Would it be better if he were rich and didn't bother to use his wealth to be as environmentally sound as he possibly can? Or are you arguing that he doesn't deserve to have more money than you?

Your post drips with resentment of the rich. When you say you're to the left of most people here, do you mean you want a complete and total redistribution of wealth, so that no one is rich or poor?

And of the hundreds of millions of houses in the US, Gore's is the second-highest rated!? Oookay. Call me crazy, but I'm betting my little hovel uses less energy than his.

Did you understand the article I linked to? The US Green Building Council doesn't rank every home in the US in numerical order, how the hell could they have the time or the manpower to do that? It has four levels of environmental soundness, like A through D on a report card, and anyone who wants them to rate a building can ask them to do so.

The Green Building Council's certification program has four levels, with platinum being the highest followed by gold. Gore's home was one of 14 to earn gold status and the only Tennessee home to earn any certification.

We all have to do what we can. Gore doesn't pretend that everyone is financially able to make the kinds of expensive technological improvements he has to cut his environmental impact. But he does point out that there are things everyone can do about this.

Do you bike, walk, or take the bus rather than drive? Use cloth bags at the grocery instead of plastic? Use compact fluorescents? Those too are stopgaps, until we restructure our entire political and economic system to build environmental sustainability into them; but they are stopgaps that anyone can use.

You seem to be more interested in slagging Gore and being angry that he has more money than you than anything else. Being poor is not an excuse for not trying to be environmentally sound. And attacking a man who spent thirty years bringing the environment to the world's attention does nothing to help matters.

is not "facts", but twisted distortions of them.

"20 times the average American" use of electricity ... sort of, if one ignores things like Gore's home is in the area of highest electricity use in the country ... or that his "home" is also an office with many people working there ... or that ... etc ...

CEI is not interested in truth but in confusing you/us with truthiness.  

Remember CEI: Tobacco does not cause cancer.  It will be too expensive and destroy the economy to do anything about Ozone.  Etc ...

the vibe I'm getting is that he/she thinks of Gore as some kind of pessimistic old fogey who's way behind the times and wants, as the young tend to want, to cut themselves completely loose from everyone who's gone before.

Gore's spent thirty years studying and thinking about the climate crisis, and probably knows more about it than any other politician alive. His understanding of what we need to do to fight it is profound, and it is foolish to deride and dismiss his hard-won wisdom.

I see way too much blithe optimism in the diarist's dismissal of Gore's inconvenient truths as bleak pessimism. Gore's actually more optimistic than I am. He seems to think that a popular movement alone can make serious progress on climate change. I don't believe that real reform on climate change can come until we enter a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, and while we should try our best to build a popular environmental movement, it won't reach critical mass until after the crisis hits.

Also, restoring the environment is a long-term project, requiring the work of not just one, but many generations. It will not be completed in our lifetimes, perhaps not even in our grandchildren's. And it will require considerable sacrifice from us spoiled Americans who comprise 5% of the world's population, but consume a quarter of the its resources.

Gore himself has said that one reason he's fighting for the environment is so his grandchildren can have a decent future. Gore's youngest son is of the diarist's generation.

Gore's motives are the same as the diarist's: preserve the environment for the sake of the young. Why does the diarist, then, feel he has to insist on distinguishing his motives from Gore's? It never crossed my mind that the diarist might be so shallow as to care about climate change only for Gore's sake.

There's no reason for the diarist to reject Gore just because he's older, nor is Gore trying to steal the thunder of the younger generation.

Dismissing Gore as old and worn-out would be just as foolish as dismissing the young as ignorant and apathetic. Everyone has a part to play in this struggle, and everyone will be needed.

Why throw anyone overboard? I'll keep Gore, and let others prove themselves too. But honestly is it necessary to kick Al Gore to the curb?

sorry, that's my opinion solely. But I've re-read the diary and normally I rec the environmental diaries but this one just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Have you read Libertaria's comments about Gore?

A sanctimonious fat cat

! Honestly! No Use for cannibalizing our best and our brightest...

they wouldn't stop with second hand smoke.

That is why the develop all those campaigns to hook youth into cigarettes.

PaintyKat

when Libertaria is repeating and amplifying the right-wing smears on Gore. Or is Gore expendable to you! He's doing it right where you can respond to it.

What was the point of your diary?

That's why I wrote this in the diary:

"Don't get me wrong, Al Gore has done a great service, tirelessly raising the profile of climate science and highlighting the warnings of the nightmare future we stand to inherit if we fail to act to end the climate crisis."

The point is that several of the commenters here just spent plenty of time and digital ink engaging in a false debate with the likes of Libertaria.  I'd certainly love to see Gore's reputation intact.  He deserves both respect and recognition.

But this movement and this cause aren't about Gore, and they aren't led by Gore.  The point of the diary is that we shouldn't, as a movement, be vulnerable to the kind of baseless smear campaigns CEI and friends are fond of running.  We shouldn't place all our eggs or pin all our hopes on a monolithic figurehead, not when our movement is so much greater than that, when it is led, as a write, by hundreds and hundreds of every day people fighting to make a difference.