Al Gore speaks in Madrid about Climate Change

Al Gore spoke yesterday for almost two hours at the 1st Summit on Energy, Local Government and Climate Change in Madrid (Spain). Al Gore left his political remarks for the end, when he said that we have a generational commitment. His presentation included plenty of figures and was complemented by a spectacular audiovisual set; during his speech he explained the evidences of climate change and the threats that it presents: droughts, torrential rain, melting of polar ice, sea level rise, crop downsizing... and he said these only represent "the present".

"How will our generation be remembered? Will we be the selfish self-destructive ones that failed to react and face responsibility or will we be the ones who succeeded in taking hard decisions?" he asked himself.

Mr Gore criticized those who have been denying the existence of climate change for years, and he was very upset with the energy policy of George W Bush, who hired Mr Philip Cooney -an oil industry man-. "Mr Bush said once that we must choose between the economy or the environment, but this is a fake trade-off. If we have no planet, we have no economy" Al Gore added. "If the Antarctica is melted, Wall Street will be under the water", he explained.

Mr Gore was, however, optimistic about the solutions to climate change, as we have the necessary technical solutions and, from an economical point of view, it is more efficient to act than it is to wait. "We have the technical knowledge to extend renewable energy" he said, argumenting that America could go back -if proper measures were implemented- to the carbon emission levels that it had 35 years ago. At the end of his presentation Mr Gore was sceptical with nuclear power: "I am from Tennessee, an area with a lot of nuclear activity, and although I am not all against nuclear power, I do not believe that it represents the solution to climate change. Not only due to the waste or eventual human errors, but also because it is uneconomical"

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