In
Al Gore's coming back -- but how far? our former vice president describes his goal as a better world, not a 2008 presidential run.
"I think this is a moral issue, not a political issue," Gore says.
The story describes one man in a David and Goliath battle to get the real ecological issues out to the masses.
Gore says he's trying to get people to lead their leaders. A groundswell of political will from regular citizens, he says, will pressure politicians and automobile, fuel and chemical corporations to embrace green technology.
"There are a few irresponsible companies, making billions of dollars by dumping massive qualities of global warming pollution into the Earth's atmosphere," Gore, 58, told USA TODAY. "When 50.1% of the American people are passionate and committed and feel the sense of urgency that's appropriate here, then the political system will flip. I think we're close to a tipping point."
What a tall order, to get 50.1% of the American public interested in our government's gross mishandling of the worlds future.
Getting the average American interested in more immediate issues seems almost impossible so taking on something in the future takes a great deal of work. In a nation where our leaders are beholden to the oil companies and our fourth estate relies on commercials from Big Oil for income, getting out a reality based message on global warming isn't going to be easy.
It says a great deal about this former Vice President, the fact that Al Gore is working to save the world for his children. Working in an atmosphere where his message will almost certainly be drowned out by big business interests, the beholden media and the present administration.
But according to Al Gore;
In America, political will is a renewable resource.
Mr. Gore was optismistic at the Cannes Film Festival last week;
"I know from my experiences in the past, what I can most valuably do is to try to change the minds of the American people and people elsewhere in the world about this planetary emergency."
Until recently, he said, the people in the US had been living in a bubble of unreality.
"But I believe that as more citizens understand the gravity of this planetary emergency they will be much more forceful in insisting that politicians respond to it," he said.
Since his narrow defeat in the 2000 presidential elections, Gore has criss-crossed the country showing his slide-show to audiences in at least 1,000 places, entreating them to join the fight against global warming. Now Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth moves his selfless crusade to educate the world that global warming is an imminent threat from a few speaking engagements to our local movie houses.
Perhaps on this go round Americans will get it. Get someting they should have understood in the 1970's. Maybe they will side with Al Gore for the simple reason that they don't have the money to fill their gas tanks.
The USA Today story goes on to describe some of the assets stacked against Al Gore;
While there is a consensus among scientists that the planet is warming, politicians and others disagree over the pace of climate change, how much damage it's doing, what causes it and what to do about it. Some groups -- many of them funded by fuel and chemical companies -- are skeptical.
The Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), one such group, has created ads in response to Gore's film. One shows a person riding a bicycle in the snow while a woman intones: " 'Let's force people to cut back,' they say."
Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy, acknowledged that the group gets funding from companies such as ExxonMobil but says that doesn't compromise him. His group says global warming is not a crisis, and oil use shouldn't be curtailed.
Ebell says deforestation, not pollution from fossil fuels, is to blame for some climate problems. He also says "niche technologies" such as solar, wind and ethanol "can only provide small amounts of the energy we need."
The oil company lobbyist attempt to squash Al Gore's message has already been documented here at DailyKos. First in Global Warming is Good for You! and later in Big Oil's attack on Gore backfired.
While the reality is that most Americans don't read DailyKos and most do watch T.V. these excuses are starting to look very lame to almost anyone. These commercials are such an insult to anyone's intelligence that there is a chance Americans will not believe the claim that Al Gore is an alarmist.
The commercials from CEI seem ridiculous as they advise Americans that there is no reason to cut down on a finite resource. Even if emissions didn't cause global warming, why would it be advisable to use gasoline like pigs until it runs out?
In a review of 'An Inconvenient Truth'; the New York Times takes a look at how Al Gore feels now;
He laments being unable so far to awaken the public to what he calls a "planetary emergency" despite evidence that heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases are warming the earth, and even after Hurricane Katrina and Europe's deadly 2003 heat wave, which he calls a foretaste of much worse to come.
"I've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and I feel as if I've failed to get the message across," Mr. Gore muses.
The question now is whether the documentary, with the potential to reach millions of people instead of a roomful of listeners at a time, can do the job.
For the moment, opinions on its prospects range from hopeful to scornful, not so much a reflection on the film's quality as the vast distance between combatants in the fight over what to do, or not do, about human-caused warming.
In a recent interview in Manhattan, Mr. Gore said he was convinced that Americans would move on the issue, not just because of his documentary (and companion book), but also because of the vivid nature of recent climate-related disasters.
