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The world according to Al Gore
By James Norman
September 25, 2007 12:00am

I was fortunate enough to be a part of Al Gore's climate-change training session at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.

Despite a lot of media comment suggesting Gore was interested in speaking only to high-paying businessmen, this two-day event was free.

The session brought together about 200 people as diverse as an indigenous woman from northern Australia, a bat tracker from the NSW north coast, several high school students and even celebrity gardener Jamie Durie.

This was not your stereotypical bunch of greenies.

There were even a few footballers there, including Shane Wakelin from the Pies and Mark Bolton from the Bombers, plus Wallabies star Alex Kanaar.

They were all there to be taught how to present Gore's Inconvenient Truth slideshow to their local communities.

Scanning the crowd, it struck me how action on climate change has now moved way into the mainstream and is uniting communities all over Australia.

It took some of us by surprise that the two- day climate change seminar started with a prayer session.

All religious persuasions were acknowledged, as well as atheists.

As one of the ministers present that day said, it was not surprising that Christians were greenies when the care of the earth was such a constant theme in the Bible.

Former US vice-president Gore spoke at length about how he came to the movement and how it had consumed so much of his life.

He said that he was now "over politics" and had moved on to this higher calling.

Also on stage was Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation and Dr Graeme Pearman, former long-time head of Australia's CSIRO and now one of the world's leading authorities on climate change.

Dr Pearman is devoting much of his retirement to educating Australians about climate change.

One of the most moving moments came when the former vice-president spoke about the near death of his son because of an accident more than 10 years ago.

He said he now felt the same emotions over the precarious state of the planet.

Those who went to the workshop made a commitment to take what they learned back to their communities.

They made a decision to devote their time and energy to educate Australians about climate change.

In closing the session, we were reminded of the words of American anthropologist Margaret Mead that we should: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

If you would like to invite one of Al Gore's climate change messengers to your town or community group, please contact the climate project at www. acfonline.org.au/climateproject

James Norman is a Melbourne author and journalist.
He is also working for the Australian Conservation Foundation, organiser of the climate project.