Tag: Al Gore

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Opinion The Last Word

Environmentalists Applaud Passage of Inflation Reduction Act

The bill’s approval surprised many. (Photo: Quick PS | Unsplash)

Last week Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The bill does a lot of things, but environmentalists applauded its $350 billion package to address climate change and promote clean energy investments. Some said the bill has the potential to lower greenhouse gas emissions across the nation by 40 percent by 2030. Here’s what some of those environmental advocates had to say about it.

“Change is coming. This bill is a historic commitment by the United States to regain a leadership position not only in addressing climate disruption but also in leading the clean energy technology revolution that is being unleashed.

While no single entity can take credit for the roller-coaster ride that led to the Senate [and the House later] passing this significant legislation, much credit must be given to the voters in Georgia. By electing not one, but two climate-focused Senate leaders in a runoff election in early 2021, these two Southern senators were absolutely necessary for creating this moment in history and shepherding the bill through the political tightrope in the Senate.”

— Stephen Smith (writing before the House passed the bill)
Executive Director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

“In almost every Climate Reality training, I include a quote from the great American poet Wallace Stevens, who wrote: ‘After the final no there comes a yes / and on that yes the future world depends.’

Today, in Congress, there came a historic yes, with the House voting to follow the Senate and pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate bill the U.S. has ever seen. It is no great exaggeration to say that on this ‘yes’ our future world depends.

To help shape the climate measures that are included in this bill, our Climate Reality leaders and chapters held more than 150 meetings with legislators. Our friends and supporters contacted their representatives and policy-makers over 180,000 times. All with one simple message: Go big. Go bold. Act now. Yes, yes, yes.

There is much to celebrate. The IRA will supercharge the just transition to clean energy that is already underway across the country, transforming our economy while creating an estimated 1.5 million jobs and cutting costs for working families. Critically, the bill invests $60 billion in frontline communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and the climate crisis, bringing clean air, good jobs, and better opportunities to those who have been subject to generations of environmental injustice.

The impact of this bill will ripple across continents. By putting the U.S. on the path to cutting global warming pollution 40 percent by 2030, the IRA helps keep the Paris Agreement alive and demonstrates to the world that we are committed to climate action for the long-term.

But for all the progress we will achieve through the IRA, there are provisions that require urgent attention and action. Fossil fuel interests forced painful concessions in negotiations, requiring the government to offer new areas for drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as more oil and gas leasing on our public lands. Lawmakers are poised to take additional steps that would fast-track pipelines that communities — and Climate Reality leaders — have fought for years to block.”

— Al Gore
Founder and Chairman, The Climate Reality Project

“The historic passage of the Inflation Reduction Act makes renewable energy — which was already affordable and, in many cases, cheaper than gas — even more cost-effective. Even before today’s momentous vote, an independent study found that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would save billions by replacing its aging, dirty coal plants with clean energy as opposed to gas.

Families across the Valley are seeing higher power bills this summer due to TVA’s over-reliance on fossil fuels. It should be a no-brainer for TVA to take advantage of this groundbreaking legislation by scrapping plans to recklessly spend billions on new gas plants and invest in clean energy sources instead.”

— Amanda Garcia
Tennessee Office Director, Southern Environmental Law Center

“The Inflation Reduction Act is by far the most consequential legislation for climate action that has ever passed. I think it will take some time to be able to process the scale and positive effects this will have on our collective future.

But the fight is not over, we’ll need to keep up momentum across the country and here in the Southeast. Paired with more federal, state, and local actions, we will be more equipped to face the most existential threat of our time: climate change.”

— Maggie Shober
Research Director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Al Gore Encourages Pipeline Opponents with Passionate Oratory

CREDIT: JB

Something unexpected was in store for the crowd of several hundred that turned up at Mitchell Road High School in South Memphis on Sunday, and then walked down the road a bit to an open field to have a rally against the building of a pipeline across Memphis’ aquifer field — its water supply.

The rally had been called by the ad hoc citizens’ group, Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, as a means of retarding or halting the imminent construction of an oil pipeline under the auspices of the Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline.

Though authorized by the Corps of Engineers, the project has aroused considerable grassroots opposition and faces potential blocking maneuvers in the Shelby County Commission, Memphis City Council, and state legislature.

The sequence of speakers who mounted a makeshift platform, one by one, to denounce the proposed project included affected residents, environmental activists, lawyers, and local politicians, all of whom were by turns reasonable, passionate, and eloquent.

