Earth Day returns to its roots

Tribune Editorial

April 22, 2007 - 8:09AM

Most holidays, if they’re noticed at all, are a time for reflection, a time not to take action but to think about actions taken by others; commemorating the birthday and legacy of a leader, or the sacrifices made by a group of people who walk among us, such as veterans, or even mothers and fathers.

Earth Day is different — for some of us, at least.

It began 37 years ago as an environmental “teach-in,” modeled after the era’s anti-Vietnam War demonstrations held on college campuses across the country, when environmental threats we faced in 1970 were more in-your-face than those we face today; rivers burning with toxic waste, smog coating all major industrial cities. Teach-ins were simply demonstrations, but Earth Day morphed into a time when the public examined the wisdom of nature and how it could be applied to their own lives, scanning their homes and offices for dripping faucets and leaky windows. Taking care of what we could really take care of, without waiting for a bureaucrat to tell us when or how. We handed out brochures telling us how to conserve water and electricity and cut down on waste — of course, we had to kill a lot of trees to do that.

The Internet has alleviated that issue to some extent. However, the threats many say we face today are less blatant and more easily argued about; invisible greenhouse gases sending us down a possibly irreversible path to a world hotter, colder, wetter, drier, and generally less livable within our or our children’s lifetimes.

But assuming all this is true, it would seem to be the time for individuals to take action now, rather than wait for the sclerotic federal regulatory process to kick in. But the trend seems to be in the opposite direction.

Earth Day Network has posted a commentary on its Web site declaring that this year the event is “returning to its roots” with an increased emphasis on lobbying, “inspiring people not only to make changes in their own lifestyles, but to join with others to create an effective movement that can push through legislation and insist on strict environmental standards.”

Last weekend saw “Step it Up” demonstrations in the East Valley and throughout the nation pressing Congress to pass laws mandating an 80 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Gov. Janet Napolitano, not satisfied with the pace at the U.S. Capitol, is battling the GOP majority in our own Capitol as she tries to implement more stringent regulations at the state level.

Fortunately, most Earth Day events still focus on teaching participants about conservation, recycling and renewal. This seems by far the more efficient means of creating change when we need it the most.

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Bob McCarty

On Friday, I was invited to a lavish estate in the upscale Nashville suburb of Belle Meade and given the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview of Al Gore about his latest effort, the soon-to-be-published book, The Tipper Point: How a Little Change Can Make a Big Difference. Today, on Earth Day, I invite readers to enjoy highlights from that interview which appear below and at my blog, Bob McCarty Writes™ www.bobmccarty.com. Enjoy:

Bob McCarty Writes™: What is The Tipper Point about?

Al Gore: It’s a book about climate change. In particular, it’s a book that presents a new way of understanding why climate change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does.

For example, why do temperatures drop so dramatically in Colorado in January? How does a novel about a highly complex scientific topic written by a man with no science background end up as national bestseller? Why do factories belch out smoke in greater and greater quantities, when every single person in the country knows that smoking kills? Why is word-of-mouth so powerful? What makes DVD movies so good at indoctrinating people – especially kids — into believing global warming is caused by humans?

I think the answer to all those questions is the same. It’s that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipper Point is an examination of the epidemic called climate change that surrounds us.

Bob McCarty Writes™: What does it mean to think about climate change as a problem? Why does thinking in terms of climate change affect the way we view the world?

Al Gore: Climate change thinking is the result of very unusual and counterintuitive thinking. Think, for a moment, about my circumstances. At my home in Tennessee, our utility bills are 20 times higher than the typical American family. But, because we don’t want to change our lifestyle and level of creature comforts, we simply buy carbon credits to offset our excess. Sure, we caught some flak about it from the rightwing media, but, thanks to our liberal friends in the media, the whole issue died out really quickly – just went away!

As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when there isn’t – such as when record snowfalls blanket the country in February, or when a slipshod documentary like an inconvenient truth ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars and wins an Academy Award – we need not be surprised. I’m saying, don’t be surprised. This is the way climate change works.

Bob McCarty Writes™: Where did you get the idea for the book?

Al Gore: Years before I went to work in the House, the Senate and, eventually, The White House, I was a reporter for The Tennessean newspaper, and I had to drive myself to work in a car with an internal combustion engine. And one of the things that struck me as I learned more and more about automobiles was how quickly the demeanor of a person behind the wheel of an automobile could change when impacted by outside forces…like my front left side of my car. A cardiologist – that’s a person who reconstructs automobile accidents – once told me that a single driver like me could cause a sudden and unexpected climate change at, for instance, an the intersection where I wasn’t paying attention, didn’t see the stop sign and, of course, didn’t stop.

Bob McCarty Writes™: Where did you get the name for the book, The Tipper Point?

Al Gore: A lot of people, including some publishing house’s attorneys, think I borrowed it from Malcolm Gladwell. In reality, honestly, it’s the name given to that moment in time when my wife, Tipper, grew tired of me hanging around the house after we won, then lost, the 2000 election.

Every day for months, I would sit on the front porch, sipping on sweet tea for hours at a time, waiting for the letter carrier to deliver my government retirement check. After it came each day, I would help Tipper with household chores. One day, Tipper’s patience with me ran out. That was my “Tipper Point”. It prompted me to think, “Gosh! What if everything has a Tipper Point? Wouldn’t it be cool to try and look for Tipper Points everywhere and try to inject my beliefs about climate change into every aspect of people’s lives?”

Bob McCarty Writes™: How would you classify The Tipper Point? Is it a science book?

Al Gore: I like to think of it as an action-adventure story. It draws from fantasy and science fiction, and uses examples of how climate change is caused by “actions” in the worlds of business and education and fashion and media. The”adventure” part comes in traveling the world and showing my DVD before large audiences of like-minded people.

If I had to draw an analogy to another book, I’d say it was like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in the sense that it takes a lot of mystical concepts and tales from the worlds of fantasy and witchcraft – which is growing in popularity now – and adapts them into “literary sound bytes” that really catch a reader’s attention in unexpected ways.

Bob McCarty Writes™: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Al Gore: One of the things I’d like to do is to show people how to create positive climate change where they live and work. The virtue of climate change, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and, with the help of my friends in the media, it can spread very, very quickly, regardless of whether everything it contains is proven true or not.

That makes it something of obvious and enormous interest to everyone from educators trying to indoctrinate students, to businesses trying to comply with more-stringent environmental regulations, and, for that matter, to anyone who’s trying to create climate change with limited resources.

Beyond that, I think The Tipper Point is a way of making sense of the world, because I’m not sure that the world always makes as much sense to us as we would hope. Climate change that happens really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing. People who understand The Tipper Point, I think, have a way of decoding the world around them.

[Editor’s Note: The Tipper Point: How a Little Change Can Make a Big Difference is not yet available in bookstores, pending the outcome of a hotly-contested plagiarism suit against Al Gore et al filed by the publisher of the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.] Suggest removal of this comment