Joe Conason: Nasty Foes Now Owe Apologies to Gore

[Dudley_DUright]

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 the 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.

Admiral James Stockdale called him a “fanatic.” Dan Quayle said his views were “bizarre, detached from reality, and devoid of common sense.” P.J. O’Rourke called him “nutty.” Grover Norquist compared him to the Unabomber. David Frum accused him of wanting to “dismantle the American economy in the name of environmental regulation.”

more...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060524_joe_conason_gore/

[bemildred]

1. “bizarre, detached from reality, and devoid of common sense.”

In most cases, when you see this sort of terminology, it indicates that the subject has suggested something that is unpleasantly close to the truth. It borders on being a law. I mean when have you seen it said about someone who was actually nuts? It's always someone who is saying something that is probably true.

[IndyOp]

4. Yes! It is step 2 of Gandhi's saying...

Paraphrasing:

First, they ignore you.
Then, they ridicule you.
Then, they fight you and, then, you win!


Step 2 - when they can no longer ignore you, they ridicule you -- we are bordering on FIGHT!

[IndyOp]

2. Go Joe! We now need only 100 more such articles and Al will have

a bit closer to the respect he deserves.

:hi:

[acmavm]

3. Look at who his detractors were. Some of the biggest crooks, frauds,

buffoons, and political morons to come down the pike. That is, until the bush** administration took up the anti-global warning mantra. And they ARE the biggest bunch of crooks, frauds, buffoons, and political hacks to ever hijack a government.

[billbuckhead]

5. Remember Rush Limbaugh ridiculing the hybrid car as the "algore"?

Almost a decade ago, El Rushbo and other Repukes had great sport saying Americans would never buy these ridiculous cars then being promoted by Al Gore.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Gore writes in Earth in the Balance earnestly and passionately about how he traveled the world, from the polar ice caps to the Amazon rain forests and how bad environmental practices have resulted in the disappearance of many animal species. He talks about how the burning of oil has led to the increase of greenhouse gasses like C02 and how this leads to a gradual warming of temperatures on earth a theory called global warming. Gore even called for a Global Marshall Plan, akin to the post W.W.II plan that rebuilt the economies of Europe, this Global Marshall Plan would help convert to cleaner burning technologies And, Gore of course called for the elimination of the internal combustion engine in his lifetime. This was the most controversial of Gore's assertions.

Republicans were quick to attack Gore and the ideas he represented. They call global warming junk science, and Republicans seized on the "death of the internal combustion engine" as they called it, as the stance of some left wing, loony, tree hugging enviro-nut. Where would the money for such a transformation come from? they asked, wouldn't such a transformation would cause an undue burden on the economy, they bellowed. These are the same Republicans who don't have any problems giving companies like Enron and IBM retroactive business tax breaks.

But history seems to be on Gore's side, the internal combustion engine seems to be going the way of the T-Rex. Honda was the first to mass produce a so-called 'hybrid car' one that uses both gas and electrical power. The car is called the Honda Insight. It uses a 1 liter VTEC gas engine, but it also uses an electric motor to supplement the torque of the engine at lower speeds. The advantages of hybrid cars are many. The combination of both gas and electric engines provide the car with more than enough speed and power to get up the steepest incline. Gas mileage is also greatly improved, Honda estimates that the Insight gets 61 miles per gallon in city diving and 70 miles per gallon on the highway.

Not to be outdone Toyota announced the mass production of it's own hybrid car, the Prius, which uses a 1.5 liter gas engine and electrical engine. At low speeds, the Prius uses solely the electrical motor for power. What's more, the Prius has an onboard generator to charge the electrical motor. Toyota's Prius is doing so well in sales that Toyota announced in December 2001, that it was going to increase production of the Prius by almost 40%."
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<http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/01/14_gore.html>

[yurbud]

6. an insult from Grover Norquist tells you you've done something right

[ms liberty]

7. Off to the Greatest Page for you...

Thanks for posting - we should be reminding everyone about Al's vision. AND the Repukes LACK of vision!

[bleever]

8. Ah, the calculus of karma, just a few simple, logical steps beyond

the reflexive "I'm rubber, you're glue..." dimension.

:)

[Jack Rabbit]

9. Unfortunately, Conason is most like right about this . . .

Now that nearly everyone else acknowledges Al Gore’s point, however grudgingly, those who attacked him so viciously owe him copious apologies. He would be wiser, unfortunately, to anticipate further assaults instead. The inevitable intrusion of reality has restored his stature, but the mean character of his enemies remains depressingly the same.

As a matter of fact, it looks like it's already starting.



Portait of King George from VoltaireNet.org

[Cha]

16. little george

prissy pants.

Yeah, those guys aren't going to admit they were wrong even as they get swallowed in the waters of melting icebergs.

[glitch]

10. Joe Conason is one of the best writers out there, but I'd still like him

to have his own radio show. He's got a great radio voice and very reasonable.

K & R for Conason and Gore.

[Dudley_DUright]

11. I agree

Even though he is a regular friday guest on Franken's show, I would rather have Franken be a regular friday guest on Joe's show.

[calmblueocean]

12. Hey, me too!

I've always wondered why he doesn't. He's got a great voice and a lot of facts. I'd listen!

[Kolesar]

13. And we lost 15 precious years while the GOPs ridiculed him as "Ozone Man"

That was Old Bush's insult, IIRC.

Old Bush is a Christian, so I can damn him to hell.

[Cha]

14. And look at those

names who derided Gore..Every bit the crackpots they accused Gore of being. And Greedy Crackposts at that.

[bluefish]

15. They won't apologize, they are bullies

Bullies never apologize.

[Uncle Joe]

17. They will not apologize, they are cowards. n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

18. kicked for Gore & Conason

[PATRICK]

19. To clean that up a bit

"all the great minds of our time" was not meant either seriously (or ironically?) to refer to Stockdale, Quayle, Frum or Norquist. I take that on good faith rather than poor construction, but it might be worth listing which great minds HAVE been so disastrously and viciously offtrack and then maybe do another article on what "great minds" people should be heeding who want to keep breathing and living a normal span of years.

Sometimes the idea of a man "ahead of his times" a heroic "prophet" perpetuates this disguise of a bankrupt gated "intellectual community" by giving faint praise to the successfully brutalized man of simple, inconvenient truth. Gore got all this simple information from others and acted upon its with the passion and most of the logic demanded by crisis. The fact that in the "leadership" community he is an exception is one of the scariest indictments of our times. There is no 'great mind" in any field whose sanity cannot be called into question at least for not getting minimally up to speed on world- and personal- survival.

The slightly embarrassed overlords can praise the harpooned victim trophy on their wall and again maintain a status quo slightly corrected to temporarily deal with unavoidable reality.