Al Gore

A dispatch from Gore’s climate training sessions

I'm blogging from Nashville, where I just spent two days hanging with Al Gore and shooting the sh-t about climate change. OK, it wasn't just me and Al -- there were about 200 other people there.

This meeting is part of Al Gore's effort to train 1000 people to go out and deliver his Inconvenient Truth talk.

The meeting started off on a low note when I found out that Cameron Diaz had been in the session before mine. Damn. My session was actually devoid of anyone well known. The closest we got was Dennis Kucinich's wife, who it turns out is actually quite a babe.

Some thoughts

Part of the confusion over Revkin’s article is that there isn’t one "climate debate." There are several. I’m going to taxonomize them in another post, but first I want to say something about the scientific one. This debate, as many folks have pointed out, is pretty much over. The denialists are wrong and they’ve been […]

The year, alphabetically

When it comes to global warming and the environment, everything seemed to change in 2006 -- at least in terms of public awareness. Here's an A-to-Z accounting of just some of those changes:

A is for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's scientific but surprisingly human documentary on the threat of climate change, which was expected to take in at most $6-7 million at the box office but went on to gross over $45 million, the biggest documentary of the year and the third-largest of all time.

B is for biofuels, which went from becoming a hippies-only fringe product to a highlight of the State of the Union address. To date, Washington has been focused mostly on ethanol, but other fuels requiring much less fossil energy to produce are coming to the fore and proving surprisingly popular. Or as the bumper sticker says: "Biodiesel: No war required."

C is for California, which set a new standard for pollution control by passing a bipartisan package of bills designed to cut tailpipe greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016 (and many other measures). For this, Iain Murray, a fossil fuel-funded think tank writer for the far-right National Review, declared: "It is hard to escape the conclusion ... that what California has done is to decide to join the Third World."

Gore: Oscar winner

An Inconvenient Truth will win the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary. You heard it here first.

On a related note: below the fold, you can watch video of Al Gore's surprisingly funny appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last week. (Thanks to Treehugger for uploading the video.)

A cool new ad campaign from Victoria, Australia

This article, in which Al Gore lays out his basic position on nukes, contains nothing much new. He's said it all before in, among other places, our interview.

Thanks to Gristmill reader LA, however, for drawing my attention to this intriguing final bit:

Mr Gore ... yesterday met with [Victoria, Australia] Premier Steve Bracks and his deputy John Thwaites. He described Victoria as forward thinking on climate change and said he would take a number of local initiatives back to the United States.

He was particularly impressed with the Bracks Government's "black balloons" advertising campaign, which links household energy usage with the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the air.

"I'm going to take that ad back and show it to some folks there, maybe put it on YouTube," he said.

Well, I don't know if Gore put it there, but the ad's on YouTube now. Here it is:

50 minutes of wonky goodness

Below the fold is a 50-minute video of an interview Al Gore did with The Guardian.

The most noteworthy features

Just to follow up a bit on Amanda's post, it seems to me that there are three particularly newsworthy features of Gore's speech:

• A "carbon freeze"? I've never even heard of that. But if we took it seriously -- if we really halted, immediately, the growth of our collective GHG emissions -- it would functionally amount to huge cuts. Those new coal-fired power plants in Texas would certainly be off the table. In fact, the coal industry would be forced to shift entirely to IGCC/sequestration. Needless to say, coal barons aren't going to like that.
• With Gore's backing, a revenue-neutral carbon tax -- the best immediate policy available to us -- is now squarely in the mainstream. Thanks, Al!
• He conspicuously failed to endorse nukes. He didn't oppose them, he just dismissed them as unworkable. That's just the right stance to take.

More later, maybe, after I look at the speech more closely.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is the speech in its entirety:

After months of gloom and doom, Gore’s all about solutions

Against a backdrop of eight American flags -- ceremoniously arranged behind a podium emblazoned with the scales of justice -- Al Gore took the stage at the New York University Law School early this afternoon to deliver what was billed in press releases as a "major policy address on global warming."

Major it was -- in terms of the media turnout, anyway. There were nearly a half-dozen cameras rolling and most major publications represented.

It was also major in terms of length (over an hour of factually dense commentary, sans visual aids) and gravitas (a more somber, more serious, dare I say more presidential Gore than the one we've seen pumping his fists and cracking jokes as he roars across the country on his climate lecture circuit). And major enough to have elicited rumors, as reported in the Independent yesterday, that the White House is hoping to steal Gore's climate thunder.

As with most policy addresses billed as "major," the rhetorical flourishes were legion. Take, for instance, the way Gore framed the address:

A subtle presidential bid?

Al Gore -- who's giving a major climate-policy speech today (more later) -- is writing another book, to be released in May: The Assault on Reason.

Two things are notable about this:

• It's a blessing that somebody other than low-level pundits is finally going to publicly acknowledge the increasing air of emotivism, unreality, and illogic that characterizes our national political conversation.
• As Ezra notes, this is extremely well timed to keep Gore in the public eye, just in case, you know, he decides to ... youknowwhat.