Churchill, JFK and Al Gore on climate change

Yesterday the former president, sorry I mean the former vice-president Al Gore continued his campaign on climate change with a speech to the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford. During his speech, Gore encouraged world leaders to assume the characteristics and heroism of Winston Churchill. In an interview with The Times Gore said “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilization in WW2. We have everything we need to fight climate change except political will”. In his speech Gore hit out at politicians and governments accusing them of ducking their responsibilities to their countries and to the world. Gore suggested that politicians and governments have been avoiding making hard political decisions about CO2 reduction because of political self-interest and the subversive lobbying of special interest groups.

As well as invoking the spirit of Winston Churchill, Gore also drew parallels regarding the scepticism about global warming and the scepticism that surrounded JFK and his audacious plan to land a man on the moon. In 1961 JFK announced that within 10 years the US would place an astronaut on the moon’s surface. As you can imagine there was a great deal of scepticism about the feasibility of such a project, but all doubts about JFK’s vision evaporated on the 16th of July 1969 after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally accomplished what many others had thought was impossible. Gore suggested that anything is possible, and indeed if we can land men on the moon, then we can certainly dramatically cut CO2 emissions within a number of years.

Despite Gordon Brown and the government’s environmental posturing, no senior British politician agreed to address the conference and its’ audience of academics and climate scientists. Poor show wot? Remember when you head to that election booth next year that what politicians say, and what they actually give a damn about, is completely and utterly different.