{"id":40967,"date":"2025-04-29T13:07:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T20:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40967"},"modified":"2025-04-29T13:07:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T20:07:11","slug":"gore-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/gore-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Gore on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
ROBERT REICH<\/a><\/td><\/tr>
APR 29, 2025<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier today, I asked rhetorically: When it comes to the necessity of speaking out against this dangerous and detestable regime, where are Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and where are their vice presidents, Al Gore and Dick Cheney? When I wrote this I had not come across a particularly powerful speech Al Gore delivered last week in San Francisco at Climate Week. My error. Here it is, in full:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is abundantly clear, after only three months and one day, that the new Trump administration is attempting to do everything it possibly can to try to halt the transition to a clean energy future and a deep reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, basically 80% of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of you here today have likely felt the chilling effect of the policies and the rhetoric coming from Washington, D.C. and what the effect has been on businesses and investors and far beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dow Jones, of course, today fell another thousand points and since Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration it\u2019s gone down six thousand points. But while the most visible impacts of what the new administration is doing may be in the market for stocks and bonds, that\u2019s not the only thing that he has caused to crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trust market has crashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market for democracy has taken a major hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope is being arbitraged in the growing market for fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth has been devalued and confidence in U.S. leadership around the world has plummeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are facing a national emergency for our democracy and a global emergency for our climate system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to deal with the democracy crisis in order to solve the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scale and scope of the ongoing attacks on liberty are literally unprecedented. With that in mind, I want to note before I use what is not a precedent, I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler\u2019s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil, and here is one that I regard as essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, a small group of philosophers who had escaped Hitler\u2019s murderous regime returned to Germany and performed a kind of moral autopsy on the Third Reich. The most famous of the so-called Frankfurt School of Philosophers was a man named Jurgen Habermas \u2013 best known, I would say. But it was Habermas\u2019 mentor, Theodor Adorno, who wrote that the first step of that nation\u2019s descent into Hell was, and I quote, \u201cthe conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.\u201d He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, \u201cattacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality. They say Ukraine attacked Russia instead of the other way around, and expect us to believe it! At home, they attack heroes who have defended our nation in war and against cyberattacks as traitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say the climate crisis is a \u201choax\u201d invented by the Chinese to destroy American manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say coal is clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say wind turbines cause cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say sea level rise just creates more beachfront property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their allies in the oligarchic backlash to climate action argue that those who want to stop using the sky as an open sewer, for God\u2019s sake, need to be more \u201crealistic\u201d and acquiesce to the huge increases in the burning of more and more fossil fuels (which is what they\u2019re pushing), even though that is the principal cause of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may not be surprised to learn that this propagandistic notion of \u201cclimate realism\u201d is one that the fossil fuel industry has peddled for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CEO of the largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco has said \u201cWe should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His colleague, Exxon CEO Darren Woods, has claimed that \u201cthe world needs to get real. \u2026 The problem is not oil and gas. It\u2019s emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Petroleum Institute says that we need \u201ca more realistic energy approach\u201d \u2013 one that, you guessed it, includes buying and burning even more oil and gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, allow me to put this question to all of you: What exactly is it that they want us to be realistic about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their twisted version of \u201crealism\u201d is colliding with the reality that humanity is now confronting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accumulated global warming pollution (because these molecules linger there on average about 100 years and it builds up over time), it\u2019s trapping as much extra heat now every single day as would be released by the explosion of 750,000 first generation atomic bombs blowing up on the Earth every single day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic to let that continue?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic to think that if we opt out of taking action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, we\u2019ll be able to just wish it away and continue with business as usual? Well, Mother Nature makes a pretty good case against that argument. Every night on the TV news is like a nature walk through the Book of Revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic, for example, to continue stoking the risk of wildfire in California, after what has already happened to so many communities in Northern California? And just look at the devastation caused by the Los Angeles wildfires in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic to tell homeowners around the world that the global housing market is expected to suffer a $25 trillion loss in the next 25 years? Fifteen percent of all the residential housing stock in the world if we do not change what we\u2019re doing? Is that realistic in their view?