Earth in the Balance ES EIB 2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page Ii

ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page i Earth in the Balance ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page ii This page intentionally left blank ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page iii Earth in the Balance Forging a New Common Purpose Al Gore ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page iv EARTH IN THE BALANCE First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA 2007 First edition published in 1992 For a full list of publications please contact: Earthscan 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Earthscan is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Foreword copyright © Al Gore, 2006 All other text copyright © Senator Al Gore, 1992. Published by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices: Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978-1-844-07484-6 (pbk) Cover design by Susanne Harris ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page v To my sister N ANCY L A F ON G ORE H UNGER January 23, 1938 — July 11, 1984 ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page vi This page intentionally left blank ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page vii Contents Foreword: The Coming “Environment Decade” ix Introduction 1 PART I — BALANCE AT RISK 1 Ships in the Desert 19 2 The Shadow Our Future Throws 36 3 Climate and Civilization: A Short History 56 4 Buddha’s Breath 81 5 If the Well Goes Dry 99 6 Skin Deep 115 7 Seeds of Privation 126 8 The Wasteland 145 PART II — THE SEARCH FOR BALANCE 9 Self-Stewardship 167 10 Eco-nomics: Truth or Consequences 182 11 We Are What We Use 197 12 Dysfunctional Civilization 216 13 Environmentalism of the Spirit 238 ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page viii EARTH IN THE BALANCE PART III — STRIKING THE BALANCE 14 A New Common Purpose 269 15 A Global Marshall Plan 295 Conclusion 361 Acknowledgements 371 Notes 374 Bibliography 386 Index 394 Credits 408 viii ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page ix Foreword The Coming “Environment Decade” LOOKING BACK I began writing Earth in the Balance in the spring of 1989 and finished it in the fall of 1991. At the time I was still in the U.S. Senate after running for president in 1987–88, in part to bring more visibility to the issue of the climate crisis. I was in the midst of rethinking all of my priorities, and one of the outcomes of that process was that I had already decided not to run for president again in 1992, although I was getting lots of encouragement to do so. While writing this book, I started giving the slide show that would later become the basis for the documentary movie and book An Inconvenient Truth. As I was writing Earth in the Balance that fall, I was at the same time in the midst of planning a trip to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro where I would lead the U.S. Senate delegation the following summer. As a matter of fact, it was while I was in Rio participating in the Summit that I received a telephone call from Warren Christopher — my first contact from him on the subject — asking if I would allow my name to be placed on the list of those being considered as a vice- presidential candidate on Bill Clinton’s ticket. I didn’t think being named to the ticket was a serious possibility at the time. ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page x EARTH IN THE BALANCE Since Clinton was from Arkansas and I was from the neighboring state of Tennessee, this combination would not have made sense according to the traditional political calculus. But the old tradi- tion, surprisingly, was upended. I was selected and became vice president. I had no idea what would follow: the successful 1992 campaign with Clinton, the vice presidency for eight years, the 2000 campaign, the thirty-six days that followed Election Day 2000, the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, and all that has happened since in the U.S. and the world. As I look back over the past fifteen years since I finished writing this book, it is striking to recall what a central role Earth in the Balance has played in my life. It helped me to focus on the mission of solving the climate crisis — a mission I am still pursuing, with an ever-increasing sense of urgency and determination. It spawned the principal attacks on me in the 1992 election by then President George H. W. Bush, when he referred to me as “Ozone Man.” And it formed my principal agenda for eight years in the White House. The book is a snapshot in time that captures the evolution of my personal and intellectual involvement in the issue of global environment, and the 2000 update (also included in this volume) provides the other bookend for the work of the Clinton-Gore years on the environment. And now, this new edition of Earth in the Balance is offered to complement my latest book, An Inconvenient Truth. When I first wrote Earth in the Balance, I could not have predicted the political upheavals to come. Nor could I have predicted how long it would take for the scientific consensus to solidify. The nature and severity of the climate crisis had seemed painfully obvious to me for quite a long time; but in retrospect, I wish that we could have had in the 1990s the deafen- ing scientific consensus that has emerged in more recent years. It would have been much easier to galvanize the public and per- suade the Congress to act. x ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page xi FOREWORD THE GATHERING STORM Since Earth in the Balance was released in January 1992, volumi- nous new scientific research has greatly strengthened our grasp of the basics: global warming is real, it is getting worse rapidly, it is mainly caused by human beings, we need to act now to avoid the worst of its consequences — and it is not too late. Most everyone, by now, understands that the burning of fos- sil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas) thickens the normally thin atmospheric blanket around the globe, and in the process, traps much more of the sun’s heat close to the earth’s surface. The unnatural levels of atmospheric heating that result radically destabilize the climatic balance that has existed for all of human history. To put it another way, we have radically transformed the fun- damental relationship between humankind and the earth. This is due to a combination of factors. First, we have quadrupled the human population of our planet in just the past hundred years. It took 10,000 human generations to reach a population of 2 billion when my generation — the baby boomers — was born. Now, in the course of a single lifetime — ours — we are increasing in numbers from 2 billion to 9 billion (over the next forty-five years). We have already passed the 6.5 billion mark. Second, the power of the new technologies now at our dispos- al has magnified by thousands of times the impact each individual can have on the natural world. Our old habits, once largely benign, are now pursued with such enhanced power that we have become like the proverbial “bull in a china shop.” Third, our bizarre focus on short-term thinking and instant gratification — not just as individuals, but more important in the behavior of markets, national economies, and political agendas — has led to a systematic exclusion of long-term consequences in our decisions and policies. The results of this profoundly new relationship between humans and the earth are devastating. It is now not so much a relationship as a collision. xi ES_EIB_2-5 15/5/07 11:54 Page xii EARTH IN THE BALANCE The scientific community has deluged us with evidence of the tremendous changes we are wreaking on the planet, their version of shouting from the rooftops. In the original 1992 edition of this book, I depicted information from an ice core going back 160,000 years demonstrating that, at the time, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the earth’s atmos- phere had never been higher. In the 2000 reissue of the book, I used a newer version that went back 420,000 years — and it pointed even more clearly to the same conclusion. Now, in these pages, you can see that current CO2 levels are at the highest they have been in the past 650,000 years! As with the rest of the evidence, it still points to exactly the same conclusion that this book presented fifteen years ago; it’s just that the evidence is even more overwhelming now.

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