Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

Al Gore was front and center before the American people who cry for a leader but never follow. Politician but last, scientifically literate, sociologist, historian...Al Gore is a modern Renaissance man, a 21st century Benjamin Franklin.

In the 2000 election, you can see remember the struggling Democratic establishment whose view was clearly to hold on to the conservative "Blue-dog" Reagan voting Democrats. What more painful reminder is there than Gore's choice of running mate, Joe Lieberman? Those voters cost us more than they ever benefitted us. In 2016, those voters are irrelevant, come along or go to the clown tent, we don't need you, it's up to your own conscience to make the historically huge and relatively simple decision to join the majority and to choose science over marketing, long term thinking over the short-term thinking clearly shorting the future of America's children.

Al Gore should be revered as a founding father of the Progressive Democrats. He is a man of vision and if you can read this book, its not too dated to be consumed. For over 20 years, progress had as many losses to apathy as it had success, but now we are beginning to see renewable energy technology reach the price points that make the economies of scale leap exponentially. The time is now, the curve is heading up, the lowest points forever behind us and the takeoff is as vertical as a shuttle launch.

There was a future 30 years ago and it is today's present, many acted as if they didn't believe that were true and chose accordingly. There is a future in today's present as well, and as Gore states, "We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the Earth is in the Balance."

No matter what you think of Al Gore and his self-aggrandizement, this book raises important issues

That photo of the ship in the desert -- after the Aral Sea disappeared when the Soviets diverted the rivers that fed it -- will stick with you.

It's horrifying that this book was written 26 years ago and there are people who still think climate change is fake...

Avoiding politics and reviewing this book solely on its literary merits, this is an very well written book. The subject matter is presented in an interesting manner and not at all preachy. Al Gore began his career as a newspaper reporter so he actually knows how to write. And he's been everywhere, from the North Pole to the South Pole(literally), from Taiwan to Kenya and everywhere in between. Many interesting anecdotes fill out the pages.

It is not solely about global warming but also about general environmental degradation caused by poor land management, and often conflates the two. A bit short on science and devoid of scientific method, Gore accepts all arguments which support anthropomorphic climate change and doesn't so much reject arguments against as rarely mention them at all. Still, his arguments are lucid and engaging, and he comes across as a perfectly reasonable person trying to impress upon the reader the importance of his topic.

The book's weakest part is the third section in which Gore puts forth his proposals for solving the problems of climate change. After many times declaring his allegiance to capitalism and democracy, he proposes a world spanning organization with governing and economic power which he names the "Global Marshall Plan." The unrealistic expanse of this plan belies the progress possible and already made in the realms of pollution controls and recycling since the 1970's. People in Michigan will not support any plan when it's January and they can't afford heating oil, and no global plan will save the Aral Sea if the people of Uzbekistan keep draining it to irrigate the desert.

People who are adherents to climate change politics will find this book wholly supports their position in a calm and respectful voice. People who deny climate change politics will not be convinced to change their position but it will give them a better idea of why other people are so wholeheartedly behind it. The blurb on the dust jacket actually proclaims this to be a "prophetic, even holy book." Indeed, Earth in the Balance belongs in the lexicon with Silent Spring, The Population Bomb, and even Unsafe at Any Speed. Read it and find out why people march in the streets.

my treehugger self wishes everyone would read this book. of particular frustration to me to read, being in russia where nobody cares and nobody is doing anything about it.

Gore deserves some serious credit for writing this book in 1992, before it was in vogue to care about the environment. And though things are now worse than when this was written, this book still seemed valuable to me. I have, of course, seen An Inconvient Truth (some bits of which are taken from Earth in the Balance), but this book helped give me a fuller understanding of Gore's thoughts on the environmental crisis.

The first section--"Balance at Risk"--is the strongest. Here is where Gore lays out the major problems humanity is facing. Global warming and ozone depletion are at the top of the list, along with deforestation. The next section, entitled "The Search for Balance" too often wades into quasi-mysticism, but does make the legitimate point that in order to start to address the crisis, it would be helpful for people to feel some connection to the earth, beyond the desire to use the resources buried underneath it. The final section "Striking the Balance" calls for making "the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." It is true that this is necessary, but Gore doesn't really illuminate the way in which such a change could be achieved. The stated goal would essentially require a wholesale remaking of society; that sort of thing does not just happen--it would require nothing less than the defeat of the most powerful instituions operating in the world--our corporate masters and the political and ideological structures that uphold them.

In fact, what makes the book bittersweet, is that Gore does truly seem to be passionate about this cause. I don't doubt his sincerity. But even after 8 years as the vice president of the United States, he managed to accomplish little in terms of serious environmental progress. Not only that, but the public's willingness to endure even a small sacrifice has not increased whatsoever in the decades since Earth in the Balance was originally published. In his 2000 campaign, Gore did nothing to draw attention to environmental problems for fear of being tagged a treehugger (a tag which was nontheless applied to him). And outside of environmentalist circles, public outcry about the Bush administration's awful environmental record is virtually non-existent. And even as I write this, $4 gasoline has prompted the republican party to press to drill for oil on every speck of US land and our coastal areas; evidently, they feel the public is behind them on this issue. If that is true--if we cannot even countenance paying what Europe has paid at the pump for years before we are willing to destroy every last natural place--then I fear that the struggle to maintain a livable planet is already over.

But I've wandered off topic. Earth in the Balance has some excellent pictures. The boats in the middle of the desert (which used to be the Aral Sea) are memorable, as is graphic from which the title of the book is taken--a Bush I era drawing of a scale with the entire earth on one side, and six bars of gold, apparently weighing an equal amount, on the other. If nothing else, Earth in the Balance will serve as a reminder that at least somebody was trying to sound the alarm about environmental catastrophe back when it still seemed possible to avert disaster.

talk about earth, talk about al gore..