Paying dearly to hear Gore’s climate story
Ben Doherty and Marian Wilkinson
The Age
September 20, 2007AL GORE has a story he wants to tell the world. But it will cost you a thousand dollars to hear it.
In a passionate attack on the climate policies of Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush, the former US vice-president, addressing a very expensive lunch in Sydney yesterday, called Australia and the US “the Bonnie and Clyde” outlaws of the global environment for their failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr Gore called on Australia to change course on Kyoto and its climate policies, saying if it did “it would be impossible for the United States to withstand the pressure” to join the rest of the world in ratifying Kyoto.
Labor under Kevin Rudd has promised to ratify the protocol while Mr Howard is adamantly opposed to it and is backing Mr Bush’s efforts to find a “post-Kyoto accord”.
Mr Gore made his comments after reporters were asked to leave the lunch venue. Despite the cost, lunch in the 700-seat room at the Sydney Convention Centre was a sell-out, as is tomorrow’s event in Melbourne. VIP packages, which included a spot close to Mr Gore and a meet-and-greet with him, cost $25,000.
With Liberal Party members allegedly warned off attending, yesterday’s lunch was something of a Labor Party affair. Mr Gore paid tribute to two Labor Bobs present — Hawke and Carr — praising the former for the hole-in-one he hit while playing with Mr Gore earlier in the day, and the latter for his commitment to the environment.
Mr Gore earlier met NSW Premier Morris Iemma, who brought with him Maxine McKew, Labor’s candidate in the federal seat of Bennelong, who also attended the lunch. Ms McKew said that Mr Gore was well informed about Australian politics and knew of her run for the Prime Minister’s seat.
“He said to me, ‘I’ve been talking to Bob Hawke about you, and I’ve been reading about you.’ ”
After his salutations, Mr Gore got down to business. The ballooning world population and the dizzying pace of technological change had helped turn mankind into an environmental “bull in a china shop”, he said.
That the world’s population had quadrupled in the past 100 years partly explained this. Technological change had also had a significant impact on “this shell of the environment that surrounds our planet”.
He went on: “In the last three weeks, the amount of ice melting in the Arctic has been completely unprecedented. In only six days an area the size of the US state of Florida disappeared; in the week before that, an area almost twice the size of Britain disappeared.
“It’s melting 10 times faster than previously recorded. Experts are now saying that if we don’t act with urgency, the entire ice cap could be completely gone in less than 23 years.”
Mr Gore said that despite all the scientific evidence about climate change, inaction still ruled among governments and business.
Raising his voice almost to a shout, he said climate change was not scientific, political or ideological.
“It’s about survival.”
My epiphany is this: Algore is not an idiot… insane, maybe, but not an idiot. The fools who give up $25,000 to hear him drone on about bad science, skewed data, and enviro-mental demagoguery are the idiots… as well as insane!