Gore on the stump. JB

But the highlight of the event was the last speaker on the bill, former Vice President Al Gore, whose political resume includes service as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and who was the Democratic candidate in the 2000 presidential election, which was the closest in American history and was decided by a still controversial ruling on the part of the U.S. Supreme Court. Gore went on to achieve renown as the author of several important books on the environment, notably An Inconvenient Truth, which, in its various multimedia forms would earn him an Academy Award and a share of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen, who preceded Gore on the platform, accurately called him “the father of the modern environmental movement” and described him as “the canary in the coal mine who told us about what was going to be occurring in our world and the threat to our environment that exists.”

All that was a given. The aforementioned surprise that awaited the rally-goers was that Gore, whose speaking efforts as a political figure had sometimes been regarded as being on the stiff side, materialized Sunday as an inspiringly oratorical, even prophet-like presence.

“I feel like I’m in church,” he began, in words that were both a tribute to the speakers who had preceded him and an indication of what was to come in his own remarks.

“We are in a struggle that we must win,” Gore said, evoking as an example the grass-roots resistance of 50 years ago when lawyers Lucius Burch and Charlie Newman earned a legal victory blocking interstate construction in Overton Park.

Attributing the pipeline builders’ route of choice — not only over the Memphis aquifer field but through an area largely populated by low-income African Americans — to a “path-of-least-resistance” strategy, Gore said, “I see a lot of resistance here today. But it’s nothing compared to what they’re going to see if they keep going on this.”

Gore connected what he saw as a threat to Memphis’ drinking water to the “chain of events” of the larger climate crisis. They’re putting 162 million tons of global warming waste into the sky every day,” Gore said. “And it stays there, each molecule, for 100 years on average. And it builds up and generates practically as much heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day, and it’s melting all the snow in the Arctic.”

The fossil fuel companies, he said, are dumping their waste into the sky using it like an open sewer. “They’re required by law to take care of their waste. The fossil fuel companies have decided, ‘well, we don’t want to take any responsibility for it.’ They just want to dump it into the sky as much as they please. Now they want to use the aquifer as much as they please.”

A million people rely on the aquifer, Gore said. “Not only in Memphis but in parts of West Tennessee, in parts of North Mississippi, and parts of Southwest, Arkansas. And the aquifer, he reminded the crowd, was in an area seismically vulnerable to an earthquake.

Gore used the term “the 3 R’s” (for “Reckless, Racist, and Rip-off” to describe the proposed pipeline project.

The recklessness was “in putting our drinking water at risk.” He noted that pipeline leaks have occurred “at least twice a day every day for the last 10 years” and most of the leaks go undetected.

In one of several biblical references, Gore likened the situation to the murder of Abel by Cain on a site “where crops never grew again.” He had previously recalled the saying of Christ: “Insofar as you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it to me.”

On racism, Gore cited statistics. “65 percent of pipelines are located in black communities. The cancer rate in Southwest Memphis is five times higher than the national average, the rate of asthma five times more, the death rate of Black kids from asthma 10 times the norm.”

As general instances of the prevalence of racism, he mentioned the death of George Floyd, the heroism of John Lewis in leading a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Alabama. Gore excoriated Pettus, a former Confederate general, as having been a Klansman, and denounced the fact of a Nathan Bedford Forrest bust (now slated for removal) in the Tennessee state Capitol.

“It’s all the same thing; it’s racist!” Gore thundered.

As for the rip-off aspects of the pipeline, Gore said it would pump 17.6 gallons every day at a pressure greater than that required for a fire hose to reach the top of a 30-story building. That volume translated into the delivery of $24 million a day, Gore said, scornfully comparing that sum to the million dollars or so the would-be pipeline builders have “sprinkled on the path of least resistance” in payments to property owners for the granting of easements.

Gore pointed out that the Shelby County Commission will, this coming week and next, be considering what to do about properties alongside the projected path that the county acquired through tax defaults. At the moment there is an embargo against sale of the properties, but that could change.

‘Do not weary in well doing,” Gore said, with yet another biblical echo. “Political will is itself a renewable resource. Political will is itself a renewable resource. Thank you. Keep up the fight.”

