I started Al Gore's Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (copyright 1992, 1993). I have two items from my latest reading.
1.
Gore discusses his 1988 Presidential run, during which time he talked a
lot about environmental issues, back when many people in the U.S. did
not exactly prioritize them. After Gore lost the Democratic nomination
and George H.W. Bush became President (and Bush pledged to be a leader
on climate change, but this, according to Gore, turned out to be an
"empty promise"), Gore plotted a strategy on how he could be a leader on
environmental issues in the Senate. Gore met with Senator Tim Wirth,
who was saying many of the same things that Gore was, so that both
would not get in each other's way and end up sacrificing the cause to
"destructive forms of competition" (page 10). Gore says on page 10, "It
was the kind of conversation I probably wouldn't have been comfortable
having only a few years earlier, but by then it seemed entirely
natural." I liked this statement because it highlights an important
element of growth: becoming comfortable or adept in doing things that,
before, you were not comfortable or adept in doing.
2. On page 28, Gore addresses the question of why so many could care when a little girl named Jessica McClure fell
into a well and was rescued, when a lot of people in the U.S. are
apathetic about the over 100,000 children who die of starvation and
diarrhea, due to crop failures and politics. Gore's answer is that
people don't know what they can do about the latter, or they deem a
response to the latter to be impossible or to demand too great of a
sacrifice, and so they "sever the link between stimulus and moral
response."
Some problems do look too big to handle. At the same
time, it is remarkable what a number of charities are doing in the Third
World: bringing clean water to areas, constructing schools, etc. Do
they eliminate all of the problems in the Third World? No. But at
least there are a lot of people there who are getting help.
Does
Gore believe that there are manageable solutions to climate change? I'm
not sure what he thinks today, to tell you the truth, now that we are
twenty years after he wrote this book, and twelve years after his 2000
Presidential run. I remember talking with my Mom about Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth,
and the solutions that he proposed to climate change----including the
things that we as individuals could do----struck me as manageable. (I
have not yet watched the movie, so I'm basing this on my conversation
with my Mom, who did watch it.) And Gore in this book does not believe
that we have to choose between the environment and the economy, for
developing clean environmental technology creates jobs and saves
companies money, especially since environmental damage can be quite
costly.
Gore has often been criticized for being a hypocrite when
it comes to the environment----that he flies a polluting private jet
rather than more environmentally-friendly planes, that his house is not
as environmentally-friendly as George W. Bush's house, etc. Gore does
not respond to those specific charges in this book, for it was written
before all of that. And yet, Gore in this book does recognize his own
hypocrisy. On pages 14-15, he says: "I have tried to confront in my own
life the same ill habits of thought and action that I am attempting to
understand and working to change in our civilization as a whole. On a
personal level, this has meant reexamining my relationship to the
environment in large and small ways----everything from wondering how my
spiritual life can be more connected to the natural world to keeping a
careful eye on our household's use of electricity, water, and, indeed,
every kind of resource----and recognizing my own hypocrisy when I use
CFCs in my automobile air conditioner, for example, on the way to a
speech about why they should be banned." I guess what he's saying is
that life is a journey, and nobody's perfect, but hopefully we can do
some self-evaluation and make improvements. I doubt that I live an
environmentally-perfect life, either. But it's good to reflect on the
issue.