I am the director and would like to very briefly encourage you all if youve not done so to support the southern festival, which we keep free and open and have done so for over 29 years by making a donation to the festival which you can do online at humanities tennessee or Facebook Page or in person on the plaza at the headquarters at union avenue. We appreciate you being here this morning. A very quick note about the q a portion of todays event. You should be holding an index card if you have a question you would like addressed please write that on the card and about 15 minutes and if you pass them towards the end of the aisle someone will come by and collect the cards that will be used for the q a afterwards. This time i would like to welcome this mornings guest, the professor of management at Vanderbilt University where he is just courses in ethics, Public Policy and negotiation industry in author on the book relation to employment which we discussed at the festival when it was published as well as the three books on the scholarly articles and presently the editorinchief of the ethics quarterly the leading International Economic journal of ethics. Former Vice President al gore is the cofounder and chairman of the Investment Management and senior partner and member of apple inc. Board of directors. As the chair man reality nonprofit devoted to solving the Climate Crisis. Al gore was elected to the house of representatives in 1976, 78, ed and 82, to the senate in 94 and was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on january 20, 1993 where he served for eight years. The author of the bestseller in that outlines an Inconvenient Truth the assault on reason, our choice they plan to solv a plane Climate Crisis and most recently the future drivers of global change. The subject of an oscarwinning documentary and new film that premiered in july and inconvenient sequel truth to power. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for informing the world of the dangers posed by Climate Change please join me in welcoming to the southern festival of books bruce berry and al gore. [applause] good morning. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, everybody and thanks for the introduction. I think he explained how we are taking questions and there are card that can be given and i will pose the questions. Questions in which a handwriting cannot be read. Iowi would be happy to intert them. The book is an inconvenient sequel to earth to power the companion book to the film and i want to say a couple things. First of all, for those who havent seen the film when it was in theaters, it became available for digital purchase earlier this month and i believe on october 24 it comes available for digital rental through the various streaming services and also comes out on dvd and bluray and i want to mention that the outset the other book the assault on reason the New York Times best seller theres a new addition that has a premise and conclusion we may say a few words about that in the course of the conversation. Let me start in this way by asking what changed but we could spend hours on that so let me frame it more in this way. Its built around the questions of change, can we change and will we change. Have the answers to those questions changed in the past ten years . Thank you for doing this event this morning and thank you all ladies and gentlemen for coming to be a part of it. If i may, i would like to acknowledge the presence of our absolutely fantastic mayor who is here somewhere. [applause] ive had the privilege of developing a friendship with proofs and megan. May i say we hold you in our hearts and we are so proud of you and reaching out to you. What has changed in the last 11 years an Inconvenient Truth was published there are two big ones worth noting, one god and one good. The climate related weather events have come more severe and frequent. I used to say on a regular basis on the tv news it is a book of revelations and im kind of reluctance to use that line these days because it is true we have had these three huge hurricanes and combined losses of 350 billion, not to mention the lives lost. And now today, 17 fires raging out of control in northern california, and others around the last. I was in nevada yesterday for a renewal conference. They had a tragedy involved. And its connected to the climate. Theres others involved with a baseline is the hotter the temperature, the dry air the vegetation and soil into the more players there are. The coalitio correlation is exa. There is more lightning strike, ten to 12 more lightning strikes. These were they think ignited by power lines but i dont know if they decided that. Hurricane harvey adopted as much water has anybody here been to niagara falls, quite an impressive sight. Think about all flow for 500 days. Thats how much water fell on texas and louisiana in the trailing parts of the storm. 