Former US vice president Al Gore delivered an upbeat assessment of the global response to climate change yesterday, saying he believes a “political tipping point” has been reached which will enable leaders to avert environmental catastrophe.
In an interview, the Nobel peace prize winner said US President Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House, combined with a growing realization of the problem among business leaders, means there is now enough political momentum to tackle the world’s greatest environmental threat.
He believes a global climate deal will be agreed at the UN-brokered climate talks scheduled in Copenhagen for December.
“There is a very impressive consensus now emerging around the world that the solutions to the economic crisis are also the solutions to the climate crisis,” he said. “I actually think we will get an agreement at Copenhagen.”
While admitting there is a big challenge ahead, he said he was seeing signs of hope. “[Obama’s election] is one of the main factors,” he said. “But we also have a big ally in reality the planet is under assault. This collision with human civilization ... is increasingly dire.”
Gore held private talks with Obama in December in which they reportedly discussed the “green” components of the US$787 billion US stimulus package signed into law on Feb. 17.
Gore said he has also detected a shift in the view of many business leaders.
“They’re seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They’re seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years,” he said. “They’re seeing the new US administration. They’re seeing [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown and [opposition leader] David Cameron both advocating dramatic changes here in the UK.”
Gore warns business leaders who did not yet “get it” that they should look to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market as a warning.
“We now have several trillion dollars worth of sub-prime carbon assets whose value is based on the assumption that [carbon dioxide] is free and there is nothing wrong with 70 million tonnes of it entering into the atmosphere every 24 hours,” he said.
“That assumption is also in the process of collapsing and the remedy for it will include ... a change in business practices,” he said.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and