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic to continue quietly accepting 8.7 million deaths every single year from breathing in the particulate co-pollution that also comes from the burning of fossil fuels? That is the number of people who are already being killed. According to health experts, it is, and I quote, \u201cthe leading contributor to the global disease burden.\u201d When you\u2019re burning coal, oil and gas, it puts the heat trapping pollution up there and it puts the particulate and PM 2.5 pollution into the lungs of people downwind from where the facilities are burning the fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic, in their view, for governments to manage 1 billion climate migrants crossing international borders in the balance of this century? That\u2019s how many the Lancet Commission estimates will be crossing borders in the decades to come, if we continue driving temperatures and humidity higher and making the physiologically unlivable regions of the world vastly larger by continuing to put 175 million tons of man-made heat-trapping pollution into that thin shell of the troposphere surrounding the planet. You know what that blue line looks like, that thin blue shell is blue because that\u2019s where the oxygen is. And it\u2019s so thin, if you could drive a car straight up in the air at highway speeds, you\u2019d get to the top of that blue line in five to seven minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what we\u2019re using as an open sewer. Is that realistic? I don\u2019t think it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve already seen, by the way, how populist authoritarian leaders have used migrants as scapegoats and have fanned the fires of xenophobia to fuel their own rise to power. And power-seeking is what this is all about. Our Constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump: someone who seeks power at all costs to get more power. Imagine what the demagogues would do as we continued toward a billion migrants crossing international borders. We could face a grave threat to our capacity for self-governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it \u201crealistic\u201d to continue inflicting the financial toll that the climate crisis is taking on the global economy? According to Deloitte, climate inaction will cost the economy $178 trillion over the next half century. And is it realistic to miss out on the economic opportunity that we could seize by going toward net-zero? Over that same period, climate action would increase the size of the global economy by $43 trillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A question with particular relevance in nearby Silicon Valley: is it realistic for the semiconductor industry to experience losses of up to 35% of annual revenues due to supply chain disruptions caused by the stronger and more severe cyclonic storms and supercell storms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic to continue with a system of financing that leaves the entire continent of Africa completely out? Right now, the entire continent of Africa, fastest-growing population in the world, has fewer solar panels installed than the single state of Florida in the United States of America. That\u2019s a disgrace to the makeup of our financial system. But Africa has three times as many oil and gas pipelines under construction and preparing for construction to begin than all of North America. It is ridiculous to allow this system to continue as it is. How is that realistic? Or fair? Or just?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it realistic for us, all of us here, to consign our children and grandchildren to what scientists warn us would be Hell on Earth in order to conserve the profits of the fossil fuel industry? The predictions of the scientists 50 years ago have turned out to be spot on correct. Their predictions just a few decades ago have turned out to be exactly right. Should not that cause us to listen more carefully to what they\u2019re warning us will happen if we do not sharply and quickly reduce the emissions from burning fossil fuels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that unrealistic to listen to a proven source of advice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This newfound so-called climate realism is nothing more than climate denial in disguise. It is an attempt to pretend there is no problem and to ignore the reality that is right in front of our faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s never present in any of this so-called \u201crealism\u201d is any credible challenge whatsoever to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. They never address that. They just wish it away and say, \u201cOh it\u2019s unrealistic to actually do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish we could wish it away, but we cannot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hard reality is that the fossil fuel industry has grown desperate for more capital. They\u2019re seeing their two largest markets wither away: electricity generation, number one and transportation, number two. They\u2019ve been losing their share of investment in the energy market to renewables and so they\u2019re panicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That explains why they are so aggressively using their captive policymakers to block meaningful solutions. Of course, as you know, they\u2019re way better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions. They\u2019ve grown very skillful at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are the wealthiest and most powerful industry lobby in the history of the world. They make the East India Company look like a popcorn vendor. They are the effective global hegemon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have used their war chests and their legacy network of political and economic power to block any reductions of fossil fuel burning emissions \u2013 whether at the international conferences that we call the COPs, the Conference of Parties in the UN process, or at the global negotiations for a plastic treaty. They blocked anything there, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? They\u2019re losing the first market of electricity generation because 93% of all the new electricity generation installed worldwide last year was solar and wind. They\u2019re losing that market steadily. EVs are rising dramatically. They say they\u2019ve slowed down. Well, we just got the new figures \u2013 an 18% increase year-on-year here in the United States. In many countries much faster than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, their third market \u2013 they\u2019re telling Wall Street that they\u2019re going to make up all of the expected lost revenue in their first two markets by tripling the production of plastics over the next 35 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, we might have a word to say about that. Is that realistic? Because we\u2019ve already found \u2013 the scientists say \u2013 that some seabirds are manifesting symptoms like Alzheimer\u2019s disease from the plastic particles in their brains and they found that it crosses the blood-brain barrier in humans, and the size of the amount has doubled just in the last decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do we really want to continue that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s crazy, but they are blocking action at both of these international forums and they\u2019re blocking action in the deliberations of nation-states, even in states and provinces, and even at the local level. Anywhere in the world where there is an effort to pass legislation or regulations that reduces the burning of fossil fuels, they are there with their money, with their lobbyists, with their captive politicians, blocking it as best they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the solution is what you\u2019re doing here at Climate Week here in San Francisco. We have got to rise up and change this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also why they are ballyhooing ridiculously expensive and hilariously impractical technologies like building giant mechanical vacuuming machines to suck it back out of the atmosphere after they put it up there. Could that someday be a realistic part of the solution? Perhaps, perhaps. But not now! Not even close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They use it as a bright, shiny object to distract attention and say, \u2018see this, see this, this could be so miraculous, we don\u2019t have to stop burning fossil fuels at all! We can actually continue to increase the burning of fossil fuels because look at this bright, shiny object. We\u2019ve got this vacuuming machine.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, CO2 is 0.035% of the molecules in the air. You\u2019re gonna use an energy-intensive, ridiculous, expensive process to filter through the other 99.965% of the molecules? It\u2019s absolutely preposterous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, the Sustainability Revolution is powering more and more of our global economy. It has the scale and impact of the Industrial Revolution and is moving at the pace of the Digital Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, in Texas, which used to have a free market for energy, over 90% of all their new electricity generation last year was solar and wind. And, you know, they\u2019ve got captured politicians there. They\u2019re pushing legislation in Texas to legally require any developers of solar and wind to spend time and money developing more oil and gas before they\u2019re given permission to develop renewables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not realism, that\u2019s pathetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is a sign of desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They don\u2019t trust the free market. They\u2019re just relying more and more on the politicians who will jump when they tell them jump and ask how high when they tell them to jump again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, around the world, the market is transforming. Since the Paris Agreement, the cost of solar has dropped 76%. The cost of wind is down 66%. Utility-scale batteries are down 87%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2004, when Generation was founded, it took a full year for the world to install one gigawatt of solar power. Now it takes one day to install one gigawatt of solar power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s not just renewables. We\u2019re seeing the Sustainability Revolution rapidly take hold across the rest of the global economy from transportation, to regenerative agriculture, to circular manufacturing, and so much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, as we gather here to kick off Climate Week and as we gather on the eve of Earth Day, we have to treat this moment as a call to action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I\u2019m here not only to respond to the invitation for which I\u2019m grateful\u2026. I\u2019m here to recruit you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of you are already working on this, but those of you who are not, I\u2019m here to recruit you. We need you. This is the time and this is a break glass moment. This is an all hands on deck moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now is the time to look at every aspect of your businesses, your investments, and your civic engagement to determine whether or not you can contribute even more to solving the climate crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to adopt our own versions of climate realism to say that the challenge is too great. Some people worry about that. To say that our individual role is too small to have an impact. Some use that as an excuse: that if the government won\u2019t act, what can any of us do about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, just as the climate crisis does not recognize borders between countries, it does not either recognize delineations between the duty of government and businesses and all significant participants in the global economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is already impacting your life and work and will more so through disrupted supply chains, increased liability, changes in consumer demand, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a moment when we all have to mobilize to defend our country. And remember the antidote to climate despair is climate action. It was in this city in the 1960s that Joan Baez first said that the antidote to despair is action. And we need to remember that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And during a time of when people were tempted to despair in the struggle for civil rights in this country, Martin Luther King said something about overcoming the forces that try to discourage you and halt progress. He said this: \u201cIf you can\u2019t fly, run. If you can\u2019t run, walk. If you can\u2019t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every one of the morally based movements in the past had periods when advocates felt despair. But when the central choice was revealed as a choice between right and wrong, then the outcome at a very deep level became foreordained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of the way Pope Francis reminded us we have been created as God\u2019s children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We love our families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are devoted to our communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to protect our future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you doubt for one moment ever that we as human beings have the capacity to muster sufficient political will to solve this crisis, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROBERT REICH APR 29, 2025 Friends, Earlier today, I asked rhetorically: When it comes to the necessity of speaking out against this dangerous and detestable regime, where are Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and where are their vice presidents, Al Gore and Dick Cheney? When I wrote this I… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40969,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40967\/revisions\/40969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}