The climate emergency by Al Gore - Assignment Example

Al Gore’s “The Climate Emergency” Summary In his speech d “The Climate Emergency”, Al Gore discusses the problem of climate change and argues that there is a great need in changing of people’s attitude and patterns of actions toward the environment. Gore defines “climate emergency” as “a crisis with an unusual sense of emergency attached to it” (154). After the introduction of the subject matter, Gore discusses the process known as “greenhouse effect” and its causes. In this regard, he describes the major factors that contribute to the process of climate change and illustrates his words with a range of examples, such as the statistical data on the level of melting of glaciers in the Arctic.

In addition to this, Gore states that climate change is directly caused by several cultural factors. In the second part of the speech, Al Gore analyzes three main causes of climate change, such as the growth of population, the rise of technology, and people’s way of thinking. With the growth of population, demand for resources (food, water, energy) increases and causes the decrease of supply of these sources. New technology presents the humanity with new power (for example, nuclear warfare) and the consequences of its use are not usually taken into account.

The final factor discussed by Gore in his speech is people’s way of thinking and their attitude toward the problem. More specifically, the author claims that people tend to think of climate change as of a slow process (even though its pace is rather high) and underestimate it consequences. Work Cited: Gore, Al. "The Climate Emergency." Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. N.p., 13 Apr 2004. Web. 3 Sep 2014.