Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 this morning.

From the Nobel Foundation’s statement:

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

And the response from the Gores:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis – a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Well, after a tremendous year of accomplishments and honors (an Emmy for Current TV, an Oscar for Inconvenient Truth, the Live Earth global concert over the summer), this is the final benchmark for Gore; if he doesn’t run for president in 2008 now, then he definitely ain’t runnin’ …

While it’s easy to smile at stories of people changing their lightbulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescents, or choosing to ride to work on a bike over driving a car, it takes more than anecdotal blips at the grass roots level to feel confident that a sea change in attitudes and behaviors is happening in the face of our looming environmental crisis. Sometimes it takes knowing that Big Capital is playing on the same team — a dicey proposition however you cut it, given that powerful corporations are the worst offenders and their political influence and financial machinations ensure that their loyal politicians sit out badly needed regulatory measures to keep those very corporations in heed.

All of which is why stories, such as this one in Vanity Fair about General Electric and its young and dynamic CEO Jeffrey Immelt, seem so encouraging. When the second largest company in the world, after Wal-Mart (which too has recently embraced sustainability). His emphasis, for better or worse, is not ‘about being trendy or moral. It’s about accelerating economic growth.’ Green must beget green, in other words. Schmarmy as that may seem, it is realpolitik; for a shift in the environmental practices of major corporations can’t be catalyzed unless they are convinced of that shift’s benefits in terms of the bottom line.

 

A profile in the recent Sunday times of China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya. As China’s economic and political might have grown, so have its interests in ensuring that international policy, as directly by an assortment of Western nations at the UN, works to its advantage. Through Wang’s wiley diplomacy, China has evolved from a awkward, quiet, shadow player to a major rival to the US at the United Nations.

Read the piece here.

 

Bully for MSNBC’s Ken Olbermann and his classy and eloquent primetime response to Rumsfeld’s recent speech, in which he compared critics of the botched Iraq war to Chamberlain-style appeasers of Hitler during World War II. Although the cynics out there might fault his speech as presumptuous for its evocation of Murrow, but I can more than dig the attempt for its ambition and earnestness in this otherwise craven day and age of lapdog journalism.

Crooks and Liars has the video posted here. Richard Greene offers strong praise for the piece in the Huffington Post. And the ever-on point Frank Rich calls Rumsfeld out by invoking this damning image of a smiling Rummy himself shaking hands with Saddam 20 years ago. Sets up an amusing parallelism to the image of Neville Chamberlain swapping skins with Adolph Hitler, no?

 

As depressingly doubtful as it often seems, however, Olbermann is not the only one working in television news who hasn’t completely lost their sense of up and down. Two others, while not journalists themselves, carry the burden of journalism’s supposed commitments to rigor and investigation (noble commitments that since Murrow’s day seem to have mutated into a kind of vampiric and solipsistic pursuit of ratings and ad revenue; news has turned into an empty, anodyne, complacent, PR- and quote-friendly form of mythmaking) by mercilessly satirizing TV news journalism itself. Of course, I am talking about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Here are some other seminal, declarative moments of television news which have cracked and rolled like heavy thunder in the fuzzy white noise of the contemporary mediasphere, seeming to stop, if only for a moment, everything in their tracks.

Jon Stewart’s brilliantly acerbic appearance (which struck a notable contrast with his warm and congenial host persona on The Daily Show) in 2004 on CNN’s erstwhile ‘debate’ show Crossfire resulted in CNN’s termination of the program shortly after this broadcast. Jon Stewart derides the left-vs-right debate format of the show as political theater, a spectacle of soundbites and crude witticisms more akin to verbal pro-wrestling than with real debate, with its hosts shilling and spouting rhetoric in their roles as partisan henchmen.

Then there is Stephen Colbert’s famous dinner roast of Bush — delivered to the president’s dazed and reddening face! — back in April.

Colbert, in a virtuoso and magnificently unfazed deadpan, delivers a ballsy calvacade of broadsides against the administration over the course of 20 earth-stopping minutes, including this one:

“I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, has he stood on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”

This stuff that Bush, in his insulated bubble, never gets to hear, let alone hear live and in person and in front of a public. But moreover, just as he’s shielded from criticism, he is also consitutionally impervious to it; Bush, after all, believes in Divine insight, in his personal connection to jesus. Did Colbert’s lancing of his imcompetence and hipocrisy grant the Decider-in-Chief one iota wisdom, thoughtfulness, or humility? Seems unlikely (in fact, the fiercely supportive response among the blogging world was a world away from the MSM’s tepid coverage of the event). Did Stewart’s plea strip down the propagandistic facades of television news and inspire a revision in its intelligence-deadening practices? Not really (though, but Crossfire did get canceled and Fox’s ratings are declining). Will Rumsfeld watch Olbermann and take a minute to reflect, rethink his choice of words, let alone worldview? Again, doubtful. And even if our SoD suddenly ‘gets it,’ isn’t it too late for the broken Iraq and the thousands dead he’s helped create and the hubris, professional ineptitude and moral callousness he’s already displayed?

But of course to ask Olbermann, Stewart and Colbert those things is unfair. They are for their own part and in their own ways and by their own degrees rousing a sleeping country, slumbering in front of its televisions, into a state of reason and alertness. One only wishes that in 2006, as far as wider tv news culture is concerned, they were the rule rather than the exception.

The inaugural issue of Wholphin (McSweeney’s DVD media arm) includes a gem of a mini-doc of Al Gore in 1999, shot and directed by Spike Jonze. It’s a warm and intimate look at a day in the life of then-presidential candidate, chilling in Carthage, Tennessee, and at a vacation spot in North Carolina, with Tipper and his daughter Karenna.

