Former US vice president and Noble Prize winner Al Gore said today that the climate crisis is growing worse rapidly.
Speaking at the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Forum in Oslo, Mr Gore said it is a global emergency that required all hands on deck.
He also told the forum that the refusal of the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to welcome the most recent scientific report on the consequence of 1.5 degrees of warming was a direct insult to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Mr Gore pointed out that humans are emitting 110 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every 24 hours.
He said the cumulative amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today traps as much heat and energy as would be released by 500,000 Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every day.
This is radically changing the climate balance, the water cycle, the fate of living species on earth, the course of human civilisation, and humanity's future as a species.
93% of all the extra heat and energy is going into the oceans and the oceans are now reflecting that back at us though extreme weather events.
Mr Gore also alluded to the loss of biodiversity and the observation that over the past few decades "half of all the animals on the planet have gone and we now face the risk of half of all living species disappearing by the end of this century".
He described as a disgrace the reluctance of governments, including that of the United States, to positively support the ongoing COP 24 negotiations in Katowice in Poland.
Their actions, he said, are part of an organised campaign to cast doubt on the truth of the scientist’s work in an effort to ensure that they would have to shoulder responsibility for the climate emergency.
However, Mr Gore said that on this issue the judgement of history will be extremely harsh.
Climate emergency requires 'all hands on deck' - Al Gore | https://t.co/GwAT7jr828 pic.twitter.com/5UQ6zVlws7
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The former vice president insisted that climate solutions were available and that it is stunning how quickly the price of renewable energy has plummeted.
He called for more progress to be made in terms of sustainable forestry and sustainable agriculture and the need to re-carbonise the soils.
The world is currently losing one football-field sized area of forestry per second, despite the fact that trees are the best technology known to mankind for taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
Mr Gore said that what is needed is political will and that we are now seeing a rising generation demanding a better world.
He praised what he said was tremendous leadership from cities and regional government around the world and in this context he highlighted Ireland's decision to divest all State investments from fossil fuels.
The Nobel laureate said solutions were available, but time was running out.
He pointed out that most of the climate reports of the past few decades have turned out in retrospect to have been far too conservative compared to the actual climate events that have unfolded.
