DEUTSCH: Why is a lot of smart people--Eric--like just not even going anywhere near that, like just going, whoa, that's just not even in the realm of possibility?

Mr. GORE: Well, because our political system now is much more responsive to these little emotional messaging techniques and the big ideas are not--the big ideas face a head wind in today's system. Social Security was a big idea in the '30s. Been criticized? Hey, it's great.

DEUTSCH: It's a pretty good system.

Mr. GORE: It's a pretty good system. But if you tried to pass a Social Security system today in this political environment?

DEUTSCH: Forget about it.

Mr. GORE: It would be very difficult. Now, we need to fix the problems, the cracks in the foundations of our democracy, that create that difficulty. But this is a big idea. Replace the payroll tax with pollution taxes, principally CO2 taxes. If we get a critical mass of opinion that says, yeah, we owe it to our kids, the North Pole is melting. I mean, think about that for a minute. Think about it for a minute. The entire North Polar ice cap, the size of Australia, one of the principal ways the Earth cools itself, could be completely gone in as little as 35 years on our watch? And we're sitting here pretending that nothing is happening? Not too many decades from now, Donny, our kids, I promise you, will ask one of two questions. Either they will ask of us, at the beginning of the 21st century, what in God's name are they're doing?

DEUTSCH: What are they doing?

Mr. GORE: Didn't they care? Were they too greedy and distracted, whatever? I want them to ask the other questions. How did they find the moral courage to rise up and solve those, when so many people said it couldn't be done? That is our challenge. This is our Thermopylae.

DEUTSCH: Eyes are lighting up now. That's because you're...

Mr. GORE: We've got to do it, man! We've got to do it!

DEUTSCH: Before we get to Live Earth, one question--will cheap marketing help here in terms of--with the movie and your slide show?

Mr. GORE: OK.

DEUTSCH: The one thing I found missing that if you said, OK, if the game here is let's change the world...

Mr. GORE: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: ...you led everybody to the water, you say, `OK, basically, if this happens, then in this city here, this is going to look like 50 million people are going to be--have to move, 100 million.'

Mr. GORE: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

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