According to an Associated Press story, where Mr. Gore's selfless crusade is referred to as a "seemingly selfless crusade," the movie gets a good review;
The film is a magnificent primer on global warming and a tough-love commentary on how today's energy gluttony could be endangering tomorrow.
Gore comes off as a wry, likable college professor, the sort whose classes you always looked forward to.
"I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America," Gore tells an audience as he opens one of his presentations, then adds with feigned vexation after they titter with laughter: "I don't find that particularly funny."
It isn't the least bit funny. Where would we be if it was President Gore? Besides the fact that we certainly would not have young Americans dying in Iraq, this nation would be a signer and leader of the Kyoto Protocol.
The nation's gas stations would probably have E85 available at every gas pump. Wind power would have been making major advances for the past five and a half years, instead of America waiting for a German company to do it for us.
The saddest part is witnessing the fact that other nations are building new economies based on alternate sources of fuel while America sits on its hands. The Boy King and the Duke of Halliburton will never do anything to upset Exxon Mobile but how is a German company importing our wind power when we have General Electric here.
Due to the price of gas today America is no longer sitting on its hands. But other nations are already leading in many fields that Al Gore would have gotten up and running on January 20, 2001. Now America is a follower in an area we should have been leading since the 1970's. How it is that Brazil had the common sense to look for answers while this great nation just sat around waiting for the Middle East to turn off the oil spigot?
High Plains Corporation was a promising American company in the field of cellulosic ethanol but the name was changed to Abengoa Bioenergy when acquired by a Spanish engineering firm. Now a plant is being built in Spain that represents the only competition to Iogen Inc, a Canadian firm that is the world leader in cellulose ethanol. Whatever happened to American ingenuity?
In Brazil, The Driving Is Sweeter! The farm lobby and ADM keeps our ethanol coming from inefficient corn while the Brazilians build a sugar cane based ethanol empire banned from the U.S. by a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff. It's just sad what corporate lobbyist can do to a good country with bad leaders.
Many countries have taken steps while Brazil has already declared energy independence. But America just sits around hoping that the price of gas will go down after Labor Day.
If Al Gore was president of the United States, there would not only be genuine incentives to advance solar energy, people would be listening. Americans would be working for a solution instead of ignoring the obvious.
But Al Gore is not the president. Instead of a responsible World Leader steering America toward energy independence, we have one private citizen launching a campaign to educate Americans about an issue that all of the people in power don't want Americans thinking about.
So now we have a good man who had the election stolen from him trying to save the world, while the thief devotes all of his time to making the highest paid one percent of Americans even richer at any cost. Yet Al Gore stays optimistic.
Saying he was an optimist, he added he believed that even US President George W. Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney, who have refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty which Gore helped negotiate aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, would be forced to change their minds.
"One can only attempt to create one's own reality for so long. Reality proper has a way of insisting itself upon you."
Things would change when people began to realize that the planet stood at a crossroads and in "one direction lies potentially the end of human civilisation and point of no return beyond which the planet's climate system degrades, and in the other direction lies hope and opportunity."
"When that fundamental choice is understood clearly, you will see a shifting toward a dramatic response, and those politicians in whatever party who want to be left behind, will be left behind and will be out of office," he said.
Two things for certain is that Bush will be creating his own reality until America is finally rid of him and he won't do anything constructive once he is out of our hair. He hasn't done anything constructive as president.
Al Gore is constructive and he has done far more to serve this nation that all of the Republicans combined.
"There are lots of things he could do with his life, and this is what he's chosen," said Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute, a private research group in Washington. "I admire him as a political leader who's chosen to use his platform to speak about this issue, and to do so in both scientific and moral terms."
I think that Al Gore represents the best the Democratic Party has to offer and his retirement from public office, just like Jimmy Carters shows the difference between former Democratic leaders and former Republican Leaders.
No matter how you cut it, dice it or slice it, Al Gore has feelings for his fellow Americans. The other party, from the top down, they don't care about you and me.
Remember what Bush's father said about Al Gore when Clinton/Gore sent him to an early retirement, while on his way to cashing in with the Carlyle Group;
It (An Inconvenient Truth) includes a few shots at Republicans including a piece of news film from the 1992 presidential campaign showing the first President Bush saying that Mr. Gore was so environmentally extreme that "we'll be up to our necks in owls and out of work for every American."
More importantly, remember where this country was going during those eight Clinton/Gore years and look at where we are now.
Have you signed the pledge?
I PLEDGE TO SEE AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ON OPENING WEEKEND IN THE THEATER.
