Photo: Michael Melford / National Geographic Stock

The Great Transformation: Our Future Depends on the Choices We Make Today

By Al Gore

Not too many years from now, a new generation will look back at us in this hour of choosing and ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, “What were you thinking? Didn’t you see the entire North Polar ice cap melting before your eyes? Did you not care?” Or they will ask instead, “How did you find the moral courage to rise up and solve a crisis so many said was impossible to solve?”

We must choose which of these questions we want to answer, and we must give our answer now—not in words but in actions.

The answer to the first question—what were you thinking?—is almost too painful to write: “We argued among ourselves. We didn’t want to believe that it really was happening. We waited too long. We had so many other problems crying out for attention. I know this is of little comfort, but we did try. I’m sorry.”

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