While it’s nice to see Gore bucking the trend in a nation where many influential people deny that global warming even exists, many of his apocalyptic claims are highly misleading.
But his biggest error lies in suggesting that humanity has a moral imperative to act on climate change because we realize there is a problem. This seems naïve, even disingenuous.
We know of many vast global challenges that we could easily solve.
私たちは、容易に解決できる多くの地球規模の広大な難問について知っている。
Preventable diseases like HIV, diarrhea, and malaria take 15 million lives each year.
毎年15百万の人々の命を奪うHIVや、下痢やマラリアは予防可能な病気である。
Malnutrition afflicts more than half the world’s population. Eight hundred million people lack basic education. A billion don’t have clean drinking water.
Gore shows that glaciers have receded for 50 years. But he doesn’t acknowledge they have been shrinking since the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800’s – long before industrial CO2 emissions.
The UN climate panel estimates that Antarctica’s snow mass will actually increase during this century. And, whereas Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, he fails to mention that ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing.
国連気候委員会は南極の雪隗が今世紀中実際には増大するだろうと予想している。 The movie shows scary pictures of the consequences of the sea level rising 20 feet (seven meters), flooding large parts of Florida, San Francisco, New York, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing, and Shanghai. Were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The United Nations panel on climate change suggests a rise of only 1-2 feet during this century, compared to almost one foot in the last century.
The movie invites viewers to conclude that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, with Gore claiming that the warm Caribbean waters made the storm stronger.
この映画は観客に地球温暖化がハリケーンカトリーナの原因だと結論付けさせるように誘導している。
そして、Goreはカリビア海の水の温暖化によって台風がより強力なものになったと主張している。
But when Katrina made landfall, it was not a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane; it was a milder Category 3. In fact, there is no scientific consensus that global warming makes hurricanes more destructive, as he claims.
After presenting the case for the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, Gore unveils his solution: the world should embrace the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to cut carbon emissions in the developed countries by 30% by 2010.
But even if every nation signed up to Kyoto, it would merely postpone warming by six years in 2100, at an annual cost of $150 billion. Kyoto would not have saved New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
But improved levees and maintenance could have. While Gore was campaigning for Kyoto in the 1990’s, a better use of resources would have been to bolster hurricane defenses. しかし土手の改善や修復はできた。Goreは1990年代に京都議定書のための活動をしていたが、ハリケーンへの防御を強化することが資源のより有効な活用だった。 Indeed, the real issue is using resources wisely. Kyoto won’t stop developing countries from being hardest hit by climate change, for the simple reason that they have warmer climates and fewer resources. 実際、具体的な問題は資源を賢く使うことである。京都議定書では開発途上国がこうむる気候変化による災害をとめることはできないだろう なぜなら、彼らはより温暖な気候を持っていて、資源はすくないから。 But these nations have pressing problems that we could readily solve. According to UN estimates, for $75 billion a year – half the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol – we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education to every single human being on Earth. Shouldn’t that be a higher priority? しかし、これらの国々は我々が容易に解決できる切迫した問題を抱えている。国連の予測によると、年間750億ドルー 京都議定書を実施するための半分の費用ーで、地球上の全ての人に対して清潔な飲料水、公衆衛生、基本的な医療 そして教育を提供することができる。その優先順位を高くすべきではないか?
Recent hurricanes killed thousands in Haiti, and not in Florida, because Haiti is poor and cannot afford even basic preventive measures. Combating disease, hunger, and polluted water would bring immediate benefits to millions and allow poorer countries to increase productivity and break the cycle of poverty.
That, in turn, would make their inhabitants less vulnerable to climate fluctuations.
それは同様にその住民たちの気候変化への脆弱さを弱めるだろう。 At the climax of his movie, Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol.
More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with “inconvenient truths,” Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.