If you’re looking for some afternoon reading you can feel good about checking out Al Gore’s opening statement from his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.  In the statement he put an emphasis on action and linked global warming and our dependence on foreign oil to our current economic and national security concerns. Here’s a snippet that I especially liked:

Moreover, we must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization at a time when our country must simultaneously solve two other worsening crises. Our economy is in its deepest recession since the 1930s. And our national security is endangered by a vicious terrorist network and the complex challenge of ending the war in Iraq honorably while winning the military and political struggle in Afghanistan.

As we search for solutions to all three of these challenges, it is becoming clearer that they are linked by a common thread - our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels. As long as we continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars for foreign oil - year after year - to the most dangerous and unstable regions of the world, our national security will continue to be at risk.

takepart to read the entire statement and then go one step further and  takepart with Al Gore and We Can Solve It.

*photo from jdlasica’s flickr stream (creative commons)