WEF24 TIME100 Davos Dinner: Al Gore Toast

TIME

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned that the world has become “voluntarily enslaved” to the fossil fuel economy, to the peril of the world’s biodiversity that those such as Jane Goodall have dedicated their lives to protecting.

Transcript

00:00 Mark, thank you for doing all this. I was so inspired by Jane Goodall, as I always am

00:06 when I hear you speak, Jane. I was reminiscing on when she and Ban Ki-moon and I were trying

00:11 to stay at the head of the crowd in the big 2015 climate march in New York City. And wrestling

00:18 between courtesy, southern male courtesy and chauvinism, I decided I was going to be a

00:28 protector of Jane and make sure that nobody jostled her as we're, well, I need not have

00:34 worried as we were in line. She claimed she did not throw any elbows. I don't know how

00:39 the hell she did it, but everybody else got out of her way. But Jane, thank you for inspiring

00:44 me. In the 1960s, I was inspired, first of all, on the climate issue by a professor named

00:53 Roger Revelle. And he opened my eyes to this and began the journey that I have been on

01:00 ever since. And on the -- he died in his early 90s, and I went out to give a speech at a

01:07 ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. And I did a lot of research

01:14 on his life, and I thought I knew all about him, but as is often the case, you just turn

01:20 up things that you didn't know about. And one of the facts I was unaware of is that

01:25 he himself, as a young college student, had been inspired by a professor whose teachings

01:32 changed his life. And it sounds like a little thing, but it caused me to think long and

01:41 hard about how many chains of inspiration reaching back in time. And I thought, well,

01:48 how many chains of inspiration in time are there that have brought us to where we are?

01:55 And of course, we're in a very difficult situation. And perhaps the best speech ever given in

02:02 the English language, Abraham Lincoln said, "The occasion is piled high with difficulty,

02:10 and we must rise with the occasion. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we will save

02:16 our country." It caused me to look up the word "disenthrall" and the word "thrall."

02:23 Thrall, at least according to Google, is an ancient form of voluntary enslavement in Scandinavia.

02:32 And the application that came to my mind is that we are, in a sense, voluntarily enslaved

02:44 to a fossil fuel economy, 80 percent of the energy we use, and we're trying to break out

02:51 of this. And it's causing so much danger and so many difficulties, not least to the biodiversity

03:01 with which we share this earth that Jane has taught us all about so eloquently. We hear

03:07 the word "polycrisis" thrown around now. Solving the climate crisis is a poly-solution.

03:15 That will help us solve a wide range of crises. And we need inspiration. And I close by again

03:22 thanking Jane for her inspiration, and I offer a toast without a glass. I offer a toast to

03:31 Jane Goodall's mother for setting her on this journey that has inspired us all.

03:37 [APPLAUSE]

Category

Transcript

Recommended