5 feet of raise rain i dont wao get sidetracked on this but in the first week houston was and through that, puerto rico is still suffering the caribbean islands and gainesville. Fullstop once in a thousand year rainfall from Hurricane Irma nobody noticed that and the same week that houston was going through there were ten times as many People Killed in south asia by historic downpours there. Today this morning in vietnam, historic downpours and scores of People Killed. So its gotten worse than they predicted that the second big change is part of what this book is all about. Weve seen a Technology Costs down curve Everybody Knows about moores law and they get twice as powerful because of the breakthroughs. It turns out solar energy is like that. And for efficiency improvements. The world is in the early stages of a sustainability repetitio rn empowered by the new Digital Tools and artificial in artifice and the internet of things and we are learning how to measure with the same position tha prect they demonstrated they could use to manage bits of information td its changing things dramatical dramatically. Things have stabilized for the last 40 years starting a downward trend and we are going to win this but the question is whether we will win this in time to reduce the risk to an acceptable level and cross a point of no return. Its a dangerous race between hope and the catastrophic consequences. We are putting another 110 million tons of pollution in the sky every day and its very thin. If you can drive a car at a normal speed youd hit the top in just five minutes. And we are dumping all of these gases. The accumulated amount now tracks as much as what he released by 400,000 exploding every 24 hours. Let me jump in here because i know i could let you go on for the entire hour. I just had a cup of coffee. Im sorry. [laughter] you mentioned the good news is this technological revolution around sustainability and renewable forms of energy. Part of the argument you make in the book and the movie is that the United States is not a much part of the revolution as it needs to be. 70 or 80 say that the u. S. Should be a Global Leader on this issue. The rest of the world has come to expect leadership from the United States if we have made our share of mistakes, but we have stood for a universally applied principle that people should be free and it is the natural condition of humanity. We have been a force for good. But where climate is concerned we have had a setback for the United States to lead this sustainability revolution. We are hanging in there because a lot of cities around the country are providing tremendous leadership. California, nevada, washington state. I could go down the list. And by the way, even though President Trump announced their withdrawal from the Paris Agreement with the first date upon which that could legally occur happens to be the first day after the next president ial election. It was directed at pretty carefully. [laughter] i dont want to make this partisan because im under no illusion that there are not a few people that are supporting trump here, but if we have a new president , excuse me a moment [laughter] but if we have a new president , then a new president could simply give 30 days notice and we are back in. And regardless of what President Trump does, we in the United States are on track to exceed the commitment that we made in the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement itself has actually shifted some of the leadership to the World Community as a whole. After trumps announcement, the only two countries in the world that are not committed are the United States and syria. Good company, isnt it . That was sarcastic, im sorry. But china and india china is the biggest source of the pollution. India will soon be the third. They are both on track to significantly outdo the commitments theyve made. Since the Paris Agreement has closed 37 coal mines, shutting down coalfired plants theyve announced a device 2022 they will need no coalfired plants, they are expanding solar electricity to 175 gigawatts, which is amazing. Theyve announced within only 13 years, 100 of al the new cars d trucks would have to be in electric vehicles and thats outdoing france and the united kingdom. They are really moving. Of the year before the Paris Agreement, for a president obama reached a deal that committed those countries to foster the success that later unfolded and the china met their usage in 2014 and theyve been going down rapidly ever since. We could do so much more and it would be good for us. Solar jobs in the United States are growing 17 times faster than all other jobs and the economy. This is a Good Opportunity if we would provide more leadership. Lets talk about the role of the business sector. You mentioned the commitment regarding electric vehicles in the years to come. So just a couple of weeks ago by General Motors and ford introducing 33 new electric models and making pledges about the degree that it will not rely on internal combustion in the next five to seven years. Those are goods x. I assume but i gather you are quite cynical about the u. S. Industry on this especially the energy industry. Are these going to make a difference . I dont view myself as cynical on the history. I am cynical about the actions taken by most of the remaining companies and several of the Oil Companies particularly exxon mobil which has been financing the climate of denial. They and some others adopted at the playbook. They hired actors and dressed them up and doctors and said i am a doctor and you dont have to worry at all and 100 Million People died and theyve hired many of the same agents and i am very cynical about that but the industry as a whole into business as a whole, i think they are moving. The number of businesses that have made a commitment to 100 renewable energy, recycling, responsible environmental stewardship, it is pretty inspiring and by the way, many of you are among the grou groupt deserve a lot of the credit for that because when their customers are telling them they will take their business somewhere else unless they align their values with what many of us believe that is making a difference. And when they go to hire new employees, this new generation is not only different from my generation, the way different. They want a good paycheck that want to work for the company that shares their values and gives them the feeling they are about something larger than only making promises. And the sustainability revolution i referred to earlier is taking hold in the Business Community industry and Investor Community. Investors are shifting money out of fossil fuels to last year 2016 in the u. S. , if you look at all of the new Electricity Generating capacity that was put in place, 75 of it is solar and wind. 0. 