By Lisa Borden Lange

United States senators and representatives need to know how citizens feel about global warming.  All American citizens can make a difference by helping, former Vice President Al Gore said in a speech at the East Tennessee State University Mini-Dome on March 26.

Gore, the speaker for the annual Lamb Lecture, spoke about the health threats and the climate crisis.

This summer Congress will hear from special interest groups that do not have the same view or concern that Gore has on global warming.  This in turn will make it hard to bring to light the importance of global warming.  Voters need to let the lawmakers know that they want to stop global warming, Gore said.

"If you really take what I'm saying to heart, I wish, I wish that I had the words, I wish I had the eloquence to find a way to transfer from my heart to yours the passion that I believe is appropriate for this turning point in world history," Gore said.

He said Americans should become active citizens to insist that politicians do something to solve the climate crisis.

"But right here in the United States of American we hold the key to the success of the fight against the climate crisis, and the reason is very simple.  The rest of the world still looks to the United States of America as the leader of the world," Gore said.

Only when the world sees America doing something about the climate crisis, will they too become involved, Gore said.

A full awareness is needed to get political systems ready to solve the climate crisis. Only after there is awareness can the leaders and people of the world be willing to support any action that will help solve this crisis, he said.

It is important to stabilize the population. To do this the world must educate girls, empower women, have available culturally acceptable methods of fertility control and have higher child survival rates, Gore said.

He said it is also important to understand the three factors that change the relationship between humankind and Earth. These factors are population explosion, the technology revolution and the way humans think.

Gore named four conditions that work in mankind's favor against the germs that can do harm. These conditions are colder winters, colder nights, stable climate and rich web of biodiversity.

“But these four conditions, colder winters, colder nights, stable climate, rich web of biodiversity, the climate crisis is changing all of these in the wrong direction,” Gore said.

The health consequences of global warming include a harmful change in these overall conditions, which leads to health problems, Gore said.

There was a recent study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that points out the relationship between climate change and the increased incidence of kidney stones, Gore said.  There is Lyme disease transmitted by ticks.  There are the mosquito transmitted viral diseases.  These mosquito diseases include the West Nile virus, malaria and Dengue Fever.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has warmed that water-borne infections like cholera and shellfish poisoning may be increasing as a result of the climate crisis, Gore said.

The world needs to put into place increased disease surveillance to solve the problems of these diseases by using geographically collected and analyzed data, Gore said.

“In my faith tradition, there is a verse of scripture that also appears in Arabic in the Koran. It also appears in Hebrew in the Torah, and in the words that I read the passage goes, 'I present to you a choice between life and death. You must choose either blessings or curses,’” Gore said.

The curse is the negative public health consequences, he said.  The blessings are the world getting the big picture, doing what is right now for all of mankind and the next generations.