Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Al Gore: Terrorist Enabler ?

Al Gore's got a new movie out! An Inconvenient Truth is essentially a filmed version of one of his famous eco-disaster slideshows. Hey Al, I have an inconvenient truth for you - from Slate:

...the film flirts with double standards. Laurie David, doyenne of Rodeo Drive environs, is one of the producers. As Eric Alterman noted in the Atlantic, David "reviles owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable, a private jet." For David to fly in a private jet from Los Angeles to Washington would burn about as much petroleum as driving a Hummer for a year; if she flew back in the private jet, that's two Hummer-years.

Gore's movie takes shots at Republicans and the oil industry, but by the most amazing coincidence says nothing about the poor example set by conspicuous consumers among the Hollywood elite.

... "What I look for is signs we are really changing our way of life, and I don't see it," Gore intones with his signature sigh. As he says this, we see him at an airport checking in to board a jet, where he whips out his laptop. If "really changing our way of life" is imperative, what's Gore doing getting on a jetliner? Jets number among the most resource-intensive objects in the world.

Oh, those wacky liberals! Fly by private jet, hop a limo to the show, then bash me and my Jeep Liberty (17 city/20 highway) as "terrorist enablers"! Let them eat cake, Mr. Gore? No thanks, I'll have what you're having...

And when Mr. Gore finds the "truth" a tad "inconvenient" for his story line, well, he justs adjusts it, Day After Tomorrow- style:

...it's jarring that the movie was not scrubbed for factual precision. For instance, this 2005 joint statement by the science academies of the Western nations, including the National Academy of Sciences, warns of sea-level rise of four to 35 inches in the 21st century; this amount of possible sea-level rise is current consensus science.
Yet An Inconvenient Truth asserts that a sea-level rise of 20 feet is a realistic short-term prospect. Gore says the entire Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could melt rapidly; the film then jumps to animation of Manhattan flooded. Well, all that ice might melt really fast, and a UFO might land in London, too.


Well, I guess every Democratic generation needs it own Jimmy Carter - note the gushing praise heaped upon him at MSNBC:

– In Washington the other day, I got a chance to tell Al Gore something I’d meant to say for a long time, which was that I thought his real strength, his real contribution, was as an observer — writer, explainer, outsider — and not as a politician.
...Gore has a certain aura of nobility about him these days — a mixture of rue, acceptance and lofty goals that makes him almost, well, endearing.

Only qualities that can be possesed by a Democratic politician, I reckon...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that Gore is willing to drum up so much fear just to push his own agenda and rev up his campaign. Plus, this is the last guy that needs to be doing a movie since he's a)boring and b)not trustworthy. Here's a funny link I've been seeing, it's good for a laugh about this whole issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSqXUSwHRI