"My own country, the United States of America, is principally responsible for obstructing the process here in Bali, we know that," said former U.S. vice president Al Gore to an enthusiastic applause from his audience gathering here for the U.N. climate conference.
"Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere where it is not now. You must anticipate that," said Al Gore, slowly and passionately.
The audience started to fill the 1,000-seat room, where Gore delivered his emotional speech on Thursday, almost an hour and half before the speech due to tighter security and people's high interest in the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Then Gore entered to a thunderous applause from the crowd, which grouped together large contingent of delegates and other dignitaries. There were also many representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A climate skeptic NGO handed out leaflets claiming that Gore had been proven wrong in a number of instances.
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, touched off laughter and applause from the crowd when he darted to the podium where the two Nobel Prize winners embraced.
Gore told the absolutely quiet audience why it had taken so many so long to understand that climate change was happening and that it was a real problem.
"There is the illusion that it will affect others. Not us," said Gore, wiping the sweat off his brow with his bare hand from time to time in the air-conditioned room.
But Gore's main message was that, more than anything else, there is a moral imperative to act on climate change, which he described as "not a political issue," "not a diplomatic issue," but "a moral issue."
He urged the audience not to wait until 2009 to complete a new treaty. "We can't afford to wait for another five years."
With his presence at the U.N. climate conference, Gore joined the voices for America to take urgent action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Differences over the emissions reduction targets have been foot-dragging negotiations ever since the U.N. conference opened on the Indonesian island of Bali on Dec. 3.
The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and is the only country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol among major industrialized countries. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a relatively modest average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Bush Administration has argued that the climate pact would harm the U.S. economy.
"When you get four opinions and they all say the same thing, you act," said Gore, who has long been campaigning for global actions on climate change.
"We are one people on one planet with one destiny," he said.
Source: Xinhua
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