City Arts & Lectures, Inc. presents Al Gore

Notes from last Tuesday's lecture by Al Gore...

• He's still called Vice President Al Gore
• Every so often when he'd talk, I'd think about the 2000 election. We had an election party and made themed drinks - like the "Ginger Al" - ginger ale and vanilla vodka.
• The presentation was actually a conversation with John McCosker, a scientist with the California Academy of Sciences
• An Inconvenient Truth is the third highest grossing documentary in history
• The discussion was called, according to the brochures, "Sowing the Seeds of Sustainability." There were Cost California Poppy seeds in the brochure :)

I didn't think to take notes until fairly late on in the conversation. It took Mr. Gore a little while to warm up. He seemed a little nervous at first, but within 10 minutes he was at ease. Witty, even and cracked a few dry jokes. There were some protesters who shouted things like "What about the 17,000 scientists who don't agree on climate change?" and "Be honest, carbon trading is killing innocent children." (Yeah, WTF?) I would have liked if Mr. Gore would have addressed the first question, but it was quite obvious from the booing that the majority of the crowd didn't need convincing.

My notes -

• "Evil as absence of truth" - M. Scott Peck (from a book that is supposedly quite good)
• "Questions of fact as questions of power" ... something about the First Level of Hell, a 1920s German philosopher (not really sure about the context)
• In times of energy uncertainty, put money in small sources, cap expenditure
• Gen III photovoltaics are going to be huge
• Distributed generation of power = good
• Allow people to generate electricity (distributed generation) and sell to grid
• There ARE solutions that decrease CO2 and increase economic growth (woo-hoo!)
• Short term economic gains, short term thinking = bad
• Census Bureau study - a majority of CEO/CFO wouldn't invest in something to have great long term gains if it meant they would miss their quarterly earnings (this sucks)
• Carbon offsets are one solution - a transition measure