The Moral Challenge
...[Continued from below] Before he arrived at the Commonwealth Club, Al Gore spoke at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting at San Francisco's Moscone Center, which had 16,000 earth scientists in attendance. Among the more alarming news items to emerge from that meeting was the projection that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by 2040; that is, in just 34 years. It was with respect to this news that Gore spoke of a "foreshortening of concern for the future." This is no longer a problem for our grandchildren to worry about. It's playing out now.
To be honest, the former VP seemed tired and, perhaps as a result, his speech was more elegiac than exhortatory. He looked like someone who had worked himself past the point of exhaustion -- both physically and mentally. He closed his eyes at times as he searched for the right wording and his humorous remarks were all bone-dry. At the end of the presentation, I happened to ride down the escalator behind him and his aide. We were the only ones on there and Gore let out a huge sigh. Out on the street, a car was waiting. He was apparently late for a plane.
But I digress.
Despite cries from some corners of alarmism in the media and global warming hysteria, Gore said global warming was a unique case in which public discussion of the subject was, in fact, too subdued. Usually, public concern tends to go beyond anything justified by the scholarship. But in the case of global warming it was the opposite: the scientific community was far more alarmed than the general populace. And that needs to change, said Gore, because we can't afford to be complacent.
He went on to explain that cognitive scientists have shown that our brains are wired to respond to immediate physical threats to our survival -- things with teeth and claws. We see a snake and all our senses are activated. Global warming is not like that. We can read about the Arctic melting, about mega-fires in Australia and the events of Hurricane Katrina without it registering on a gut-level. Not until we are personally faced with the immediate threat are we, as a species, driven to take decisive action.
Global warming thus presents an interesting challenge to our moral imagination. How do we overcome this built-in inertia? This is the heart of the matter, because, Gore said, when the catastrophe comes, it will be too late. He underscored the point by citing T.S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men: Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow.
"We have to find a way to cross that shadow, that gulf," said Gore.
To be honest, the former VP seemed tired and, perhaps as a result, his speech was more elegiac than exhortatory. He looked like someone who had worked himself past the point of exhaustion -- both physically and mentally. He closed his eyes at times as he searched for the right wording and his humorous remarks were all bone-dry. At the end of the presentation, I happened to ride down the escalator behind him and his aide. We were the only ones on there and Gore let out a huge sigh. Out on the street, a car was waiting. He was apparently late for a plane.
But I digress.
Despite cries from some corners of alarmism in the media and global warming hysteria, Gore said global warming was a unique case in which public discussion of the subject was, in fact, too subdued. Usually, public concern tends to go beyond anything justified by the scholarship. But in the case of global warming it was the opposite: the scientific community was far more alarmed than the general populace. And that needs to change, said Gore, because we can't afford to be complacent.
He went on to explain that cognitive scientists have shown that our brains are wired to respond to immediate physical threats to our survival -- things with teeth and claws. We see a snake and all our senses are activated. Global warming is not like that. We can read about the Arctic melting, about mega-fires in Australia and the events of Hurricane Katrina without it registering on a gut-level. Not until we are personally faced with the immediate threat are we, as a species, driven to take decisive action.
Global warming thus presents an interesting challenge to our moral imagination. How do we overcome this built-in inertia? This is the heart of the matter, because, Gore said, when the catastrophe comes, it will be too late. He underscored the point by citing T.S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men: Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow.
"We have to find a way to cross that shadow, that gulf," said Gore.
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