2 is coal. About a quarter of its natural gas which has been displaced along with renewables, but now because the Cost Reduction curve continues downward, solar is beating natural gas in the state cost of utilities are having. There was a contract signed two weeks ago for 1. 7 cents per kilowatt hour unsubsidized and a number of contracts, three contracts earlier in the year for 2. 4 come if you dont speak kilowatts, 2. 4 is less than half the cost of electricity from burning coal and so thi this hoe is out of the barn and on its way to the line. How do you diagnose the psychology of Oil Companies and the fossil fuel industry in this country because im under the impression that theres more progressives overseas and the energy companies. How do you diagnose the psychology of the people leaving these firms . Are they just keeping their blinders on . I think that they are in a quiet panic. They realize they are facing an ex essential crisis. They have a product that poses a threat to the survival and as that spreads around the world they are facing a crisis. They are ahead in shifting their business plans. Its difficult for the company to become renewable. Youre an expert on that so i cant tell you about it, but im skeptical that they will be among the leaders but they are trying. But i think that they are worried. In the Investor Community there is a phrase stranded assets, and maybe this speaks for itself if you are holding an asset that is in danger of suddenly losing all of its value, think of the subprime mortgage crisis where we have 7. 5 million mortgages given to people for couldnt make a monthly down payments that the banks decide to file if they just lump them altogether and sell them to the global marketplace, the risks will disappear. Not so much. And when people realized they were worthless, thats what created the credit crisis and recession that followed so we now have 22 trillion of subprime carbon asset on the books of the multinational in sovereigns. Saudi arabia just yesterday pulled the back on the proposal. The first to lose its value was the coal industry it lost 90 of its market cap in the last decade. Some big investors are pulling out of their. Oil is mainly sold into the liquid fuel market before gasoline and diesel and jet fuel and that is where the electric vehicle revolution matters to the oil industry. Idenmark and norway announced a ban on gas and diesel cars by 2025. India by 2030. Even germany where the Auto Industry began. Angela merkel said the future is all electric. General motors said the future of us all electric. Again, every automobile manufacturers are in the world idoes have some space on the curve moving heavily into electric vehicles, so the handwriting is on the wall for the companies. What they have done is take some of their revenue stream cheer to finance the climate denial, and sony to try to plant false doubts in the public mind. There was a great book called the emergence of doubt that documents this thoroughly, but the game is up. They are being sued by the attorneattorney general of new d massachusetts, and some other states just as the Tobacco Companies were sued. They are being investigated for violating the law that makes it illegal to tell investors holds information about a material fact. If you are in the market to buy stock, one of the things you might be interested in is whether this product is going to destroy our civilization. [laughter] that might discourage you from buying it. If they go into the marketplace and theres nothing to this Climate Crisis stuff, dont believe that. If the evidence supports the allegation that is an extremely serious violation of the security. I want to stick with this idea of psychology that move away from the business and economics in the realm of politics and Public Opinion. Its an interesting topic with respect to Public Opinion and in the u. S. Overwhelming numbers of people say that they are concerned about this and thereve been polls in the last year or two coul that say we shd be spending much more of our attention on sustainability and renewables but yes we have an administration that tells us last week that the war on coal is over. Dont get me started. [laughter] i have to download some existing outrage just to make room for it. [laughter] [applause] it wasnt my goal to bring new outrage to the table. [laughter] what i do want to ask you is about the psychology of Public Opinion on this because one of the paradoxes is that people when asked will say this is important and that it matters, but when they are asked as political pollsters often do when they are asked to rank its importance in terms of the issues they worry about the candidates