Al Gore launches new book with real solutions to global warming

Wednesday, 04 November 2009 10:42

“An old African proverb says, ‘If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’ We have to go far . . . quickly”, Al Gore wrote yesterday on his blog, on the launch of his new book.

Our Choice – A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis is the follow-up to Gore’s bestselling An Inconvenient Truth, in which he laid out the case for climate crisis. This time, according to the press release, he gives us the tools to solve it. Our Choice utilizes Mr. Gore’s forty years of experience as a student, policymaker, author, filmmaker, entrepreneur and activist to comprehensively describe the real solutions to global warming.

During the three and a half years since his last publication, the former US Vice President organized more than thirty “Solutions Summits,” where experts from around the world shared their knowledge and experience in subjects relevant to the construction of a plan to solve the climate crisis. In addition, he engaged in a large number of one-on-one sessions with leading experts.

One of the most unique approaches Gore takes in the book is showing readers how our own minds can be an impediment to change. After meeting with psychologists and neuroscientists, he reveals the brain system that can guide us in making the crucial decisions necessary to safeguard our civilization and the new approaches we need to employ in order to change human behavior.

Gore further looks at how political obstacles have stood in the way of progress and turned global warming into a more biased, partisan issue - like the countless misinformation campaigns aimed at misleading the public about the true nature and severity of the climate crisis.

Still, Gore’s message is optimistic. Despite the challenges, he focuses on the opportunities that are everywhere – especially in the form of increasingly powerful technological tools, which will allow us to avert the worst impacts and set the stage for successful recovery.

In a recent interview in The New Yorker, Gore also states that there, in many quarters around the world, has been an undeniable awakening during the last five years, of the gravity and the seriousness of this climate crisis:

“Even though that pressure for change has not yet led to an international treaty, it has led to some significant changes in awareness and in advocacy, and I feel confident in saying that we are very close to a political tipping point beyond which this pressure for change and reform will be manifested in more national laws and in an effective treaty,” Gore says.