Al Gore feels passionately about the environment and the climate crisis.
So do I. So do a lot of people.
But Al Gore's words aren't helping solve the climate crisis. In fact, they're hurting. His allies aren't covering him any more, and his allies are using him as the butt of jokes. Yes, Gore-o-phobia is unfair. But it's real, and he needs to deal with it.
We all need to, by taking Al Gore from the field of political battle. Bodily, if need be.
Some headlines from his latest outburst. “Climate change skeptics are like racists” – TG Daily. The same headline is on the Daily Caller. “Meat = Global Warming” – Consumer Freedom. “You Knew This Was Coming” – PowerLine.
Now I know these are not friendly outlets. But Al Gore has become on the environment what Fonda became on Vietnam. Always the enemy, and always the excuse for ignoring anything not only they say but anyone they know says.
Jonathan Moorman of “Ology” was pretty calm about it. “When you start comparing your opponents to racists, you know what that does? End the conversation outright and force everyone away from the middle.”
Al Gore needs a nice big cup of STFU.
Besides, I know something they don't know. Al Gore's actions are his best revenge. His investments are making big money. He's seeing all the best clean energy deals, and getting a taste of many. He may end this life a billionaire.
The right argument on the environment is the financial one. Instead of talking about the polar bear, how about talking about how despite China's big investment in solar panels we're exporting more to them than they are to us. That's an 83% export increase in one year.
Got a better business opportunity?
If the prosperity angle doesn't work, how about the national security angle. You know South Korea just opened the world's largest tidal power plant, capable of powering a city of 500,000? And that's just ahead of a similar plant in France?
Fact is there is a ton of money to be made in renewable energy, and we're not getting our share. Getting our share will get our economy rolling again. Instead of talking about a “carbon tax,” how about talking about cost equalization – making certain every power source pays the full cost of its production and consumption, including all externalities?
That's the problem. Oil interests insist that “renewables can't compete” only because they ignore the bulk of their costs. They ignore the carbon river that came rushing through Kingston, Tennessee a few years ago. They pretend the war in Iraq was fought for something other than assuring oil supplies – how are 4,000 American lives for a subsidy?
The argument needs to be an economic argument, a national security argument, if it's to be won. We have to see pollution for what it is, a cost we're not paying, a subsidy of the industry producing that energy.
Instead of complaining that “we have 4% of the world's people but consume 25% of the world's energy,” how about turning that on its head, and pointing out how we're the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, with more opportunities for efficiency than any nation on Earth, more ways to make money cheaply than any other country.
Making this an economic and a national security interest attacks the Right where they think they're strongest. By making this an environmental argument, an intellectual argument, Al Gore was politically stupid.
We continue to pay for it.
One more thing. I am disappointed by the President's rhetoric on this subject, but he has done more in getting the national security establishment to put $7 billion into renewables and doubling CAFE standards for the climate crisis than Al Gore ever succeeded in doing. Speak through your actions, don't trouble us with words.
Shania Wickersham
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