and politicians to commission come it doesnt score that while. It is so longterm if they have to do with the future of civilization does not like next month or next year. So much of your book is about trying to break through this. How do we break through this . Its important to recognize that our country is unique in a communitthe community of nationh this persistent high level of climate denial. I would hasten to add two thirds and more of the American People say its real. We are causing it. Weve got to fix it. I will come back to how they rank it as a priority. But those u. S. Is unique in that there is a saying if you see a turtle on top of the fence post you can be pretty sure it didnt get there by itself. And when we see this level it didnt happen by itself. This massively funded unethical immoral Public Relations campaign has in part up until recently achieved its intended purpose and there are three sources of climate denial. The second source is political and ideological. There is an ideological battle in this country over the proper role of government is and there is what i would regard as an extremist faction from some of that group in the famous words of a lobbyist they want to shrink the government down to where it can be drowned in the bathtub, and its kind of almost blending with anarchists and in a way, but that group has formed an Ideological Alliance to help feed this nature Cottage Industry of the denial. Now the next one is human nature, because all of us actually want to push away anything that is painful or uncomfortable. And these blends together because if you are wanting to avoid having to think about this, then you are exposed to some of these false doubts. Then the tendency on the part of some is to say if its not a settled question then we can afford to wait. You talked earlier about extreme weather events and that always produces conversations among the pundits and other commentators about whether it is a sign of Climate Change. The question here is do you think that these events are proving Public Opinion . Definitely. Let me add a quick word about the nature of cause and effect. Its still common to hear some in the Scientific Community say you cannot attribute any single extreme weather events to the Climate Crisis. What you have to say is the odds of it happening have increased. But increasingly the best is the cutting edge scientists are saying differently. What they say is every storm is different now. And that could cause and effect. We are used to thinking of cause and effect as the linear phenomena single cause, single effect. If you have a complex system that manifests many consequences and then you radically change the operations of the system, all of the consequences are different. Mark mcgwire broke babe ruths and rogers record for home runs and found out hed been on steroids doubletime. If each of those home runs results from the steroids, while every time he hit the ball it was different, and certainly the net result was different. Quick example, there is now a 5 increase in water vapor in the air all around the world because we are boiling the oceans. 93 of all of this extra energy goes to the oceans so we have atmospheric rivers infinite downpour of hers it is fed by a huge increase in the amount of moisture. Same thing with drought. Its so much hotter that they take hold quicker that leads to ththe fire some of the ice is melting so the sea level was rising. Another confirmed case of locally transmitted disease. Today we need Better Public Health assistance. The tropical diseases are moving to northern latitudes because the conditions are moving north. The extinction crisis. The average land based plant and animal species on average are moving towards the north pole at a rate of 15 feet per day. And that is happening on our watch. We are in danger of losing 50 of the species on the planet this century. The biologists say that is the worst consequence. But the storm, to wrap up to the specific question, they are definitely having a big impact on Public Opinion. The famous psychiatrist and author had a column in the New York Times last week noting the pollsters are finding it. Let me ask a related question and whoever has the question is welcome to bring them to me at any time. Related to understanding the politics and Public Opinion i want to ask about journalism. We have something in common we spent part of our 20s practicing and i know you are thoughtful on the subject in the new conclusion. You write about how the press and media landscape changed since the First Edition of the book and the film. How good a job as the press doing covering the Climate Crisis and what role are they playing or not playing in moving us ahead . Its been a massive systemic failure of journalism. There are many honorable exceptions. There are a lot of writers. Elizabeth is one that comes to mind. Many are doing a terrific job. As a whole, particularly the Network Television news has ignored it. We just went through the president ial election cycle last year. This was the third quadrennial president ial election in a row where not one question in any of the debate dealt with the Climate Crisis. Arguably i am convinced it is the most serious challenge were facing and noweare facing and ne question about it. If you look at the total number of minutes devoted to the last year its pathetic. Its like 45 minutes total among all three for the entire year and yet, we have had recordbreaking climate