Gore champions the Environment and brings the crowd roaring to its feet

Inside Bay Area - IBA - Argus - Local News:

"OAKLAND : Al Gore brought corporate executives and environmentally minded investors roaring to their feet Thursday with multimedia images of an overheating planet and a call for Americans to reclaim their 'moral authority' by tackling global warming.

'This is really not a political issue, it is disguised as a political issue,' Gore said. 'It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue.' If we allow this to happen, we will destroy the habitability of the planet. We can't do that, and I am confident we won't do that.'

As a U.S. senator, Gore gave global warming talks 15 years ago in Washington that relied almost entirely on scientists' best guesses and computer models.

Now bolstered by real climate changes, he has gone Hollywood, with movies of collapsing ice shelves, then-and-now shots of vanishing glaciers and lakes, telegenic photos of dwindling wildlife species; plus floods, tornadoes and, of course, hurricanes.

'We have been blind to the fact that the human species is now having a crushing impact on the ecological system of the planet,' Gore said. "