Al Gore: 'Planetary Solution' Needed to Address Climate Crisis February 7, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/01/30/Rising_to_the_Challenge_of_Copenhagen

Addressing the upcoming Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer emphasizes the importance of the big country club, while former Vice President Al Gore stresses the significance of "binding commitments" from the developing world. "It has to be a planetary solution, to a planetary crisis," says Gore.

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With world leaders preparing to meet at the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen in December 2009 to create a global framework for tackling global warming and climate change, Thomas L. Friedman, Columnist, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, USA, asked panelists what has to happen between now and the end of the year to ensure success.

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Before that, Vice President Gore served in the U. S. House of Representatives (1977-85) and the U. S. Senate (1985-93), representing Tennessee. A prominent environmental activist, he shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in the 2000 election in which he won the popular vote by a plurality. A legal controversy over the Florida election recount, ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush by the Supreme Court, made the election one of the most controversial in American history.

Today, Gore is chairman of the American television channel Current TV, chairman of Generation Investment Management, a director on the board of Apple Inc., an unofficial adviser to Google's senior management, and chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection. He recently joined venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, to head that firm's climate change solutions group.

Jeroen van der Veer - Jeroen van der Veer is the CEO of oil company Royal Dutch Shell.