The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.
Interpretation
The environmental crisis is urgent and affects future generations.
Al Gore emphasizes the seriousness of the global environmental crisis, arguing that it is undeniable and compares its reality to a common saying in Tennessee. He expresses a deep concern for the future of his children, highlighting the moral responsibility to address environmental degradation to ensure a better planet for them.
In practice
During a lecture on sustainability, this quote can be used to emphasize the urgency of environmental protection.
Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The consequences are mainly negative and headed toward catastrophic, unless we act. However, the good news is that we can meet this challenge. It is not too late, and we have everything we need to get started.
The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.
I think it's harder for people than it should be. But as more and more of us become carbon neutral and change the patterns in our lives to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we are now beginning to see the changes in policy that are needed.
We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.
CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.
Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.
When you pollute a river, it's a supreme injustice to those who are downstream and those who live in the river who are not human beings.
All things are connected, like the blood that runs in your family "The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father." 1854 The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother.
I have thought that wild flowers might be the alphabet of angels, — whereby they write on hills and fields mysterious truths, which it is not given our fallen nature to understand.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
If we want to prevent both climate and ecological catastrophes, the key task is to minimise the amount of land we use to feed ourselves, while changing the way the remaining land is farmed. Instead, governments almost everywhere pour public money into planetary destruction.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
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