And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated withincreasing distress, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong,and we must make it right.
Now science iswarning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution thatis trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of theatmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent “carbon summer” .
As the Americanpoet Robert Frost wrote, “ Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.”Either, he notes, “would suffice” .
But neither needbe our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.
We must quicklymobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously beenseen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survivalwere won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surgeof courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortalstruggle.
Now comes thethreat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, anduniversal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring thischallenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would beunsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose ourfate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to actvigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?
Mahatma Gandhiawakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with whathe called “Satyagraha” – or “truth force.”
In every land, thetruth – once known – has the power to set us free.
Truth also has thepower to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we”, creating thebasis for common effort and shared responsibility.
There is anAfrican proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want togo far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.
