What changed in the United States with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences.
Interpretation
Hurricane Katrina marked a significant shift in awareness about environmental consequences in the U.S.
Al Gore's statement reflects on Hurricane Katrina as a pivotal moment in American history, indicating that the disaster brought to light the urgent and severe consequences of neglecting environmental issues. It suggests that such events force society to face the realities of climate change and its impact, highlighting a collective shift in consciousness about our environmental responsibilities.
In practice
In a speech addressing climate change, one might quote Al Gore to emphasize the urgency of our environmental responsibilities.
Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The consequences are mainly negative and headed toward catastrophic, unless we act. However, the good news is that we can meet this challenge. It is not too late, and we have everything we need to get started.
The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.
I think it's harder for people than it should be. But as more and more of us become carbon neutral and change the patterns in our lives to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we are now beginning to see the changes in policy that are needed.
We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.
CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.
Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.
Great upheavals produce shock waves that widen cracks in political, economic, and security orders. Sometimes the old orders break. Yet it can be in the power of leaders and peoples to shape the directions of change.
A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's best juices for ourselves-these may also be our enemies. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.
Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.
All destruction, by violent revolution or however it be, is but new creation on a wider scale.
We can celebrate the speed at which LGBT equality has progressed, but we also have to acknowledge that it wasn't fast enough, because too many people didn't get to experience it. We can never be too impatient.
If, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?
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