Well, this is rich.
President Obama’s never-ceasing supplications for a green economy and clean energy are enough to make any sensible person’s head explode. The constant refrains of “winning the future,” “wind and solar,” and “no more tax breaks for oil companies” that seem to sneak their way into every single speech, no matter the subject; the “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices and renewables-subsidies that factor into our feeble economy and chasmal debt; the drilling and mining moratoriums that keep us unemployed and nowhere near energy independence: the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the massive big-government environmental lobby are manifold, and President Obama’s pretentious pandering is often appalling.
But apparently, President Obama is not doing nearly enough to combat the imminent crisis of climate change, according to planet earth’s noble knight, Al Gore. In a 7,000-word litany published in Rolling Stone yesterday, Gore scolds both our selfish society at large and President Obama’s relatively weak stance on global warming:
Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is "the power to persuade." Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.
Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.
It is long, but I encourage everyone to read this article: Gore’s usual sanctimoniousness soars to new and amazing heights. Besides his careful criticism of President Obama, Gore derides the Television and Internet as peddlers of deception and detriments to the earnest exchange-of-ideas that took place in the public squares of American history (actually, they make information and education accessible and affordable to everyone, not just privileged elites, and are the biggest advancements to a “green” world to date). He admonishes George Bush and Right-Wing Ideologues for invading Afghanistan in a crusade for big oil (gee, never heard that one before), and claims that the mainstream media too often ignores the climate crisis (I really have no idea which MSM he's been paying attention to). My favorite is his assertion that politics have only recently become dishonest and vulgar, but he himself is immune to this vulgarity because he was first elected decades ago. And I quote:
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first generation ethanol… One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."
Hypocrisy, thy name is Gore. I’m sure that I’m earning zero points for originality here, but I just cannot help myself:
