On Last Day of Conference, Al Gore Says: ‘Let’s Finish This’

Today at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznań, Poland, Al Gore spoke to delegates regarding the road ahead for climate change in a passionate address. “The goals we are reaching for are incredibly difficult,” he said.

Encouraging the delegates, Gore continued: “Once the process of change begins, once the momentum shifts, once the decisions are arrived at, then the task often becomes easier in the doing [...] We will see that [these initiatives] do strengthen our economies, they do create millions of new jobs and they do improve the standard of living.”

It’s Not a Political Issue…

Gore went on to distinguish the issue of climate change from political issues, stating that climate change is not political but moral, and that “we need the moral courage necessary to do what is seen as impossible [...] It can be done, it must be done, let’s finish this”

…It’s All About the Benjamins

With today as the last day of the Conference, many countries are waiting to see how the issues between developed and developing countries will play out, especially in terms of the Adaptation Fund (the money to help developing nations adopt programs and technology to mitigate climate change). Yesterday, the government of Sweden gave $500 million to the fund. However, this will not be enough, as some estimates published last year by the World Bank, Oxfam, the UN Development Programme and the UN Climate Change Secretariat, show that the investment needed for adaptation in developing countries lies between $10-100 billion per year.

According to the Stockholm Environment Institute it’s up to developed countries to take the lead in the global warming arena. “For example, all of Africa is responsible for less than 3 percent of global CO₂ emissions to date, while Sweden alone has contributed 0.37 percent. The United States are responsible for almost 29 percent of global emissions to date.”