Al Gore
When we respond to threats immediately and take action right away, it's usually the threats that we're hard-wired to respond to, the kinds of things that our ancestors survived.Collection: Action
The truth is that we're at a critical juncture in the history of our species and if we don't act soon, we could inhabit a world we don't recognize anymore. But the most important truth is that we are capable of stopping climate change before the worst of its consequences are locked in. The solutions exist - all we need is the will to do something about it.Collection: Important
For me, the most serious problem is how America became so vulnerable to the assertion of blatant falsehoods that drive policy and are not corrected by the so-called immune system of democracy, a free press and a free democratic discourse.Collection: America
There are some bright spots, to be sure, but the internet is still in a Wild West phase, as was the case during the early age of the printing press as well.Collection: Age
In an economic recession, naturally, when you ask people to list their priorities, they're going to place a higher priority on the immediate economic situation.Collection: People
You can push your local communities to adopt more sustainable sources of energy and environmentally-friendly practices.Collection: Practice
It's not at all new for wealthy and powerful interests to try to hide the ball and ignore independent analyses of relevant facts.Collection: Powerful
We've seen the bankruptcy of many newspapers. We've seen a further erosion of the line between news and entertainment. But I do believe that there is reason to hope that over time we will see the higher-quality journalism rise to the surface.Collection: Believe
I'm passionate about restoring the efficacy of American democracy, making capitalism sustainable, prioritizing advances in technology, and seizing the opportunities to use that kind of innovation to help usher in a new economy that doesn't rely on carbon-spewing fossil fuels.Collection: Technology
Although I have a variety of obligations, the climate crisis is my central concern.Collection: Climate
George Orwell once wrote that a false belief sooner or later collides with physical reality, usually on a battlefield.Collection: Reality
I feel passionate about solving the climate crisis.Collection: Climate
I work to promote the idea of sustainable capitalism driven by long-term considerations rather than quarterly profits, which seeks to better people's lives and the planet rather than destroy them.Collection: Ideas
I think that asserting that former President Obama wasn't born in the United States was just the height of irresponsibility, of course. And Donald Trump corrected that one. There are others that have yet to be corrected.Collection: Thinking
We are seeing every night on the television news now a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. These climate-related extreme weather events have convinced the vast majority of people that the scientists have been right for a long time. We have to address this.Collection: Book
The truth is that climate change is presenting the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.Collection: Challenges
When you talk about President Trump, the cable networks turned over so many hours of prime time to him. Why? Because he was entertaining, but also because it drove ratings. And that is different from what the news media is supposed to focus on.Collection: Media
Political will is a renewable resource, and everyone can have it in abundance if they so choose.Collection: Political Will
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what President Trump represents in American politics. But, if nothing else, he represents a way for tens of millions of people who were desperate for change to just turn the table over and say, we want to start over again. But it is a challenge for our democracy. It definitely is. But, again, the remedy has to be devoting enough attention to restoring the way we make collective decisions in this country.Collection: Country
Eventually we'll use a CO2 tax offset by a reduction in taxes elsewhere alongside a cap-and-trade plan, but the degree of difficulty associated with a CO2 tax far exceeds that with a cap-and-trade plan. We're seeing it's hard to get a cap-and-trade plan and it's much easier to use as a basis for a global agreement than a CO2 tax.Collection: Agreement
There's such a wide variation in tax systems around the world, it's difficult to imagine a harmonized CO2 tax that every country agrees to. That's not in the cards in the near term. But the countries that are doing the best job, like Sweden, are already doing both of these. I think that eventually we'll use both of them but we need to get started right away and the cap-and-trade is a proven and effective tool.Collection: Country
Even though it's important for all of us to change our light bulbs and the vehicles we drive, it's much more important to change our laws and policies. I drive a hybrid and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else. But putting the burden on individuals to solve this global crisis is ultimately not going to be the most effective way to solve it.Collection: Light
Israel has its own right as a nation to defend its national security.Collection: Israel
When our founders created America, it was in the age of the printing press, when individuals could freely join the conversation. And that robust, democratic dialogue more often than not lifted up the best available evidence and asserted what was more likely to be true than not.Collection: America
We have to use our reasoning capacity and set long-term goals based on our deepest values.Collection: Long
It is just human nature to take time to connect the dots, I know that. But I also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.Collection: Wish
Mother Nature does not do bailouts.Collection: Mother
We all know the leopard can't change his stripes.Collection: Stupid
The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.Collection: Becoming
Our way of life is at stake, our grandchildren are at stake, the future of civilization is at stake.Collection: Grandchildren
Take it from me: Elections matter.Collection: Political
From wherever the emissions come, they have the same effect: They trap much more heat from the sun, melt the ice, raise the sea level, cause stronger storms, floods, drought, bigger fires, generate millions of climate refugees, destabilize political systems, threaten the growing of food crops and cause a number of other catastrophic consequences which, taken together, threaten the basis for the future of human civilization on the Earth.Collection: Taken
Take it from me, every vote counts.Collection: Political
We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance.Collection: Children
Atheists have just as much of a right to the public discourse as any ... people of any religious faith in this country.Collection: Country
The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton.Collection: Paris
Distributed intelligence is the key to the advancement of human civilization. Dictatorships, communist countries, monarchies in the past all eventually collapsed because of their inefficiency in moving information.Collection: Country
The mountain glaciers in every region of the world are melting, many of them at an accelerated rate, threatening drinking supplies - drinking water supplies and agricultural water supplies. We have these record storms, drought, floods, fires, three deaths (ph) in the American West, climate refugees beginning now, expected to rise to the hundreds of millions unless we take action.Collection: Drinking
The fate of mankind, as well as religion, depends on the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth.Collection: Fate
We are running out of time, we must have a planetary solution to a planetary crisis.Collection: Running
When it comes to climate, we can all make a big difference.Collection: Differences
Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now ... the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization.Collection: Civilization
The misconception that there is serious disagreement among scientists about global warming is actually an illusion that has been deliberately fostered by a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies. These companies want to prevent any new policies that would interfere with their current business plans that rely on the massive unrestrained dumping of global warming pollution into the Earth's atmosphere every hour of every day.Collection: Science
Researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School have told us that the entire Arctic ice cap may totally disappear in summer in as little as five years if nothing is done to curb emissions of greenhouse gas pollution.Collection: Summer
The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.Collection: Moon
Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.Collection: Country
The insistence on complete certainty about the full details of global warming-the most serious threat we have ever faced-is actually an effort to avoid facing the awful, uncomfortable truth: that we must act boldly, decisively, comprehensively, and quickly, even before we know every last detail about the crisis. Those who continue to argue that the appropriate response is merely additional research are simply seeking to camouflage timidity or protect their vested interest in the status quo.Collection: Effort
The Himalayan Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have been among the most affected by global warming. The Himalayas...provide more than half of the drinking water for 40% of the world's population...Within the next half-century, that 40% of the world's people may well face a very serious drinking water shortage, unless the world acts boldly and quickly to mitigate global warming.Collection: Drinking
ManBearPig, half man, half bear, half pigCollection: Men