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In a follow up to Danwen’s last post about Al Gore’s energy challenge to the public, I’m posting a video of the highlights of Al Gore’s speech.

To quote one of the best parts of the speech,

“we are borrowing money from china to buy oil from the persian gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet, every bit of this equation needs to change”

You can also read about Al Gore’s other efforts to fight Climate Change.

Former Vice President Al Gore set a goal yesterday to switch from coal and other harmful energy sources to alternative fuels by the year 2018. He believes this would solve the energy crisis that we face today, as well as eliminates the problem of global warming and our economic downturn.

“The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels,” Gore told a packed auditorium in Washington’s historic Constitution Hall. “When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices.”

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barrack Obama, as well as Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman who is the presidential nominee for the Libertarian party, also agree with Gore in his stance on America’s dependency on foreign and fossil fuels. They all agree that in order to make these changes, “political leaders must move beyond partisan divisions.”

To read more about Gore’s plan in making these energy changes, click here. I feel like this is an important step in solving our biggest issues–by investing in the technology that could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels as well as funding clean fuel or fuel saving technologies that will let us do our part individually in saving the planet and improving the wealth of the nation.

I know that Al Gore is in the press frequently, but I can’t resist writing a blog post about him because he is the spokesperson for the current mainstream environmental movement to fight climate change. We all know that he starred in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, but did you also know that he wrote a book under the same name upon which the movie is based?

In addition to writing and starring in “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore was a former congressman who served in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and served as the Vice President of the United States for the Clinton Administration. But that is not all! Mr. Gore is also co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management and Current.tv, is a member of the Board of Directors of Apple, Incorporated, is a senior advisor to Google, is a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (a highly respected Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley), and is a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Let’s not forget that he also was a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Whew, talk about a looonnnnggggg list of accomplishments. If only he would have ran in the current United States Presidential election, then he could add President of the United States to his list of accomplishments.

But, why write all of this?

I write this because Al Gore is the spokesperson of the current mainstream environmental movement to fight climate change and I long for society to awaken and recognize a someone as the spokesperson for humanitarian issues (such as ending poverty).

I suppose you could say that Bill Gates, Bono, or Muhammad Yunnus could be nominated for this role, but society has not given humanitarian issues the level of attention that environmental issues receive. Who would you nominate for the spokesperson of humanitarian issues and what needs to happen for society to give humanitarian issues the attention it deserves?