JB

Cohen and Gore await their turns to speak.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Al Gore to Speak at Anti-Pipeline Rally

Former Vice President Al Gore will be in Memphis on Sunday,

Former Vice President Al Gore

March 14th, as special guest at a rally of the Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP). The rally will be held at Mitchell High School, 658 W. Mitchell Road, and will be streamed live on the MCAP Facebook page.

The proposed Byhalia Connection pipeline project was approved last month by two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offices (Memphis and Vicksburg). The 49-mile crude-oil line, if constructed, would go from Memphis to Marshall County, Mississippi, and would cross the well field connecting to the Memphis Sand Aquifer.

A joint venture of Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, the proposed underground structure would be safely above the drinking-water portion of the aquifers, say company officials. But environmentalists and political figures see the pipeline as potentially hazardous and as disruptive to the predominantly Black populations in the area to be covered.

The project is opposed by 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and is the subject of preventive legislation both in the General Assembly and the Memphis City Council.

Gore attended classes at the University of Memphis and was a U.S. Senator from Tennessee before his vice presidency. He was the Democratic nominee for president in 2000. He is a recognized authority on environmental hazards and is the author of several books on the subject — including Earth in the Balance and, notably, An Inconvenient Truth, which, in its various multimedia forms, resulted in numerous plaudits, including the Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

An Inconvenient Sequel

About a third of the way into An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, something remarkable happens: Al Gore gets mad. The moment comes during a training session for climate activists, where Gore is passing on the knowledge in his persuasive and ever-evolving Keynote presentation describing the problem of global warming and proposing solutions. For a moment, the famously low-key vice president gets caught up while describing the efforts of the fossil fuel industry to sew doubt about the reality of what he calls the climate crisis. His voice coarsens into a shout, his eyes narrow, and he pumps his fist into the air. Then, he catches himself, stops, and takes a deep breath. The crowd of 300 or so progressives burst into applause and shouts. But Gore doesn’t take the bait and start ranting. Instead, he apologizes, quiets the crowd, and gets back down to business.

It’s a small moment that reveals much about Gore’s character. He kept his cool as the presidency was stolen from him, but he finally loses it when he allows himself to think about the sheer magnitude of the petty, greedy, self-serving, willfully ignorant jackholes who would risk the complete collapse of human civilization just to keep their companies’ stock prices up. If I were Al Gore, I would be frothing with rage all the time. And maybe, down deep, he is. But he’s too disciplined and too focused to let it slip out, and that’s why he’s the one with the Nobel Peace Prize.

When it premiered at Sundance in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth was the right movie at the right time. Climate change denier George W. Bush had won re-election, but his inept handling of Hurricane Katrina in late 2005 had caused the blinders to fall away for a large part of the electorate. The core of the film was just the same slideshow Gore had been polishing since he walked away from a two-decade-long political career in the wake of the 2000 election debacle. But the information was so well presented and so alarming, and Gore’s presence so comfortingly professorial, that the movie became the 10th highest grossing documentary of all time and earned two Academy Awards.

Al Gore (above) keeps his cool — even while he warns of a global meltdown.

For a time, An Inconvenient Truth seemed to turn the tide against climate denial. Much progress has been made over the ensuing decade. Gore spends a considerable amount of time in An Inconvenient Sequel talking about the advances in wind and solar power generation. The climax of the film follows Gore as he is part of the team of negotiators trying to close the deal in the 2016 Paris Climate Accords, where he helps negotiate a solar technology transfer to India.

But for a 2017 viewer, what was supposed to be the triumphal moment of the film — the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement by 196 countries — comes across as a harbinger of doom. We know the delicate progress was undercut by the election of Donald Trump, a dedicated climate change denier who promises to withdraw the United States from the agreement. In the words of The Big Lebowski, the plane has crashed into the mountain.

The consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels are not left to the viewer’s imagination. The film’s most incredible footage — some of the most incredible footage in any film ever — comes from a helicopter pilot flying over Greenland during the hottest day ever recorded on the Arctic island. We see a glacier not so much collapsing as exploding. Thousand-foot spires of ancient ice collapse into clouds of steam. It’s like the buildings exploding in a city-destroying climax of an Avengers movie, only it’s real. Later, Gore is taken on a tour of Miami Beach by the city’s mayor. High tides now routinely flood the city. A city engineer tells Gore of a plan to raise an eroding roadbed by a foot. Gore tells him the sea is expected to rise by at least seven feet. It’s moments like that when you think maybe it would be a good idea if Gore got mad in public more often.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (March 12, 2015)

Sometimes I think I get a general sense of what’s about to happen. I’m no Edgar Cayce or anything, but I can often imagine the effect that results from the cause. If you disregard my absolute certainty that Al Gore would be president in 2000, my predictions have more often been right than wrong. Even back in 2006, when Hillary Clinton was all but being crowned as the next Democratic presidential candidate, I wrote that two years was an eternity for another candidate to emerge to challenge the presumptive nominee, and one certainly did.

