APCOM

The former vice-president of the United States and Nobel peace prize winner Al Gore is "optimistic" on the duration of the international financial crisis. He sees it as a "danger", but also as an "opportunity" to speed up the fight against climate change. The two issues "are linked", he explained during a lecture organized in Milano by the Diners Club International, "also with the crisis of military safety in the Persian Gulf. The common denominator is the extreme dependence on the fossil energy sources." For this reason, Gore thinks that "the only solution is to face the historical transition" to renewable sources.

"We have all we need to tackle both these crisis," he said about the current economic and environmental problems. "There is no political will. However, in democracy this is a renewable source." According to Gore, it is necessary to "act quickly" in all the big world economies through a "synchronized spur". The latter, he added, should be driven by infrastructures that can reduce climate changes. In China and in Japan, he underlined, there are two ideograms to describe the crisis: one is indicative of the real crisis, the other of the word "opportunity".

Al Gore also stated that the international economic crisis can be overcome if the governments will take any opportunity to "relaunch the investments in alternative energies, as Barack Obama is going to do in the United States. Now investing in alternative energies," he said, "means paving the way towards a less troubled world and a more sustainable development."