Al Gore, the erstwhile trumpeter of inconvenient truths and dire warnings of climate catastrophe has fallen under attack by the climate deniers and flat earth-ers of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
CEI is taking Gore, perhaps the most visible figurehead of the climate movement, to task for living in “a posh Nashville mansion” that allegedly uses 20 times the energy of a normal American home while making money as he calls for action to halt the climate crisis.
Adhering to the age old maxim, “If you can’t kill the message, kill the messenger,” they cry “Hypocrite!” trying to besmirch Al Gore’s cause as they besmirch his reputation.
Some of my friends and fellow bloggers have been bustling to rise to Al Gore’s defense. I on the other hand, have not.
So what if Al Gore isn’t a perfect model of a modern major climate hero? That’s only a problem so long as we insist on making him our figurehead. His alleged hypocracy is only a problem if we insist on making climate solutions all about personal sacrifice. Heck, the bulletproof veracity of the dire predictions of climate science is only critical if we insist on making our movement solely about avoiding the nightmarish future Gore describes in “An Inconvenient Truth.”
So defend Al Gore if you want, but I’m going to waste little time on it. Al Gore is not the leader of my movement. He’s not my inspiration, or my hero. His message is not the message that inspires me to act.
Do we think he’s going to be our MLK with a message of inconvenient truths and dire warnings? Is that what will inspire America and the world to act?
The leaders of my movement are the dozens and dozens of citizens and activists, many (most) of them young, working day in and day out to make a difference, trusting implicitly that others out there are doing the same. These climate champions aren’t former “next presidents of the United States,” or millionaire politicians. They are everyday people rising to do great things, motivated not by fear (by a sense of urgency, yes) but rather by a vision of the better world we’re striving to create, a sustainable, just, and prosperous future.
Don’t get me wrong, Al Gore has done a great service, tirelessly raising the profile of climate science and highlighting the warnings of the nightmare future we stand to inherit if we fail to act to end the climate crisis. But now it is time for a new generation of leaders, and a new vision of a brigther future, a vision where we talk not about “inconvenient truths,” but about the very convenient fact that we stand at a moment of unique opportunity, at a catalyzing chance to create a better world.
A crisis is not yet a disaster. Gore himself says something akin to that, although that message is often lost in the rest of his rhetoric. A crisis is a choice, a choice between futures, and we still have time left to choose.
Will we choose the nightmare or the dream? And which will inspire us to action? I say it’s time to dream.
Subscribe by Email!
Subscribe by RSS!
Share on Facebook
Well said, Jesse. I’ve been feeling a need to see someone lay out the truth that Al Gore is not the leader of the climate movement. The global warming “skeptics” want us to have a leader whom they can besmirch with personal criticisms and ad hominum arguments (don’t I sound educated, using the Latin phrases I’ve been learning in my Environmental Ethics class? now if I could just figure out how to put them in italics). They assume the movement must have a leader - what social movement doesn’t? So the sight of Al Gore giving his speeches in the halls of Congress and at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies must gladen their hearts; here is someone who not only seems to be the leader of the movement, but is also amazingly easy to attack. They don’t even have to work very hard - they can just do a little research, and recycle the old stuff used during Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.
But it puzzles me when these people call global warming science “liberal” propaganda. A strange liberal movement it is when many environmental groups continue insist that NO “liberal” politician today - Gore included - has put forward a plan strong enough to meet the challenge of global warming. I think many liberal politicians wish this issue would just go away almost as badly as conservatives do; but it will not go away - certainly not because someone noticed that there are problems with Al Gore as a leader. He is not the leader of the climate movement, because this movement has no single leader. This movement is vast, organic, and spontaenious; it springs from people in every portion of the globe who have been fighting the fossil fuel industries and a system of globalization that exploits the poor, the oppressed, and the environment.
It is hard for our opponents to understand a movement that has no leader; if it ever fleetingly occurs to them that is what they are facing, I think the realization must scare them. Because a movement with no single leader can not be brought down by ad honinum arguments, a smeer campaign, or even an assasination. A movement with no leader - with instead hundreds, thousands of individual leaders, each with their own slightly different ideology - transcends the traditional boundaries of liberal vs conservative politics. Many people would like Al Gore to be the “leader” of our movement, becuase that would make squashing us an easier job; they realize that a movement with no leader, a movement this grassroots, is nearly impossible to extinguish.
It really doesn’t matter what stand you take. Those so inclined will continue using politics and political motives as a means to avoid doing anything about climate change. Or they’ll use greed. Or mass conspiracy and treachery. Or perhaps your own secret plan to ruin the US economy. Come on, time to ‘fess up.