The historical inevitability of Barack Obama couldn’t be stopped, even by the ugly campaign the Clintons ran against him. Hillary’s failed campaign left a lingering resentment among certain Democrats over her scatter-shot tactics and baseless accusations. Her term as Obama’s secretary of state revived her reputation for competence, regardless of the fake “scandals” the GOP tried to lay at her feet. Hillary is probably the most-qualified, best-informed candidate to seek the presidency in decades, and polls have shown the country’s willingness to elect a female president. So let me go out on a limb and make a prediction, then two years from now, you can check back and see if I was correct. Hillary Clinton will not only fail to win the presidency, she won’t even get the Democratic nomination.

A lightning rod for controversy, Hillary can instantly become so exasperated that she unleashes a public barrage of ill-inspired quotable soundbites that only provide ammunition for her enemies. It’s been pretty much settled that the entire Benghazi witch-hunt was merely a concoction of right-wing operatives out to do her damage, but frustrated by idiotic questions over whether to call the tragedy a “terrorist attack,” or a “spontaneous protest,” Hillary spouted, “At this point, what difference does it make?” When stripped of its context, right-wing pundits found her remarks to be pure gold, and the almost defunct House Select Committee on Benghazi has become suddenly reanimated, subpoenaing thousands of her newly controversial emails.

Hillary has a history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Remember when she said she wasn’t going to be a typical first lady, sitting home and baking cookies or “standing by her man,” as the popular song went. The accompanying outrage forced her to go out and profess her love of country music and apologize to Tammy Wynette and America’s housewives. And when the Gennifer Flowers scandal came along, she did stand by her man after all.

While in the White House, she was accused of everything from murder to drug smuggling, as well as being “secretive.” Then she did herself no favors by having her previously requested Rose Law Firm billing statements, said to be long lost, turn up one day in a White House office drawer. Hillary parlayed Bill’s inexcusable sexual betrayal into a senate seat from New York, where she learned the art of “triangulation” — taking the absolute middle ground between two opposing points of view. In this capacity, Clinton voted her approval for the Iraqi War; co-sponsored an anti-flag burning amendment, even though she’s a lawyer and knew that the Supreme Court had already ruled the act was a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment; and voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, opening the door for U.S. attacks on Iran. During Hillary’s senate career, every controversial vote seemed to be made with a political calculation.

This latest kerfuffle about Hillary using her private email account to conduct government business is another stink-bomb attack by her adversaries that won’t amount to much, yet she insists on making it worse for herself. Already believed in certain quarters to be someone who cuts corners or makes her own rules, Hillary set up her own private server, registered to a fictitious name and routed it back to her New York home. She didn’t break any laws, but she bent the rules. The former secretary has announced that she is eager to turn over her emails for scrutiny, but only those pertaining to the business of the State Department. This allows her to exercise more control over physical access and furthers the perception that she has something to hide. At some point, Hillary will also have to justify accepting donations by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state.

It’s enough to give you a case of pre-Clinton Fatigue. Two years is a lifetime for a presumptive nominee to coast, and there are bound to be more gaffes and temper explosions. When Hillary alienates enough members of her own party, the Democrats may be forced to turn to someone else. The GOP will likely nominate a Tea Party extremist as their candidate. Why shouldn’t the Dems offer a true liberal and a fighter for the underdog instead of another blue-dog? Elizabeth Warren insists she’s not running for president. So did Barack Obama before he was finally convinced that his hour of destiny had arrived.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: New Mayor, New Council?

CREDIT: jb

Naming “crime, cronyism, and corruption” as major issues in
this year’s mayoral election, candidate Carol Chumney addressed the
Germantown Democratic Club Monday night, pledging if elected to “get a good
team” in order to bring renewed efficiency to Memphis city government.

