http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/al-gore-47042502 Al Gore, in an interview with the Sun, said he will not be working, formally, in the next president's administration. Not for Hillary Clinton, not for Barack Obama, not for John McCain.
“I don’t intend to be a part of any administration,” he told the Sun. “I’ve been Vice President, I ran for President twice, so I don’t have any interest in being a cabinet member. I think my best use is in building grass-roots support. I will, of course, give advice to whoever asks me for advice on this and will work to help but not in a formal way.”
It's not much of a shock. Gore has grown so powerful as a campaigner for action to solve "the climate crisis," as he calls it, that he can have an audience with any world leader. He commands a far larger audience than any EPA administrator or energy secretary. In short, he's more powerful – and more likely to be effective – as is.
Right now, Gore's strategy includes a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign and an update to the famous slide show featured in An Inconvenient Truth.
The interview:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/special_events/green_week/article1065876.eceAL GORE wants to make a sequel to his Oscar-winning documentary on global warming – and despite Earth’s “rising fever” he is still hopeful for a happy ending.
We are, he says, all players in deciding the outcome.
Despite the success of his film An Inconvenient Truth and last year’s Live Earth concerts in raising awareness, the former US Vice President believes little has changed where it counts and the situation is even more urgent.
And he warns that while individual efforts such as changing to low-energy lightbulbs are important, it is more significant for world leaders to change laws to stop pollution pouring into the atmosphere and affecting the climate.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Mr Gore – hailed as the world’s leading green campaigner – said recent polls had found that while people rate climate change as a “serious problem”, some ranked it lower than clearing up dog mess.
“When politicians walk down the pavement, four or five of every ten people they meet ask, ‘What are you doing to solve the climate crisis?’ he said. “If you ask people their opinion, more than two thirds will say, ‘It’s a very serious issue, we’re responsible for it. We need to take action’.
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Mr Gore, 60, reveals he no longer has his sights set on becoming a political leader. Instead, since losing the race for the White House to George W Bush in 2000, he has found “a much more important job to do” – saving the planet.
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He said governments need constant pressure and that is what he will devote his life to.
Mr Gore added: “I have to say the situation has not improved since I made the movie in 2006. Sure, awareness has grown and more people are concerned since scientists said we had just ten years to take action to halt rising sea levels.
“But the situation has got worse. The entire North Polar ice cap is melting and could be gone in some areas in as little as five years.
“You have to ask what would it take to set off the alarm bells to make this a top-of-mind priority in the body politic. If you had told me a few years ago that we would be facing a situation where the entire North Polar ice cap was going to imminently disappear, I might have thought we’d certainly get people’s attention, and yet only to a limited degree.”
So if it’s all down to governments, is there any point in people “going green”? “Absolutely”, he booms. “I believe that while it’s important to change lightbulbs, it’s far more important to change laws.
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He has his eye on the prize and we have to as well, by telling all of these candidates that they need to get serious about meeting the challenge of the climate crisis. Had they truly listened to Mr. Gore instead of only using him to get an endorsement, I might actually believe myself they really care about this. We will see.