disasters on right after the other. And i will tell you what its like first. Part of it is the erosion of the lines between entertainment and consultation of the media industry. It is as much as they can to the bottom line and they do polling of one segment causing the population to turn the dial. They resemble a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage if the word alcohol is mentioned so they tiptoe around the elephant of the room. It is unleashed if anybody mentions the solutions to it. We have some traffic questions. [laughter] im going to go to some of deans and we will get in as many as we can. The first one is a perfect segue. One of the ways the book differs from the film is the film talks about being an activist and what you can do to words the film but that is a major component of the book. What advice can you give to the environmentalists making a difference . This morning i personally find all of the copies that are out there for sale and 100 of the profits go to the climate reality project which trains people to the climate activists. Three things in general you can do in the conversation on climate, the climate deniers inspire some people who are reluctant to speak up is to be overcome. You dont have to be hostile or mean about it. I remember as a kid growing up in smith county when a civil rights conversations really changed dramatically. Im so proud nashville plated part. But its important to acknowledge the conversations. We still have the ultimate power if we will registering to vote and organized as the us organizy in the Labor Movement use your vote capacities of these at the as a citizen then use your choices in the marketplace because when that not only helps you walk the walk it sends a pretty powerful message to the business industry designers to speed up. Right to your congressman. Im doing a Training Session in pittsburgh. We have 1600 people coming to be trained. I did one earlier this year in seattle and there was an 11yearold girl that came and i didnt know what to think because all of a sudden i saw myself like the amusement ride owner you have to be this tall to get in but she carefully took notes the whole three days and two weeks later i clicked on a video going viral on the internet and at first i didnt recognize her. She had gone to the town hall meeting of her republican congressman in coloradcongressms standing there giving him hell on climate and i was thinking you go. [laughter] i think it goes without saying among the suggestions and the people in the book sign up for one of these climate project trainings. Ive done two of them in tennessee already. The first one was at the barn and then i did a big one here in downtown nashville, and im going to be putting another big one. But i do them are not available also. Ive done one and jakarta, beijing, new delhi, mexico. Im getting one in mexico city next year. And the reason for this is that in order to solve the Climate Crisis we also have to address the democracy crisis. Our democracy has been hacked but not just by the russians. Before the russians, big money hacked our democratic process and we have to fix it. Although Reform Movement are now online for the echo chambers and weve been reminded how vulnerable it is thus we can take it back and we can re empower people to use their voices in the political system. This is a guidebook for how to do that. Ive come to the conclusion that there has to be a bottomup movement because big money has captured the mind and heart of too many in washington and it is a shame but now we are seeing campaigns on with small donations and i just think it is really important to get involved politically. Somebody writes are we beyond the Tipping Point in ocean levels and more frequent storms. No, we are not. At least that is the conclusion of the committee that i trust and follow. All i do is channel what theyve been finding it if youre patient enough with me to go over the stuff over and over again until i get into playlist down so i can finally understand and thats what i try to communicate. That they will say in answer to that question now, we still have time, not a lot of time, but still time to avoid the catastrophic consequences. In all candor, i have to point out that they also tell us that the decades ahead are going to be a challenge for the character of humanity because some of the consequences weve already begun to experience will only get worse. There will be increased Sea Level Rise and so we have to guard ourselves for the fact weve already done some damage that will not be easily reversed, but the civilization in the consequences can still be avoided and we can begin a healing this that will redeem the promise all of us as parents and grandparents would like to make the upcoming generations that weve done what we were supposed to do to try to safeguard. We have to prepare to change the things we cannot adapt to and thats why the urgency is so great. There were starting to be some conversations in the storms about whether some places you dont rebuild. One of the most compelling scenes in the book is when you are standing with the mayor and my favorite page in the book is a page that has a photograph of an octopus in a parking garage and im not saying we should let miami go but weve seen some damage in the care to be enhanced with and it raises the question of whether we were going to rebuild places that are vulnerable if thats part of the change we have to adapt to