Subsequently, city council member Chumney fielded at least
two questions from the membership (which includes several Memphis voters who
live in Cordova) about her reported difficulties with the mayor’s office and
fellow council members.

One member asked: What about her “relation building” and
“leadership style”? Would these be obstacles?

Chumney responded that she had developed good relations
with fellow legislators while a state House member for 13 years and said, “City
government has been a little different because there’s been quite frankly some
corruption. Many times I would be the only one who would stand up and say
anything. Some folks are going to get mad at you. I’m a strong leader, I will
tell you that.”

When another member followed that up by asking if the city
council would back her proposals if she were elected mayor, Chumney said, “We’re
going to elect a new city council.” Noting the virtual turnover of membership in
the county commission in last year’s elections, she expressed confidence that
city voters would follow suit. “It’s going to happen here. They’re going to vote
and vote in a new team.”

Pledging to renew cooperation between city and county
law-enforcement teams, Chumney said, “It’s disrespectful to expect the police to
go two years without a pay raise while asking them to risk their lives for us.”

She repeated her objections to Riverfront Development
Corporation proposals, including the recently approved Beale St. Landing
project, and called both for the city’s retention of The Coliseum and for
“something classy” in the downtown Pyramid.

Chumney said she’d heard “disturbing rumors” about the past
management of Memphis Networx and reported plans for its pending sale and
promised “to get to the bottom of it.” She said the council’s authority over a
prospective sale was uncertain but said she was seeking authoritative word on
that from the state Attorney General’s office.

  • Germantown is becoming an important campaign venue for
    candidates running for office in adjacent Memphis. A week or so earlier members
    of the Republican Women of Purpose organization heard a presentation at the
    Germantown Public Library from Brian Stephens, city council candidate in
    District 2, the East Memphis-suburban seat being vacated by incumbent Brent
    Taylor

    Stephens has been active in an effort to strengthen laws
    regulating sexually oriented businesses (S.O.B.’s in the accepted jargon) and
    specifically to make sure that veteran topless-club entrepreneur Steve Cooper
    does not convert a supposed “Italian restaurant” now under construction in
    Cordova into an S.O.B.

    He discussed those efforts but offered other opinions as
    well, some of them surprising – a statement that “consolidation is coming,
    whether we like it or not,” for example – and some not, like his conviction (a
    la Taylor) that tax increases are not necessary for the city to maintain and
    improve basic services.

    In general, Stephens, who seems to have a head start on
    other potential District 2 aspirants, made an effort to sound accommodationist
    rather than confrontational, stressing a need for council members to transcend
    racial and urban-vs.-suburban divisions and expressing confidence in the ability
    of currently employed school personnel to solve the system’s problems.

  • Also
    establishing an apparent early lead over potential rivals is current school
    board member Stephanie Gatewood, running for the District 1 council seat
    being vacated by incumbent E.C. Jones. Gatewood’s fundraiser at the Fresh
    Slices restaurant on Overton Park last Thursday night drew a respectable crowd,
    and her membership in Bellevue Baptist Church on the suburban side of District 1
    provides an anchor in addition to an expected degree of support from the
    district’s African-American population.

  • One night
    earlier, Wednesday night, had been a hot one for local politics, with three
    more-than-usually significant events, and there were any number of dedicated
    and/or well-heeled visitors to all three:

    –Residents of the posh
    Galloway Drive area where U of M basketball coach John Calipari resides
    are surely used to long queues of late-model vehicles stretching every which way
    in the neighborhood, especially in election season when Calipari’s home is
    frequently the site of fundraisers for this or that candidate.

    But Wednesday night’s event, a $250-a-head fundraiser for District 5 city
    council candidate Jim Strickland, was surely a record-setter –
    out-rivaling not only Calipari’s prior events but most other such gatherings in
    Memphis history, including those for senatorial and gubernatorial candidates. A
    politically diverse crowd estimated at 300 to 500 people showed up, netting
    Strickland more than $60,000 for the night and bringing his total “cash on hand”
    to $100,000.

    –Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Herman Morris attracted
    several hundred attendees to the formal opening of his sprawling, high-tech
    campaign headquarters on Union Avenue – the same HQ that, week before last,
    suffered a burglary – of computers containing sensitive information, for one
    thing – a fact that some Morris supporters find suspicious in light of various
    other instances of hanky-panky currently being alleged in the mayoral race.

