Al Gore To Journey To Antarctica

Al Gore To Journey To Antarctica

Former Vice President Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica next week as part of a cruise organized by his Climate Reality Project.

Gore and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of NASA and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will give talks during the journey.

Other attendees include Bangladesh's minister of environment and forests, Hasan Mahmud, and British billionaire Richard Branson, who blogged about the trip last month.

"Today is the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his team's successful trip to the South Pole. Next month I'm going to Antarctica with [my family] to celebrate that trip and also Capt Robert Scott (who was a relative of ours) incredible voyage there," Branson wrote on Dec. 14. "Sadly as you know he perished on the way home. We're going on a boat organised by Al Gore to learn as much as we can from scientists and experts about where we are in the worrying cycle of Global Warming."

The Antarctic voyage is part of a larger campaign to focus attention on the threat climate change poses to the world's ice sheets and glaciers -- a subject Gore highlighted in his 2007 documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and at a 2009 conference he convened with Norway's foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre.

"This winter we will be talking about Antarctica as part of our 'Living on Thin Ice' campaign which will focus on how people around the globe are being impacted by the melting of the world's ice," Climate Reality Project spokesman Eric Young said. "As part of that effort, we are journeying to Antarctica with our chairman, Vice President Gore, and leading scientists and thinkers to see firsthand how the climate crisis is unfolding."

Antarctica is not the only stop for Gore's campaign, Young said, which has convened events in Ecuador, the Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn and is planning trips to Nepal and the Alps."
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So truly what is hoped to be accomplished by doing this? Travelling the world to show people what has already been put into motion expends more carbon does it not? At least that is what naysayers will say. No real addressing of this crisis from our own government. Carbon emissions continuing to climb. Agriculture globally continuing to be affected. Our oceans have acidified more in the last 200 years than the previous 21,000. A freshwater bulge in the Arctic growing larger with the threat of winds pushing it into the currents. So again, what is the purpose of all of this? What is the anticipated outcome?

That any president of the US will stand up in front of the people to tell Congress to send him a bill that places a price on carbon in time? Obama won’t even do that. Matter of fact, he is in it thick with oil companies to give them investments in shale gas wells now all over the country besides allowing them to continue drilling. All we see are ads for natural gas and tarsands. Why isn’t money being expended to make ads countering them? Where are the billboards on highways where everyday people can see them? Why can’t money be expended to start agroecology projects in developing countries? Reforestation efforts? (moringa trees especially which are drought resistant and provide food, medicine and water purification.) Solar stoves for people in the Himalayas? Solar energy projects? Preparing refugees who will need to be relocated due to sea level rise?

A trip to Antarctica is exciting and may reveal some reality to the choir attending, but what about people out here? I’m not putting down this idea because God knows people need to see reality, which is why I hope this is documented. However, who is all going on this journey? Richard Branson and his family- because he is rich? Any US Congressional members? You know, the true criminals in all of this who continue to reap benefits from their lies. When will they truly be held accountable? They need to see this.

Lay people like myself who have been out here for years studying this on our own and reporting about it are getting weary of seeing nothing year after year but more deterioration of the planet we love with too many people reaping benefits from it. We are running out of time. Do we really have another year to spend trying to convince people while we continue business as usual? I do hope this makes a difference. As always, thank you for your vigilance and passion. I share it with you.

Return safe. <3