our their lowlying areas we have to abandon . It is a painful subject but it comes down to a calculation of cost versus benefits. Now, with new orleans for example, you can build a bigger, taller seawall and they will probably endeavor to do that. Miami is a different place from the lowlying coastal areas. India just completed the largest on the southern border with bangladesh. The Largest Naval base in the world is the naval base in your and the u. S. Navy has to move the entire naval base and that is going to be expensive. There is also areas that will be abandoned due to excessive heat. There is a city in iran Everybody Knows it is a combination. Just imagine if you are in the e city of iran and they said the temperature is this but it feels like 150 degrees fahrenheit, that is what the index has been and thereve been others reached that level. No human being can survive more than 46 hours in those conditions. So, some of the scientific institutes are mapping regions in the middle east and north africa some of which will be uninhabitable. This brings up the climate refugees. There was a drought in the eastern mediterranean. The connection has been documented by the way, and it destroyed 60 of the farms and killed 80 of the livestock. 1. 5 million climate refugees and their internal conversations again well before the civil war saying its going to cause an explosion and so whether we make rational decisions to save the area and about on a global basis, this is going to be disruptive and we have to prepare ourselves for it. We have time for a couple more questions. An interestininteresting questia little more complicated because it is about the issue of population and whether it refers to the population explosion and whether we have the Natural Resources to accommodate that. I guess i will pose the question more generally what is the relationship and im looking for a short answer. What is the relationship because i know it is a big question. I will do my best. [laughter] the Climate Crisis is the single most dangerous manifestation between the way we organized the system of the earth. The effect we are havin they arn the oceans etc. First its the population. Second is Technology Enhanced power and third is our way of thinking and our obsession with the outcomes of decisions that have longerterm consequences so its one of the three big factors. The thing about the global population increase is to believe it or not, it is a Success Story unfolding in slow motion, and im sorry not to be able to make this shorter its well understood how this can be successfully addressed. There are two population equilibrium states. First is large families, high birth rates and high death rates. It comes down to the second equilibrium small families come in low birth rates, low death rates. Every nation on the earth is on the journey and weve already accomplished that. Western europe, japan, russia. Africa still is farther up the curve and it needs to be. Africa will have more people than either china or india. But both are way down the curve. How do we accelerate the transition . Educate girls, and power women, reduce Child Mortality rates. [applause] first question what will happen to the polar bears and do i smell. When the ice melted. There are others that adapted that are hybrids between grizzly bears of longterm when a species loses its habitat it either has to adapt or disappear and unfortunately the overall population is declining significantly. In the face of such opposition how do you stay motivated . It is a privilege to have work to do. If you love your job and you feel like it is worthwhile if gives you energy back and does not feel exhausting or draining. And particularly when we are beginning to make this progress in the old and we are not making it fast enough i want to emphasize, that now we can see weve got a pathway weve got to win it fast enough. I dont remember a single moment when i thought i am too tired to go to work on this today. I never imagined that this would become kind of a mission for me but the more i got into it, the more i felt like it was a source of joy for me to have work that makes me feel like im doing what i intended to do. [applause] another round of applause. Thank you, al gore. [applause] thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] its an incredibly sophisticated time and i will give you examples of that. So for example i have two sentences like they gave her cat food or they gave her cat food so theres two different meanings. In another example i think music witwould be less enjoyable. Its already out there and i give an example and i think that might be the time if we can play the audio clip. The challenge for u. S. To see if you can recognize the song that reminds you of anything, i will explain what it is and later i will give you a clue. Then i did this to my undergraduate undergraduate at me with a blank space, but the name of this group is the beatles. [laughter] see if this reminds you of anything. Does that remind you of any one or two songs . Delusive marine, any other beatles songs . The people whose work is picked up were paying attention to the notes but the timing was totally yesterday, so it was a hybrid song and i think that this is a nice example of how important timing is too everything we do and at the same time how sophisticated the ability is to tell time on the scale. And if you slow music down or speed up then it ceases to be so it is a critical range