    — Yet a a third major political gathering took place Wednesday night, as Shelby
    County Mayor A C Wharton was the beneficiary of a big-ticket fundraiser
    at The Racquet Club. Proceeds of that one have been estimated in the $50,000
    range – a tidy sum for what the county mayor alleges (and alleged again
    Wednesday night) is intended only as a kind of convenience fund, meant for
    charitable donations and various other protocol circumstances expected of
    someone in his position.

    Right. Meanwhile, Wharton declined to address the most widely speculated-upon
    subject in Memphis politics: Will he or won’t he enter the city mayor’s race? As
    everybody knows, and as the county mayor has informally acknowledged, he is the
    subject these days of non-stop blandishments in that regard, and there’s very
    little doubt that these have accelerated since a dramatic recent press
    conference by Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton alleging “the 2007 Political
    Conspiracy.”

    While some of
    Mayor Wharton’s intimates at the Wednesday night affair were keeping to the line
    that the chances of his running for city mayor were minimal to non-existent,
    their answers to inquiries about the matter were delivered after what we’ll call
    meaningfully inflected pauses. The door may be shut for now, but it clearly
    isn’t padlocked.

    jb

    Chumney in Germantown

  • NASHVILLE
    — The name of McWherter, prominent in Tennessee politics for most of the latter
    20th century, will apparently resurface in fairly short order, as Jackson lawyer
    and businessman Mike McWherter, son of two-term former governor Ned
    McWherter    , is making clear his plans to challenge U.S. Senator Lamar
    Alexander    ‘s reelection bid next year.

    Apparently only one thing could derail Democrat McWherter — a renewed Senate
    candidacy by former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., who last year
    narrowly — lost a Senate race to the current Republican incumbent, Bob
    Corker    . “I don’t think I would compete against Harold. But I don’t think he
    will run,” McWherter said in an interview with The Flyer at Saturday’s
    annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville.

    The 52-year-old activist sees Alexander as a slavish follower of President
    George W. Bush.

    “With one or two exceptions, he’s done everything the president has wanted him
    to do. He’s toed the party line,” said McWherter, who has recently paid courtesy
    calls on ranking Democrats, both in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C., informing
    them of his interest in running next year and soliciting their support.

  • Keynote speaker
    at the Democrats’ dinner in Nashville was presidential hopeful Bill
    Richardson    , whose situation somewhat paralleled that of former Massachusetts
    governor Mitt Romney, who earlier this month had been the featured
    speaker at the state Republicans’ Statesmen’s Dinner, also in Nashville.

    On that occasion, Romney – who had been invited before the entrance of former
    Tennessee senator Fred Thompson became likely – was a de facto lame-duck
    keynoter, and, mindful of the attendees’ expected loyalty to favorite-son
    Thompson, cracked wanly, “I know
    there’s been some speculation by folks about a certain former senator from
    Tennessee getting into the presidential race, and I know everybody’s waiting,
    wondering. But I take great comfort from the fact than no one in this room, not
    a single person, is going to be voting for — Al Gore.”

    That bit of verbal bait-and-switch got the expected laugh, and so did a joke
    Saturday night by New Mexico governor Richardson, who uttered some ritual praise
    of native Tennessean and former presidential candidate Gore and then, when the
    crowd warmly applauded the former vice president, jested, “Let’s not overdo it.
    I don’t want him in this race!”

    jb

    • Categories
    News

    Al Gore Gets New Job

    The New York Times reports that former vice president and Nobel Laureate Al Gore is now a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

    Gore will investigate the potential of alternative energy start-ups and advise the company on whether it should finance those start-ups. If that wasn’t enough, Gore’s salary will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

    It looks to be a good partnership for everybody. Green businesses will get an opportunity for an influx of capital, and there are also rumors that Gore will probably be named Time Magazine‘s Person of the Year. Last year, you may recall, the magazine named “You” the winner.

    Read the Times story here.

    Categories
    Opinion Viewpoint

    The Other Gore

    Let me stipulate: Al Gore is the deserved winner of the Nobel Prize, just as his film documentary on the subject, An Inconvenient Truth, had previously merited the Academy Award it got. Gore’s unstinting campaign to alert the nation — nay, the world — about the perils of global warming has been his finest hour.

    Equally praiseworthy are the political points the former Tennessee senator and vice president has publicly made since his Supreme Court-assisted defeat for the presidency in 2000. An early critic of the Iraq War, Gore accurately foresaw the extent of the debacle, and he has been eloquent and on point concerning the ongoing erosion of Americans’ Constitutional liberties.

