TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/88/88poy.009

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 6.2 KB | 126 lines

                                                                                January 2, 1989

PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 66

"What Is Wrong With Us?"


A Senator's impassioned call for action

By  Albert Gore


    If the steps needed to save the environment are well known and
feasible, then why are they not taken? In a speech at the
conference, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, one of the most
ardent environmentalists in Congress, explored this crucial
question. Excerpts from his remarks:

    When I announced I was running for President, I said the
greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer and the global
ecological crisis will, by the end of this election year, be
recognized as the most serious issue facing this country and the
world. Three days later, a George Will column ridiculed the naivete
of a politician who could imagine that issues of this kind would
be politically salable.

    I guess he was partly right and partly wrong. I was right in
that the issue has, during this year, attained enormous importance
and new recognition. But he was right, since it didn't do me any
good politically. There are still barriers to political action. Let
me discuss five of them.

    Number one, there are areas of uncertainty about the greenhouse
effect and the dire nature of the ecological crisis we face, which
are seized upon as excuses for inaction. This is a psychological
problem common to all humanity. If strong responses are needed and
yet there is some residual uncertainty about whether you are going
to have to make those responses, the natural psychological tendency
is to magnify the uncertainty and say, "Well, maybe we won't really
have to face up to it."

    But the fact that we face an ecological crisis without any
precedent in historic times is no longer a matter of any dispute
worthy of recognition. And those who, for the purpose of
maintaining balance in debate, take the contrarian view that there
is significant uncertainty about whether it's real are hurting our
ability to respond.

    The second barrier to political action is an unwillingness to
believe that something so far outside the bounds of historical
experience can, in fact, be occurring. To put it another way, this
set of problems sounds like the plot of a bad science-fiction
movie. People automatically assume it can't be real.

    The third political barrier is the assumption that it will be
easier and more sensible to adapt to whatever climate change occurs
than it will be to prevent the crisis. But the change could come
so swiftly that adaptation will be all but impossible.

    The fourth barrier is the lack of widespread awareness among
the peoples of the world about the nature of the problem. Most
political leaders, let alone their public, are unaware of what is
happening and how severe it is. That must be changed.

    The fifth barrier to political action is the knowledge that
many of the ultimate solutions are almost unimaginably difficult.
And since they are harder than anything we have done before, and
the efforts may all come to naught anyway, why mess with them? Why
not conserve our energy and just not even try? That is a formidable
barrier, not least because the solutions require international
cooperation on a scale that is totally unprecedented in history.

    Those five barriers must be overcome before the political
system reacts. The role of leadership is critical in spreading
awareness, in framing solutions, in offering a vision of the future
we want to create, as well as a vision of the nightmare we wish to
avoid.

    There is an old science experiment in which a frog is put into
a pan of water, and the water is slowly heated to the boiling
point. The frog sits there and boils because its nervous system
will not react to the gradual increase. But if you boil the water
first and then put the frog in, it immediately jumps out.

    We are at an environmental boiling point right now. Is the
destruction of one football-field's worth of forest every second
enough to make the frog react and jump out of the pan? What will
it take? If, as in a science-fiction movie, we had a giant invader
from space clomping across the rain forests of the world with
football field-size feet -- going boom, boom, boom every second --
would we react? That's essentially what is going on right now.

    We saw the two whales trapped in the Arctic ice, struggling
for air, and the world responded. The U.S. and the Soviet Union
cooperated. Yet we see 40,000 babies starving every day, and we
don't react. What is wrong with us?

    There used to be a debate in the '70s about appropriate
technology. Now the question is: Did God choose an appropriate
technology when he gave human beings dominion over the earth? The
jury is still out. And the answer has to come in our lifetime from
the political system.

    There are precedents. We made human sacrifice, once
commonplace, obsolete. We made slavery obsolete. These things, just
like changes in weather patterns, took a long period of time. But
now, just as climate changes are telescoped into a very short
period of time, changes in human thinking of a magnitude comparable
to the changes that brought about the abolition of slavery must
take place in one generation.

    We know how to solve the problem. It will be unimaginably
difficult. The cooperation required will be unprecedented. But we
know what to do. What is required is a change in thinking and a
change in the equilibrium of the world's political system.

    Right now the political equilibrium is characterized by
short-term policies at the expense of long-term policies. It is
characterized by actions to confer national advantage at the
expense of actions designed to promote global advantage. It is
characterized by preparations for war, ignorance and starvation.

    Our challenge as political leaders is to come up with an agenda
of solutions, which we are doing. But the larger challenge for all
of us is to shift the world's political system into a new state of
equilibrium, characterized by more cooperation, global agendas and
a focus on the future. As General Omar Bradley said at the end of
World War II, "It is time we steered by the stars and not by the
lights of each passing ship."