Washblog

Here's my position up front: anthropogenic global warming is happening. There is no room for debate. Disagreement is a sign of either severe mental impairment or nefarious motives. Like arguing the earth is flat.

I'm bad at guessing numbers, so I'll say 10,000 people attended. Gore mentioned it was his largest audience ever.

No one in the audience needed to be convinced that global warming is occuring.

Dave Ross was the MC. Yea.

Gore's delivery was pretty good. He's practiced. And he knows the material cold. Gore's not a charismatic like Reagan or Clinton. But he does very well with the tools he has. And, of course, he can handle any question that comes up.

Gore is quite the jet setter these days. He sounded a bit tired. It (re)occurred to me that politicians, athletes, and surgeons need to have unusually high stamina and health. Because I know Gore's schedule would kill me.

The presentation itself is updated continuously. So there's always new information incorporated.

I wasn't taking notes. So I'll just give one example of updated information that wasn't in the movie.

The tundra's permafrost in Siberia, Alaska, and Northmost Canada is thawing. As it thaws, it releases C02 as the vegitation decomposes. The permafrost currently contains as much CO2 as the atmosphere. So if it fully thaws, the atmospheric CO2 levels will double. It's feared that once that thawing starts, it maybe irreversible.

Pleasant thought, no?

As in the movie, Gore very empathetically stated that we have the opportunity to address global warming while restructuring our economy so that everyone prospers.

I actually believe this. Anyone familiar with Japanese ideas of continuous improvement will recognize the inherit merits put forth in Natural Capitalism and elsewhere. In brief, do more with less and make money doing it. It's not terribly hard to figure out. The trick is to end our addiction to oil. Yes, Big Oil exploits consumers, just like the cocaine cartels exploit addicts.

The Q&A portion was interesting. Again, I didn't take notes and I'm sleep deprived, so this is scattered.

Gore got on to the topic of how the environment is undervalued. Measures of economic activity do not include the depletion or spoiling of environmental resources. So stuff like air, water, and pollution aren't included in the balance sheet. What are called "externalities". An example is profiting from clearcutting forests while sticking the tax payers with the increased costs of flood control and water treatment.

Gore then delivered a great line about how he internalized air and water all the time. It was a great turn of phrase, demonstrating the myopia of current accounting practices.

Gore had another great line about automobiles. Something like "People in the future are going to wonder why we brought 4,000 lbs of metal with us everywhere."

Another question was about the need to reform media. That uncorked a good rant. People may not remember that Gore started as a journalist. All the standard stuff was repeated: a free press is so important, it's covered by the Constitution; corporate media consolidation has boned us; we need alternatives. He threw in references to the disruption the printing press caused and how the average American watches 3 plus hours per day.

I was surprised that Gore didn't talk about his efforts at "disintermediation", Current.tv, the rise of the blogs, citizen journalism, etc.

There were a bunch of groups handing out literature, signing up volunteers, etc. I really need to get my act together and have my "activist action box" ready to go for opportunities like this.

Global warming is the single biggest crisis facing humanity at this time. We'd be addressing this problem today if the 2000 Presidential election hadn't been stolen. Which why I became an election integrity activist. Because the American people already made the right choices. The trick now is to honor the will of the people.