    Having materialized as a veritable tribune of the people, even an oracle, should Gore not, then, seek again the presidency which, so many think, he was unfairly deprived of?

    The answer is no. As Gore himself has noted, such a course would prove divisive and perhaps destructive to his current cause. It would also necessitate his moving away from a position of unquestioned moral authority into the murky untruthiness of politics — a world which, despite his scaling its heights, Gore may never have been ideally suited for.

    A current myth has it that, in 2000, a wicked establishment press made the decision to waylay Gore, mischaracterizing as lies his essentially accurate statements about his own past and otherwise finding fault relentlessly. So dedicated did the establishment press become to the downfall of Gore that its members perversely embraced the patently undeserving George W. Bush, who was regarded as an acceptably hail-fellow-well-met alternative to the goody two-shoes Gore.

    Or so goes the story.

    The truth is not much prettier but is, well, different. In fact, the media animosity toward Gore (and that part was certainly real) was probably born not in indulgence toward good-ole-frat-boy Bush but in solicitude toward the honest if plodding Bill Bradley, the recently retired New Jersey senator who was Gore’s Democratic primary opponent. The unfortunate Bradley was being gleefully attacked by Gore as often and as gratuitously as Gore himself later was by an unforgiving media.

    When Bradley and Gore tangled in a debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in October 1999, ABC’s Jake Tapper, then with Salon, was watching the affair via closed-circuit TV in a nearby media room. He remembered it this way: “The reporters were hissing Gore, and that’s the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event.” Time‘s Eric Pooley: “Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.”

    Gore had been mauling the preternaturally docile Bradley fore and aft, on everything from the New Jerseyan’s alleged indifference to disaster aid for Iowa flood victims (The New York Times: “Mr. Gore’s accusation was false and unfair. Mr. Bradley supported the 1993 legislation that provided $4.8 billion in emergency flood relief for farmers …”) to his racial positions. (Campaign chroniclers James W. Caesar and Andrew Busch: “Bradley landed few clean blows and even took some unfair blows from Gore, who charged before [a] mostly black audience that ‘racial profiling’ of blacks by the police ‘practically began’ in Bradley’s New Jersey.”)

    The Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas Zúniga recalled the Gore campaign’s “blatantly unfair” attacks on Bradley, as did The Nation‘s David Corn, who found Bradley “more progressive … less irritating [and] sincere in his desire for political reform,” while Gore’s campaign “bends, manipulates, dodges, or obliterates the truth.”

    Said Newsday: “Gore effectively criticized former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley for proposing an expensive health care reform, for being too liberal, and being out of touch with ordinary voters … [H]is aggressive tactics worked.”

    And the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank reported Bradley’s responses to Gore in that Dartmouth debate: “‘Attack, attack, attack, every day, the people are fed up with it … You’re the elephant of negative advertising … Why should we believe you’ll tell th e truth as president if you won’t tell the truth as a candidate?'” And, to bring us full cycle, Milbank segued into this: “In the WMUR press room, my colleagues laugh derisively at Gore’s offensives. …”

    That feeling, fair or not, was the likely cause of the media animosity and not any imagined bonhomie of Bush’s. The gallant Gore has at length found — and become — his better angel. He should, we should, leave well enough alone.

    Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    VIEWPOINT: The Other Gore

    Let me stipulate: Al Gore is the deserved winner of the
    Nobel Prize, as his film documentary on the subject, An Inconvenient Truth,
    had previously merited the Academy Award it got. Gore’s unstinting campaign to
    alert the nation – nay, the world – about the perils of global warming has been
    his finest hour.

    Equally praiseworthy are the political points the former
    Tennessee senator and vice president has publicly made since his Supreme
    Court-assisted defeat for the presidency in 2000. An early critic of the Iraq
    War, Gore accurately foresaw the extent of the debacle, and he has been eloquent
    and on point concerning the ongoing erosion of Americans’ constitutional
    liberties.

    Having materialized as a veritable tribune of the people,
    even an oracle, should Gore not, then, seek again the presidency which, so many
    think, he was unfairly deprived of?

    The answer is no. As Gore himself as noted, such a course
    would prove divisive – and perhaps destructive — to his current cause. It would
    also necessitate his moving away from a position of unquestioned moral authority
    into the murky untruthiness of politics — a world which, despite his scaling
    its heights, Gore may never have been ideally suited for.

