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Global Warming is really not a political issue, it is disguised as a political issue. It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue. If we allow this to happen, we will destroy the habitability of the planet. We can't do that, and I am confident we won't do that.
- Al Gore
The scientific community has reached a consensus that global warming is real and that human activities are causing the warming trend. Global temperatures have steadily risen over the last century, with 4 of the 5 warmest years occurring in the past 5 years.
Global Warming Summary
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Preserve and Protect Our Environment
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There are scientific warnings now of another onrushing catastrophe. We were warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda; we didn't respond. We were warned the levees would break in New Orleans; we didn't respond. Now, the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published a study well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in intensity, by about 50 %. The newscasters told us after Hurricane Katrina went over the southern tip of Florida that there was a particular danger for the Gulf Coast of the hurricanes becoming much stronger because it was passing over unusually warm waters in the gulf. The waters in the gulf have been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting warmer. And the pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have predicted for twenty years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are facing us right now.
The president says that he is not sure that global warming is a real threat. He says that he is not ready to do anything meaningful to prepare us for a threat that he's not certain is real. He tells us that he believes the science of global warming is in dispute. This is the same president who said last week, "Nobody could have predicted that the levees would break." It's important to establish accountability in order to make our democracy work. And the uncertainty and lack of resolution, the willful misunderstanding of what the scientific community is saying, the preference for what a few supporters in the coal and oil industry - far from all, but a few - want him to do: ignore the science. That is a serious problem. The President talked about the analogies to World War II - let me give another analogy to World War II.
Winston Churchill, when the storm was gathering on continental Europe, provided warnings of what was at stake. And he said this about the government then in power in England - which wasn't sure that the threat was real, he said, "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent." He continued, "The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."
Ladies and gentlemen, the warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences. Churchill also said this, and he directed it at the people of his country who were looking for any way to avoid having to really confront the threat that he was warning of and asking them to prepare for. He said that he understood why there was a natural desire to deny the reality of the situation and to search for vain hope that it wasn't really as serious as some claimed it was. He said they should know the truth. And after the appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, he sad, "This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year - unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our stand for freedom."
It is time now for us to recover our moral health in America and stand again to rise for freedom, demand accountability for poor decisions, missed judgments, lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful denial of the obvious truth about serious and imminent threats that are facing the American people.
- Al Gore, 2005
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Reusable Shopping Bag
Tote bag with "Reduce Reuse Recycle, Conserve Protect Preserve" printed around Earth
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I tell you one thing I'm not going to do is I'm not going to let the United States carry the burden for cleaning up the world's air.
- George W. Bush, 2000
...if you think about it, if we're smart and have got a strategic vision and a leader who understands strategic planning, to make sure that we change the terms of the battlefield of the future so we can keep the peace. This is a peaceful nation, and I intend to keep the peace. Spending money is one thing. But spending money without a strategic plan can oftentimes be wasted.
- George W. Bush, 2000
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Did you know?
Big oil companies have been funding junk science and biased research designed to confuse and misinform the public by creating uncertainties about the realities of global warming.
ExxonMobil, an oil giant that generates its huge profits from the fossil fuels that contribute to global warming, gave $15,000,000 (15 million dollars) to organizations designed to challenge science's conclusions on global warming.
George W. Bush consistently misleads the public on environment issues. One of his administration's first actions was to withdraw the United States from Kyoto, a global effort to reduce climate change. In 2002, his republican administration released the
ridiculously titled "Clean Skies" initiative, which weakened the Clean Air Act and was in effect a license for companies pollute more. That same year, his administration introduced the "Healthy Forest Initiative", which was basically a giveaway of our national forests to the logging industry. His administration has continued to introduce legislation that weakens protection of natural areas and national parks, and has even gone as far as nominating officials with ties to polluters to head the EPA!
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