Rachael's mystery tasters have won Oscars®, Emmys®, Grammys® ... but her final mystery taster of 2009 can add another prestigious award to his collection - the Nobel Peace Prize! Rachael welcomes Al Gore to her kitchen table, and asks if there has been much progress since his 2006 Oscar®-winning documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. "There has been progress," he says, "and there's been a tremendous growth in the awareness of global warming and the need for urgent solutions. But we're still not to the point where governments around the world are doing what they should."

Rachael inquires if people really can make a difference. "Absolutely!" Al states. "In fact, that is what is most needed because the influence of special interest lobbies has grown in recent years. Money plays too big a part in politics these days, and the only way to overcome it is for citizens to speak up and become active enough so that the political leaders understand that whatever the special interests are saying there's a lot of broad public support for doing the right thing for our kids."

Al explains that it's not too late for people to take small steps to help the environment. "The small steps do add up," he says. "They're good steps anyway because they usually save a lot of money: changing the light bulbs to the compact fluorescent ones (and soon they'll have these LED bulbs); changing the windows if you have single pane windows - that's a little bit more of a project but it pays for itself; getting one of these cheap, very effective blankets for the water heater - all these kinds of steps do add up, but as important as it is to change the lights and the windows, it's far more important to change the laws and the policies."

Watch the video above for Al's special message to mothers, and how kids are already taking steps to change the world they'll be inheriting one day.

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