    A current myth has it that, in 2000, a wicked establishment
    press made the perverse decision to waylay Gore, mischaracterizing as lies his
    essentially accurate statements about his own past and otherwise finding fault
    relentlessly.

    So dedicated did the Establishment press become to the
    downfall of Gore that its members embraced the patently undeserving George W.
    Bush, who was regarded as an acceptably hail-fellow-well-met alternative to the
    goody two-shoes Gore.

    Or so goes the story.

    The truth is not much prettier but is, well, different. In
    fact, the media animosity to Gore (and that part was certainly real) was
    probably born not in indulgence toward good-ole-frat-boy Bush but in solicitude
    toward the honest if plodding Bill Bradley, the recently retired New Jersey
    senator who was Gore’s Democratic primary opponent. The unfortunate Bradley was
    gleefully being attacked by Gore as often and as gratuitously as Gore himself
    later was by an unforgiving media.

    When Bradley and Gore tangled in a debate at Dartmouth
    College in New Hampshire in October 1999, ABC’s Jake Tapper, then with Salon,
    was watching the affair via closed-circuit TV in a nearly media room. He
    remembered it this way: “The reporters were hissing Gore, and that’s the only
    time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at
    any event.” Time‘s Eric Pooley: “Whenever Gore came on too strong, the
    room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting
    down some hapless nerd.”

    Gore had been mauling the preternaturally docile Bradley
    fore and aft, on everything from the New Jerseyan’s alleged indifference to
    disaster aid for Iowa flood victims (The New YorkTimes: “Mr.
    Gore’s accusation was false and unfair. Mr. Bradley supported the 1993
    legislation that provided $4.8 billion in emergency flood relief for farmers…”)
    to his racial positions (Campaign chroniclers James W. Caesar and Andrew Busch:
    “Bradley landed few clean blows and even took some unfair blows from Gore, who
    charged before [a] mostly black audience that ‘racial profiling’ of blacks by
    the police ‘practically began’ in Bradley’s New Jersey.”).

    The Daily Kos’s Markos
    Moulitsas Zúniga recalled the Gore campaign’s “blatantly unfair” attacks
    on Bradley, as did The Nation‘s David Corn, who found Bradley “more
    progressive,.. less irritating [and] sincere in his desire for political
    reform,” while Gore’s campaign “bends, manipulates, dodges or obliterates the
    truth…..”

    Said Newsday: “…Gore
    effectively criticized former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley for proposing an
    expensive health care reform, for being too liberal, and being out of touch with
    ordinary voters…[H]is aggressive tactics worked.”

    And the Washington Post‘s
    Dana Milbank reported Bradley’s responses to Gore in that Dartmouth debate: “‘Attack,
    attack, attack, every day, the people are fed up with it…You’re the elephant of
    negative advertising….Why should we believe you’ll tell the truth as president
    if you won’t tell the truth as a candidate?'” And, to bring us full cycle,
    Milbank segued into this: “In the WMUR press room, my colleagues laugh
    derisively at Gore’s offensives….”

    That feeling, fair or not, was the likely cause of the
    media animosity, and not any imagined bonhomie of Bush’s. The gallant Gore has
    at length found – nay, become — his better angel. He should, we should,
    leave well enough alone.

    Categories
    News

    Gore Wins Share of Nobel Peace Prize

    Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his service in informing the world about the perils of global warming. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday that the Tennessee native will share the award with a United Nations panel that monitors climate change.

    In its announcement, the committee characterized Gore, whose film documentary An Inconvenient Truth had previously won an Academy Award, as “the single individual who has done most” to alert the world to the reality of climate change caused by global warming and to the imminent threat it poses worldwide.

    Gore indicated he would donate his half Nobel prize money — about $750,000 — to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit environmental group whose board he chairs. He issued this statement: “The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity, It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

    The text of the Nobel committee’s announcement is as follows:

    The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change

    .

    Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

    Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming. Thousands of scientists and officials from over one hundred countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of the warming. Whereas in the 1980s global warming seemed to be merely an interesting hypothesis, the 1990s produced firmer evidence in its support. In the last few years, the connections have become even clearer and the consequences still more apparent.

    Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world’s leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.

    By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

    Oslo, 12 October 2007