A primer on climate change by Al Gore

Al Gore admits it won't be easy.

His critics are loud. And painful as it is, he has to contemplate that we might not "find the moral courage" to solve global warming, which he calls the foremost planetary crisis before us.

But because he's optimistic, he's giving us a road map for how to address it. Due in bookstores today, it's called Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

Gore wants to retrofit not just our buildings and our political policies, but also our very culture, changing the way we avoid thinking about climate change because it seems too abstract.

Rather than a checklist, it's an all-of-the-above primer on everything from renewable energy to forest conservation to building a smarter grid. Not to mention the need to develop the political will.

"We need changes in laws and policies in order to accelerate reduction in global-warming pollution," he said in a recent interview with The Inquirer.

On Friday, Gore will be at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel, speaking at a national conference on critical security issues in the 21st century sponsored by the World Affairs Council.

His critics have long called some of his ideas impractical and said they would hurt the economy.

Gore takes his critics on, even picturing some of them in the book and attributing their views to "political bias."

The 416-page paperback from Rodale Books, of Emmaus, Pa., is a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.

It resembles a cross between a textbook and a coffee-table book, a Ken-Burns-meets-global-warming, with vivid diagrams of how technologies work and lavish color photos. It lists at $26.99.

Gore cites environmental exhortations from the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah and lambastes corporate carbon polluters for "lavishly financed" campaigns of "intentional deception" that he says have "poisoned" the integrity of the nation's democracy.

The book comes just a month before the world's leaders meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to establish a climate agreement.

Gore, who recently met unofficially with climate-policy leaders in China, South Africa, and Egypt, plans to be in Copenhagen for the talks, an aide said. Gore is registered through his nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, which gives him "observer" status. (The proceeds from his book are being donated to the organization.)

"The airwaves will be jammed leading up to Copenhagen, and he'll have the biggest microphone," said Timothy E. Wirth, president of the nonprofit United Nations Foundation and a former Democratic senator from Colorado.

From China to Europe, climate change "is all people talk about," Wirth said. "Here, it's like people whistling past the graveyard."

Andrew Light, an analyst with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, also believes Gore will be a major presence in Copenhagen.

Two years ago, Gore all but single-handedly saved climate talks in Indonesia from collapsing when he flew to Bali and persuaded some delegates not to walk out of the meeting in protest over the position the Bush administration was taking, Light said.

Even some who disagree with Gore's recommendations respect his voice.

"The bottom line is, Al Gore is a large and present voice in this debate, and he will continue to be that," said Frank Maisano, energy specialist at Bracewell & Giuliani L.L.P., an international law firm that represents utilities, refiners, and wind developers.

"In fact, he's a larger figure in the debate now than he ever would have been as the president. He has the ability to say what he thinks, rather than having constituencies to go back to."

However, Maisano said Gore's support for both a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade program - which he has testified about and reiterates in the book - will go nowhere.

"It's a double hit on the economy," Maisano said. It might reduce atmospheric concentrations to where they need to be, he said, "but the political reality of doing that is probably zero."

The book has a first printing of 400,000 copies. It is, of course, carbon-neutral and printed on 100 percent recycled paper. But that's not all. Gore uses nearly an entire page to describe the other eco-choices made in producing the book.

The book is launching the former vice president on a blitz of appearances.

On television alone, he was on the CBS Evening News last night and is scheduled for Good Morning America and the Late Show With David Letterman today. Then it's on to Jon Stewart tomorrow and Larry King next week.

Our Choice stems, in part, from more than 30 "Solutions Summits" Gore hosted, involving experts in various fields.

A common thread is that the world has to put an appropriate price on carbon. He says the world's inability to recognize carbon's true cost is a brewing crisis that resembles subprime mortgages.

The book has a companion Web site, www.ourchoicethebook.com, that includes an evolving "Solutions Wiki," where both experts and everyday citizens can weigh in.

Among an onslaught of other pre-Copenhagen books, Gore's stands out for its readability, said Joseph Romm, who blogs on climate matters for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and who got an advance peek.

"It is a very broad-based primer on the solutions," Romm said. "I don't know of a comparable book out there."

He praised Gore for tackling complex issues like nuclear power, concentrated thermal power, and even biochar - a carbon-capturing soil additive that is a new buzzword in environmental circles.

"Things in this book that aren't well-known, over the next 10 to 15 years they are going to be things any educated person is going to need to be knowledgeable about and have an opinion about."

The book is not without some bite.

On the first page of the chapter titled "Political Obstacles" is a photo of Saudi King Abdullah embracing George W. Bush.

Gore humorously refers to himself as "a recovering politician," but in a recent interview he said he'd always been forthright. "What has changed is the science," he said. It is now more clear than ever, he said, that action needs to be taken.

If the Senate can pass meaningful climate and energy legislation before Copenhagen, he said, "President Obama will be able to negotiate on behalf of our country with the authority he needs to help get a meaningful treaty."

Gore writes in the last chapter that, at its most basic, the nation has two choices: Solve the problem or not.

He envisions two letters to future generations. One, an apology, answers the question, "Did you not care?"

The other: "How did you find the moral courage to rise up and solve a crisis so many said was impossible?"

"The choice is awesome and potentially eternal," he writes. "It is in the hands of the present generation: a decision we cannot escape, and a choice to be mourned or celebrated through all the generations that follow."