Whether you should read the then Senator's book depends on how you answer this question: if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Stumped? If this confuses you, you're not alone. Many, many people think it's a ridiculous question, not worthy of answering. Are you one? If so, please do read on about why Gore believes the question and your answer to be so vitally important.

I used to be confused by the question. Now I understand that we must care about all the trees that are being cut down for short-term profit by logging companies around the world. Deforestation strips the soil and kills the moisture, leaving it a desert. It also kills the thousands of living things that made it their home, things that help us ward off disease. The people who live in the area, a poor, developing country, sicken and die from malnourishment with no way to help themselves. And the world is affected, also. CO2 (carbon dioxide) that used to be taken in by the trees is able to pollute our air even more than before, which leads to insinuous global warming.

Why Read This Book?

This book is about much more than the various causes of global warming, though. It is not simply a scare tactic that is meant to pull at your emotions, but a very intelligent and sensitive look at how our global environmental crisis began, in the philosophies we have lived by from the abstractness of Plato to the greedy materialism of today that bespeaks of a dysfunctional society that is afraid of disturbing the status quo and would rather distract themselves with an adolescent, live-for-the-present lifestyle.

In fact, Gore criticizes our current political system for not leading the country and the world into a mature understanding of the crisis and taking appropriate actions to help save the environment. One example cited was then President Bush's refusal to fund birth control devices for developing countries exploding in population. Gore understands the great need to reverse that decision and also to educate and give nutritional support at the same time in the effort to stabilize the world's population. With education and support, abortions need not be suffered by millions of women, nor do the babies who cannot be cared for need to die horrible deaths.

You see, the man believes we have a future despite how bad it looks for our planet and has a well-thought out vision of how to make sure we will. In the last chapter he thoroughly explains what steps our country needs to take in order to lead the way for the world to follow. He first advises us to change our laissez-faire attitude and to realize it is not too late to prevent the worst from happening. We as a society have prided ourselves in being able to adapt to change, but we will not be able to adapt to a world that is burning up, unprotected from harmful radiation and no clean air to breathe. He finds hope in new technologies like microprocessors, superconductivity and wind-generated energy, but cautions us from worshipping technology as our savior. All the technology in the world will not help unless we actually use it for good and believe in creating a better world for our children now.

The book is dedicated to his sister who passed away in 1984, but he also wrote it for his children, one who almost died from an accident and inspired him to start writing. Countless scientists, climatologists, environmentalists, cosmologists like Carl Sagan, oceanographers like Jacques Cousteau and other various authorities have helped him to get the facts right and the bibliography is almost eight pages long. I have learned so much from these fifteen chapters within three sections of Balance At Risk, The Search For Balance and Striking The Balance. Here are the titles:

Ships in the Desert, The Shadow Our Future Throws, Climate and Civilization: A Short History, Buddha's Breath, If The Well Goes Dry, Skin Deep, Seeds of Privation, The Wasteland

Self-Stewardship, Eco-nomics: Truth or Consequences, We Are What We Use, Dysfunctional Civilization, Environmentalism of The Spirit

A New Common Purpose, A Global Marshall Plan


Al Gore is a Christian, yet he expresses disappointment in many negligent church leaders who should be more aggressive in creating an awareness of the crisis and programs to involve their members. Most religious leaders have more immediate problems they are busy with, unfortunately, and so the environment is going to have to be saved by all of us. It cannot be left to the Christians or indeed other religious people. We all need to get involved.

This is only a brief look at some things the book offers. I hope I have piqued your interest into checking out the rest of what he has to say in 368 fascinating, well-presented pages. Rather than a bunch of dry statistics and scientific mumbo-jumbo, this is a friendly, inspired sharing of his thoughts and feelings based on years of research even before becoming a senator of Tennessee when he was a journalist in Vietnam and then Washington. I will end with these words on page 258 in "Environmentalism of The Spirit":

The strange absence of emotion, the banal face of evil so often manifested by mass technological assaults on the global environment, is surely a consequence of the belief in the underlying separateness of intellect from the physical world. At the root of this belief lies a heretical misunderstanding of humankind's place in the world as old as Plato, as seductive in its mythic appeal as Gnosticism, as compelling as the Cartesian promise of Promethean power-and it has led to tragic results. We have misunderstood who we are, how we relate to our place within creation, and why our very existence assigns us a duty of moral alertness to the consequences of what we do. A civilization that believes itself to be separate from the world may pretend not to hear, but there is indeed a sound when a trees falls in the forest.


Recommended: No