Former Vice President Al Gore’s New York Times op-ed yesterday shows again why his approach to climate change antagonizes conservatives, even climate-concerned conservatives like me.
First, it was a plug for “Live Earth,” the latest cause-celebre concert planned for this weekend. Tune me out – or just YouTube me in. I’ll find the tunes I care about without the blather. Plus, I’ll check Drudge for the latest Sheryl Crow-style blasts at George W. Bush and America’s wastefulness.
I hope I’m wrong, and the sponsors of this blog might disagree, but don’t you get the sense that the former Veep forgets what Americans should really be focused on this week – Independence Day, and the struggle to remain free in the face on a global terrorist threat?
At the very least he could have made the connection that developing new low-carbon energy technologies will not only help us tackle climate change but also keep fewer of our oil dollars from parts of the world where terrorists recruit and train for their attacks against freedom. Or he could have referenced the group of retired U.S. admirals and generals who recently concluded that fighting climate change would help improve our national security. But there wasn’t a word about it in the op-ed.
Is climate change a serious concern for our country? Yes, and I think we need to take all serious threats seriously, and that goes for liberals who don’t emphasize the threat to freedom, as well as the conservatives who can’t envision success against carbon loading of the atmosphere.
And what about the former Veep’s audacity to quote President Reagan? As a veteran of the Reagan-Bush reelection campaign, I cringed.
It’s not that I think Reagan would disavow climate change or throw up his hands at the problem. (One of his closest advisers, George Schultz, advocated capping harmful emissions of various kinds and trading permits to pollute in order to unleash innovation and profit, according to my fellow TR blogger William Tucker.)
It’s just that Al Gore doesn’t have the standing to assign new meaning to Reagan’s words.
America needs to do something about our carbon emissions, and we should lead other nations to a solution to climate change. Someday soon I believe we will be well on our way to less energy dependence, and we’ll be stronger and more secure because of it.
Meanwhile, I’ll join all Americans – liberal, conservative, and in-between – in celebrating Independence Day this year. I’m sure Al Gore will too. I just wish he’d be as loud about terrorists as he is about climate.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under Climate Change, Pop Culture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
