Al Gore Returns

Full Disclosure: I am not an environmentalist, at least not in the traditional understanding of what an environmentalist is supposed to be and act like. Not in the granola-eating, pierced-body, cynical, Pitch-reading, Starbucks-drinking, save-the-whale, Walmart-hating, stinky-body odor, Third-World-loving, Bush-hating, drive-an-old-Volvo-to-the-Greenpeace-rally variety prevalent in the urban cores of most major American cities. I always found those people strange irrelevancies in the sea of American politics...good for a few laughs at the lunch table with my co-workers, but not much more. But I am a conservationist. As a conservative, I believe in conserving the natural resources of the Earth and I find it wasteful that we pollute the Earth with the burning of fossil-fuels to propel our modern lifestyle when we have several cleaner alternatives like solar, nuclear, and wind power. As a cheapass skinflint, I am the type of guy who likes to go around the house and turn off all the lights in order to save money on my electric bill. I didn't engage in this behavior until the Kansas City Power and Light electric bill had my name on it. Now, I find myself monitoring energy usage and what I can do to cut back on expenses in the increasingly insane world of energy prices.

Last night, I had the pleasure to watch "An Inconvenient Truth", the new documentary movie starring former Vice-President Al Gore as...Al Gore. The film is a brilliantly crafted, 100-minute lecture by Al Gore about the issues and problems surrounding the problem of global warming. I went into the film a little cynical. I have never voted for Al Gore for Vice-President or President, and his brand of politics has been anathema to me (the blandishments about creating the Internet, the personal tragedy stories as political theater, the harsh partisanship of the younger Al Gore each served to turn me off severely). To my delight, I thoroughly enjoyed "An Inconvenient Truth" and I sat mesmerized during the entire film, transfixed at this brilliant, witty, and unorthodox public relations campaign by Al Gore to highlight the problem of global warming. I highly recommend this movie to anyone with an interest in politics...even to conservative Republicans like me who are typically skeptical regarding alarmist-Chicken-Little environmental prognostication of doom and gloom.

The movie is basically Al Gore going through his PowerPoint presentation about the dangers and perils of global warming. But don't let that scare you. This is not your father's Al Gore...this is a new and improved Al Gore. He is wiser. He is humble. He is less partisan (although he still manages to throw a partisan punch or two during the film against the current Republican administration). But the facts he presents are rock solid. And the case he makes about global warming is compelling. Al Gore is truly the environmental David speaking truth to power and using his PowerPoint slingshot to hit the Goliath of Global Warming right smack between the eyes. And Al Gore sure can keep an audience's attention! This isn't just some boring PowerPoint of the variety you find in any Corporate America sales pitch. Gore uses cartoon parodies, film clips, evidence, pictures, Mark Twain quotes, personal anecdotes, and compelling testimonials to really capture your attention and hold it for the entire 100 minutes. The documentary constantly cuts away to little sidebars of Al Gore traveling from city to city on his messianic tour to enlighten the world's opinion leaders about the perils of global warming. It is similar to how they made "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour" movie (great film), only instead of redneck fart jokes you get civic activism and an education into the biggest sleeper issue in American politics.

What I most enjoyed was watching Al Gore. The man who served for 8 years as Vice-President and then lost a close and bitterly contested election in 2000 has mellowed over the past 6 years. In 1960, Richard Nixon similarly lost a closely contested presidential election after serving as Vice-President for 8 years in the Eisenhower Administration. Nixon did not run for President in 1964, wisely choosing instead to spend his time traveling to each of the continents of the world and visiting as many foreign countries as possible to become a foreign policy expert and to better prepare himself for a future bid for the presidency. When Nixon ran for president again in 1968, it is not a stretch to say that because he had spent the previous 8 years out of office touring the world, he was by far the best-prepared president the United States has had in terms of foreign policy. And this experience paid off in terms of the opening to China, detente with the Soviet Union, and the ending of the Vietnam War. Similarly, Al Gore is following the Nixon model of investing his time since his 2000 defeat to study and learn all of the nuances about the issue of energy and global warming. Unlike the other candidates who will be running for president in 2008 (Senator John McCain, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, et. al.), Al Gore has had time away from the hustle and bustle of politics to reflect on the issue of global warming and has truly made it his moral imperative. Gore has sharpened his thinking on what he would actually do with the office of president in terms of the global warming debate. In my humble view, Al Gore has done exactly what Richard Nixon did in the 1960s: he is making himself a better future president. Will the country elect this new and seasoned and wiser Al Gore? That question is impossible to answer in 2006, and I am not Nostradamus so I really have no clue. All I know is that Gore should be commended for the devotion he has invested in the global warming issue, his efforts through this film to warn the world about the consequences of inaction on this issue, and his efforts to recast the global warming debate from something we don't want to think about to the leading moral issue of our time.