Joe Conason: Nasty Foes Now Owe Apology to Gore

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Thursday, May 25, 2006 by TruthDig

Nasty Foes Now Owe Apology to Gore

by Joe Conason

Long before the release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the new film about climate change starring Al Gore, the scientific consensus had ratified the warnings he has delivered over the past two decades. Leading business executives in the insurance, investment and even energy industries have conceded that he was right. Conservative politicians who scoffed at him have since traveled in his footsteps to the shrinking polar ice caps—and returned to Washington as fervent environmentalists.

The truth that the former vice president has been trying to tell us for most of his public career is no longer subject to serious dispute. The real questions are no longer whether climate change is occurring or whether that change is caused by human activity, but how much damage the world’s rising temperature will do to civilization, and how much time we have to change course before we suffer a catastrophe.

Even more impressive than Gore’s mastery of this grave matter is his remarkably consistent and courageous effort to save the planet. In 1997, he went to the Kyoto conference in pursuit of a global accord, despite advisers who said his role there would jeopardize his political future. In the spring of 2000, he reissued “Earth in the Balance,” his 1992 book on the subject, on the eve of his presidential nomination. Just to be sure that nobody misunderstood him, he added a new foreword and postscript emphasizing his commitment to “completely eliminating” the internal-combustion engine.

Like many prophets, Gore has often been derided as an annoyance, an extremist and possibly a madman. Every great American mind of our time felt compelled to take a shot at him.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0525-20.htm

[gratuitous]

1. You damn betcha they owe him an apology

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one. If the Times' little hit piece on the Clintons and David Broder's vapid commentary are any indication, the major media outlets would like nothing more than to return to the halcyon days of gas for a buck and a half and pondering what Bill Clinton was doing with his wee-wee and with whom. Sure beats all this depressing war stuff.

But apologize? Not on your nelly.