I am inclined to believe the legions of scientists who testify to the need for Al Gore’s mounting campaign to address the human causes of global warming. I am inclined to believe that Gore hasn’t been championing this cause for two decades for anything but sincere reasons. I am inclined to believe that Gore has chosen 2006 as the moment to bring the environment to the forefront of the national debate because he honestly believes that the danger of doing nothing is severe.

I had the opportunity to see Gore’s storied non-Power Point presentation last year at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. I was blown away by how intense he was, how accessible he was, and how confident he was. Here was a man on a mission who was deriving his strength from the power of scientific data, moral imperative, and freedom of the “nothing left to lose” variety. Since then I have been convinced that we face a global crisis but I have done very little to address it.

It’s a vast problem, stretching from our energy use to our city planning to our fishing practices to our trade agreements. It’s so big that the small sacrifices available to me seem pathetically irrelevant. And so I’ve sat on the island of Manhattan with the full expectation that someday, perhaps even in my own lifetime, my fifth floor apartment might just be high enough to keep my feet dry.

A problem of this magnitude needs to be fought at my level through personal sacrifice, but it also requires fundamental policy changes that can only be driven from within and from on high. Someone needs to take the lead by setting a national and global set of priorities based on shared sacrifices and long term planning.

In short, we are living in the Second Antediluvian Period. When God told Noah to build an Ark it was so he could wipe the earth of human sin. As shepherds of the earth, we are failing in our duties by continuing activities that actively destroy earth’s balance. If a second Flood comes it will not be God punishing us for the sins we commit against each other but the earth reacting to our profound sins against its fragility.

Unlike in Noah’s time, we have much more advanced warning of this flood, which is a good thing because there is no Ark big enough to hold all of humanity. The Noah we need now is a man who won’t ask God what to do when the flood comes but rather what he can do to prevent it from happening. Remember, the Flood came to cleanse the earth, but maybe in the 21st Century we can take up our own mop so God doesn’t have to.

Al Gore could be our incarnation of Noah. He represents our best chance at redemption as he tries to guide us towards policies that would preempt the need for an Ark. He is ushering us all in hopes that the two-by-two of the Bible can be replaced by a one-and-all of today’s reality.

For this… is a critical moment. Ultimately, it is not about any scientific discussion or political dialogue; it is about who we are as human beings. It is about our capacity to transcend our limitations, to rise to this new occasion. To see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the response that is now called for. This is a moral, ethical, and spiritual challenge.

Just as we can no longer ignore this challenge, neither should we fear it. Instead, we should welcome it. Both the danger and the opportunity. And then we will meet it because we must.

We have accepted and met other great challenges in the past. We declared our liberty and then won it. We designed a new form of government. We freed the slaves. We gave women the right to vote. We took on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured polio and helped eradicate smallpox, we landed on the moon, we brought down Communism, and we helped end apartheid.

We even solved a global environmental crisis – the hole in the stratospheric ozone layer – because Republicans and Democrats, rich nations and poor nations, businessmen and scientists, all came together to shape a solution.

And now we face a crisis with unprecedented danger that also presents an opportunity like no other. As we rise to meet this historic challenge, it promises us prosperity, common purpose, and the renewal of our moral authority.

We should not wait. We cannot wait. We must not wait.

The only thing missing is political will. But in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.

Gore envisions an awakening of our democracy to confront the global challenges that we face. He foresees policies that address not only how much energy we extract from the earth but also how much life we extract from the developing world. Gore quotes General Omar Bradley, who said at the end of World War II, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of each passing ship.” That means addressing terror by addressing poverty, taking on job loss by taking on education, by reversing global warming by rejecting the primacy of old technology. Coming out on top means fighting the war not just the battles.

If this country hopes to survive the threats of this globalized world and of its own fledgling democracy, we must seize the opportunities and priveleges afforded to us by these very things. Al Gore gets it and I cannot understate how much I am already inclined to vote for him in 2008. I hope he runs.