I remember what made me start acting on climate change...
I was 12 years old and my parents took me to see An Inconvenient Truth , I was immediately terrified amongst all my other fears about murderers, terrorists and my still-standing trepidation of planes going down. I was terrified on where the world was headed on Climate Change. At that stage, I felt no hope.
But from then on I started committing my life to the problem. Throughout High School I joined all the environment committees, I wrote a strongly worded letter to John Howard (the Prime Minister then, and received a very disappointing letter back), and I now am fighting Climate Change through my work for 1 Million Women.
So, I can clearly trace my fears and then motivation to fight Climate Change back to Al Gore. From his An Inconvenient Truth , describing the turmoil the world was in because of inaction, he now is hopeful that the world is heading in a better way - the way of Climate Action! This can be seen in an article Al Gore wrote in Rolling Stone, The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate , in which he talks about the amazing power of Renewable Energy and shifting mindsets.
According to Fastcoexist , Al Gore states, " I think the momentum is generally shifting" . He believes that the People's Climate March in New York will greatly contribute to what he calls "a growing social movement".
His optimism can be seen in his huge encouragement by Solar Energy, he recently wrote in Rolling Stone:
“ There is surprising—even shocking—good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted, " He continues " By 2020—as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline—more than 80 percent of the world’s people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources."
His optimism about the thriving of renewable energy and the decline in coal based energy can be seen when he showcases countries like Germany, " Germany's two largest coal-burning utilities have lost 56 percent of their value over the past four years, and the losses have continued into the first half of 2014. " and states "Germany...now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020."
He highlights the rapid shifts in India too, explaining the plan to " rely principally upon photovoltaic energy in providing electricity to 400 million Indians who currently do not have it" that the newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced.
He highlights this argument with one of his many statistics stored up in that brain of his, " Enough raw energy reaches the Earth from the sun in one hour to equal all of the energy used by the entire world in a full year. " And he really see's the amazing things the world is doing for renewable energy, and subsequently for the planet.
I will end with one of my favourite parts of the article -" The American poet Wallace Stevens once wrote, 'After the final 'no' there comes a 'yes'/And on that 'yes' the future world depends.' There were many no's before the emergence of a global consensus to abolish chattel slavery, before the consensus that women must have the right to vote, before the fever of the nucleararms race was broken, before the quickening global recognition of gay and lesbian equality, and indeed before every forward advance toward social progress."
This is undeniably true, there will be no's and there has been many, but that does not mean that all hope is lost. It is quite the opposite! My environmental consciousness was spurred from the fear that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth provoked, which subsequently led to action not fear! Positive climate action is everywhere, so it's not all doom and gloom, but that obviously doesn't mean our job is anywhere near done, but rather pushes a need to accelerate the shift!
Read full article by Al Gore here- The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate