NATURE'S FRIENDS AND FOES

James Hansen ——————————————————Al Gore

I have a love/hate attitude toward Al Gore. His reputation as an environmentalist was the only bright light in the ‘92 elections. His inactivity or foiled effectiveness during his eight year term saw his implied promise go the way of all campaign promises. Dr. James Hansen's revelation of the role of man in global warming began being censored under Gore's eight year watch and continued more restrictively under Bush. His wooden refusal to mention any of Bush’s business debacles and gubernatorial goofs during his own presidential campaign assured the commander in thief we’ve had for the past seven years.

And then, after leaving what I grant may have been the stultifying bureaucratic red tape of our behemoth, profit motivated government, he surfaces with a report on his collation of world wide climate data and expertise to announce what everyone knows but many cannot afford to believe if they are going to maintain the life style they have worked so hard to mimic and inflict on the world and call it “making their mark”, usually a scar. We are shitting in our nest, we’re burning the slats off the house for a fire to keep from freezing, we are monkeying with the life support system of our space ship with no idea how it works, we’re taking stomach upset medicine in the drive-in line because we know we are ordering the kids favorite poison. Whatever metaphor one cares to make of our environmental crisis, none is as dire as the reality of our predicament.

I guess this is the essence of why I’m pissed at Gore today — he identified the entire crisis with its least obvious, most debatable probability: global warming. While the rape of rain forests, pollution of rivers and oceans, poisoning of the earth with insecticides and chemical fertilizers, genetically manipulating food, extermination of biodiversity and contamination of our breathing by petroleum usage are obvious and undeniable with no less dire consequences for life on earth, everyone is arguing global warming. If we address the sure things, the probabilities of the more subtle catastrophe will diminish at the source.

I recommend today’s Democracy Now broadcast for the inside story of the inundation of the white house politicization of all branches of the scientific community to censor environmental connection to the oil industry.

I just got my copy of Path through Infinity’s Rainbow and am impressed with its comprehensive accounting of the “perfect storm” of political, environmental, energy and economic crises contributing to a peak made unavoidable by the investment of the ruling elite in the oil industry for generations. His ideas for surviving to the other side of the collapses remain to be read, but I will definitely keep you up to date with its insights.