Page 130 - 4923
P. 130

commercials. So here's what we're doing. This is gasoline consumption in all of these countries. And us. But it's
      not just the developed nations. The developing countries are now following us and accelerating their pace. And
      actually, their cumulative emissions this year are the equivalent to where we were in 1965. And they're catching
      up very dramatically. The total concentrations: by 2025, they will be essentially where we were in 1985. If the
      wealthy countries were completely missing from the picture, we would still have this crisis. But we have given
      to the developing countries the technologies  and the ways of thinking that are creating the crisis. This  is  in
      Bolivia -- over thirty years.


             This is peak fishing in a few seconds. The '60s. '70s. '80s. '90s. We have to stop this. And the good news
      is that we can. We have the technologies. We have to have a unified view of how to go about this: the struggle
      against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions, all has a single, very simple
      solution.

             People say, "What's the solution?" Here it is. Put a price on carbon. We need a CO2 tax, revenue neutral,
      to replace taxation on employment, which was invented by Bismarck -- and some things have changed since
      the 19th century. In the poor world, we  have to  integrate the responses to poverty with the  solutions to the
      climate crisis. Plans to fight poverty in Uganda are mooted, if we do not solve the climate crisis.

             But responses can actually make a huge difference in the poor countries. This is a proposal that has been
      talked about a lot in Europe. This was from Nature magazine. These are concentrating solar, renewable energy
      plants, linked in a so-called "supergrid" to supply all of the electrical power to Europe, largely from developing
      countries -- high-voltage DC currents. This is not pie in the sky; this can be done.

             We need to do it for our own economy. The latest figures show that the old model is not working. There
      are a lot of great investments that you can make. If you are investing in tar sands or shale oil, then you have a
      portfolio that is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets. And it is based on an old model. Junkies find veins in
      their  toes  when  the  ones  in  their  arms  and  their  legs  collapse.  Developing  tar  sands  and  coal  shale  is  the
      equivalent. Here are just a few of the investments that I personally think make sense. I have a stake in these, so
      I'll  have  a  disclaimer  there.  But  geothermal,  concentrating  solar,  advanced  photovoltaics,  efficiency  and
      conservation.

             You've seen this slide before, but there's a change. The only two countries that didn't ratify -- and now
      there's only one. Australia had an election. And there was a campaign in Australia that involved television and
      Internet and radio commercials to lift the sense of urgency for the people there. And we trained 250 people to
      give the slide show in every town and village and city in Australia. Lot of other things contributed to it, but the
      new Prime Minister announced that his very first priority would be to change Australia's position on Kyoto, and
      he has. Now, they came to an awareness partly because of the horrible drought that they have had. This is Lake
      Lanier. My friend Heidi Cullen said that if we gave droughts names the way we give hurricanes names, we'd call
      the one in the southeast now Katrina, and we would say it's headed toward Atlanta. We can't wait for the kind of
      drought Australia had to change our political culture. Here's more good news. The cities supporting Kyoto in the
      U.S. are up to 780 -- and I thought I saw one go by there, just to localize this -- which is good news.

             Now,  to  close,  we  heard  a  couple  of  days  ago  about  the  value  of  making  individual  heroism  so
      commonplace that it becomes banal or routine. What we need is another hero generation. Those of us who are
      alive  in  the  United  States  of  America  today  especially,  but  also  the  rest  of  the  world,  have  to  somehow
      understand that history has presented us with a choice -- just as Jill [Bolte] Taylor was figuring out how to save
      her life while she was distracted by the amazing experience that she was going through. We now have a culture
      of distraction. But we have a planetary emergency. And we have to find a way to create, in the generation of

                                                           129
   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135