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Al Gore turned 60 today and kicked off a new campaign to cool the planet.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from “American Idol” to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It highlights the extent to which Americans’ growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

Full story here.

Thinking about Gore Again…

Paul Krugman writes today about Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. In his column he talks about the disinformation campaign waged by oil companies, how working to slow global warming would not adversely affect the economy, and…

Why, after all, was Mr. Gore’s popular-vote margin in the 2000 election narrow enough that he could be denied the White House? Any account that neglects the determination of some journalists to make him a figure of ridicule misses a key part of the story. Why were those journalists so determined to jeer Mr. Gore? Because of the very qualities that allowed him to realize the importance of global warming, many years before any other major political figure: his earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis.

Stop. Could anyone use the words “earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis” to describe George Bush and keep a straight face? No…

And so the 2000 campaign ended up being about the candidates’ clothing, their mannerisms, anything but the issues, on which Mr. Gore had a clear advantage (and about which his opponent was clearly both ill informed and dishonest).

I won’t join the sudden surge of speculation about whether “An Inconvenient Truth” will make Mr. Gore a presidential contender. But the film does make a powerful case that Mr. Gore is the sort of person who ought to be running the country.

If he does run, it won’t just be him that will have an opportunity for a “do over.” Krugman asks if the voters are up to the task of electing the right kind of man for the job. I ask if the media, given the same opportunity for a “do over,” is up to the task.

Given this piece of shit about the Clintons that passes for journalism in The New York Times, I think not.

Al Gore did the opening segment for SNL this weekend. If you haven’t seen it, go here.

Transcript here.

There’s a great article at Common Dreams today by Jeremy Rifkin about Bush’s lack of vision and leadership. Here’s an excerpt:

If I could get the ear of George Bush, for just a moment, I would say: “Mr President, if you had looked deeply into the eye of the storm, what you would have seen was the future demise of the planet we live on.” It’s time to tell the American people and the world the real lesson of Katrina: that we need to mobilize the talent, energy and resolve of the American people, and of people everywhere, to wean ourselves off the oil spigot that’s threatening the future of every creature on earth.

President Bush, spare us your homilies about American determination to “weather the storm and persevere”. Tell us the truth about why Katrina and Rita really happened. Ask us to consider a change of heart about our profligate, energy-consuming lifestyles. Call on us to conserve our existing fossil-fuel reserves and make sacrifices. Provide us with a game plan to move America to a new, sustainable energy future based on renewable sources of energy and hydrogen power. We’re waiting.

We’ll be waiting a long time, but not because we wouldn’t make sacrifices if asked, and not because we aren’t capable. We’ll be waiting a long time because our leader can’t see through his oil-smeared glasses to identify the problem. He has no vision of a post-petroleum based economy so, from his view, sacrifices are not necessary to develop new sources of energy. It’s no different than not asking us to sacrifice some money through higher taxes to pay for his war or rebuild a devastated city. Whaaa Whaaaa Whaaaaaa… What do you expect from a guy who was handed everything throughout his life? He doesn’t even know what sacrifice is.

Every time I read stuff like this I can’t help but thing how much better off this country would be if Al Gore took the oath of office in January 2001 instead of Bush. Gore would have urged all Americans to conserve energy and would have pushed for development of alternative energy sources. Take a look at this October 2000 comparison of their views on natural resources, energy, and the environment and see for yourself.

We are five years behind and have a lot of catching up to do.

I checked Bernard Goldberg’s list of the 100 People Who are Screwing Up America, and did not find Pat Robertson on the list. Maybe he’ll make the paperback version. If he does, which one of these evil America haters will he bump off the list?

Jimmy Carter
Paul Krugman
Al Gore
Bill Moyers
Al Franken
Harry Belafonte
Barbra Streisand

My money is on Belafonte.

Every once and a while I stop and think about what it would be like if Al Gore was our president. I started thinking about it over the weekend when I heard reports of what Bush was saying about global warming while visiting countries in Europe. On Thursday, he reiterated his March 2001 view that the Kyoto Protocol would have crippled the U.S. economy when he said, “Kyoto would have wrecked our economy. I couldn’t in good faith have signed Kyoto.”

He was making the same claims during his 2000 campaign. Here’s what Al Gore had to say back then:

We can have a next-stage prosperity where you don’t have to build your lives around a fuel source that is distant, uncertain and easily manipulated. We will demand and develop new technologies to free ourselves from gas-tank price-gouging, and we will sell those technologies to the world. We’ll build a new generation of fuel-efficient vehicles — and then make it easy for families to afford them.

And…

There can be a next stage of prosperity in which American creativity builds not just a better product, but also a better planet, a next stage of progress in which it is an every-day accomplishment for Americans to develop path-breaking technologies that create millions of high-wage jobs, clean up the environment and combat global warming at the same time… A next stage of prosperity and progress in which we encourage and support the Edisons of tomorrow, and empower them to build a better, cleaner and more prosperous world.

Then I read a column by Nicholas Kristof about how the city of Portland, Oregon has done many of the things that Gore campaigned for in 2000:

Newly released data show that Portland, America’s environmental laboratory, has achieved stunning reductions in carbon emissions. It has reduced emissions below the levels of 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto accord, while booming economically.

What’s more, officials in Portland insist that the campaign to cut carbon emissions has entailed no significant economic price, and on the contrary has brought the city huge benefits: less tax money spent on energy, more convenient transportation, a greener city, and expertise in energy efficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide.

“People have looked at it the wrong way, as a drain,” said Mayor Tom Potter, who himself drives a Prius hybrid. “Actually it’s something that attracts people. … It’s economical; it makes sense in dollars.”

Oh… so this is the direction our country would have taken if Gore were president. It doesn’t sound like it’s crippled Portland’s economy. In fact, Portland’s economy is prospering while it becomes more energy efficient and cleaner. This model sounds like a much better one than Bush’s old-school model built on more drilling for oil, developing nuclear power plants, and allowing energy companies to draft the Energy Plan-all of which lead to more consumption, less efficiency, dirtier air and dirtier water.

And as an added bonus, if Gore was our president, we wouldn’t be spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year and thousands of lives fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq where there just happens to be a whole lot of oil.

Dream on.