The film was made for the Democratic Convention of 2000, but was never more widely released. The liner notes (which includes a short interview with Jonze) suggest the possibility that a larger airing of this short may have offset the media portrayal of Gore as a stiff and uncharismatic candidate. Indeed, watching this relaxed, witty and completely amiable man putz around the house with his family leaves you aching, knowing that he would soon lose to the privileged, unprincipled fratboy failure who has now occupied the White House for two craptastic terms. Little did Al Gore or Spike Jonze know that this tiny film would be viewed, in 2006, as a tragedy. Watching this film is a little like peering back through the looking glass to a brighter time and place, before we were all plunged into this collective nightmarish alternate reality …

View the 15-minute piece on the Wholphin site, or on Video Google.

[via BoingBoing]

*** 

Lastly, I leave you with this (rhetorical) question: why should we draft Al Gore?

From illustrator Thomas Fuchs’ collection “GOP100 - Deconstructing Dumbo,” produced around the time the Republican Convention invaded our fair city of New York in that depressing summer of 2004.

It’s now part of a self-published book; get your copy at New York Imposter.

[via Neatorama]

Michael Bierut has written a post in Design Observer describing the recent mini-protest at this year’s National Design Awards (held annually by the Cooper-Hewitt) by five prominent designers (Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, and Georgie Stout, all from 2×4; Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister), who declined an invitation by Laura Bush to attend a breakfast at the White House for the occasion. It’s a principled gesture, and one I support, but it remains a gesture, and its ultimate futility recalls a quote by Deleuze in the preface to his collection of writings Negotiations (substitute “design” for “philosophy” where, or if, appropriate):

… philosophy’s always caught between an anger with the way things are and the serenity it brings. But Philosophy isn’t a Power. Religions, states, capitalism, science, the law, public opinion, and television are powers, but not philosophy. Philosophy may have its great internal battles (between idealism and realism, and so on), but they’re mock battles. Not being a power, philosophy can’t battle with the powers that be, but it fights a war without battles, a guerrilla campaign against them. And it can’t converse with them, it’s got nothing to tell them, nothing to communicate, and can only negotiate. Since the powers aren’t just external things, but permeate each of us, philosophy throws us all into constant negotiations with, and a guerrilla campaign against, ourselves.

The design elite, like philosophers, speak in a rarefied language whose meaning is only communicated within tiny, isolated circles. They speak of politics but do not impel any direct force upon politics.

Adam Hanft wrote of this phenomena in a terrific piece for The Huffington Post a couple of months ago. He calls it the ‘creative curse,’ defined in this way: the groups that are most creative and contributory to the arts are the lease effective in the political sphere.

As perpetual outsiders, liberals have constructed an ecosystem — an architecture of desire and hope — that seeks to influence the culture artistically, to re-imagine the world through drama and fiction and poetry. The conservative movement has taken a completely different approach, and has been wildly successful at it. They aren’t interested in the alchemy of philosophy into art, but the muscle of philosophy into practice. They’ve made the two last struggles of the last 50 years — against Communism and now against terrorism — into national theater with clear protagonists, heroes, enemies and values. It’s not sophisticated or imaginative theater, it’s not draped in ambiguity and moral complexity, but it’s theater nonetheless. Fox News is Death of a Salesman for conservatives. Reagan’s “Morning in America” was a national opera.

…

Liberals have been patterned by the Creative Curse, and it’s haunting them. If they want to become not just the dominant political segment — but the dominant turbine of ideas — they need to extend their energies to the levers of the larger culture, and write a narrative that is as creative politically as aesthetically. When the conservatives mock liberals as “elite,” what they’re really saying is that they put on performances that satisfy each other’s narrow frustrations or longing or anger. Meanwhile, while the left is constructing plays that are, in [Tony] Kushner’s term, “watchable,” the right is constructing epics that are winnable.

Yet another sad episode in the United States’ continued slow motion self-lobotomization:  

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush’s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.

The full article, from the New York Times, is here.

Greenpeace UK released a brilliantly acidic ad (part of their What Does Your Car Say About You? campaign) that tucks anti-SUV sentiment neatly within the metaphor of all-too-familiar intra-office relations.

This video tells me two things about the British: that 1) they are (still) obsessed with The Office, and 2) they are much further along culturally in their rejection of the irresponsible fuel-hogging behemoths known as Sports Utility Vehicles. The message of this piece would simply not fly in the US. For Americans, the social pariah in the commercial is less likely to be the douche with the SUV than the sensible person with the gall to argue in favor of a gasoline tax or carbon trade caps on our vehicular and industrial emissions. Sigh …

But I do think things are changing. If the increase of ad hominem attacks on specific car-types and drivers indicates a larger and more ingrained shift in our attitudes, then sites such as FUH2 (a user-generated photo submission site with its guns trained unflinchingly on the H2 line of Hummers) are encouraging. Sometimes you must be hater to be a lover!

Check out our submission of June 14, 2004:

[via Treehugger]

On the sustainable energy front, two new technologies to be tweaked by …

Brown energy is the polite term being bandied about to describe new methods of capturing the methane gas (a chief component of natural gas, as well as a principle greenhouse gas, more potent in its heat-capturing effects than carbon dioxide) generated by cattle. Polite because it euphemizes the process of collecting gas from thousands of cows and pigs farting and shitting their way to their own annihilation.

But its scatological characteristics aside, it’s impossible not to recognize a certain elegance to the operation, both ecologically: 

… More utilities are thinking of buying the gas outright. Pacific Gas and Electric has agreed to transport gas from a big digester that Microgy, a digester manufacturer, is building in California. Right now Microgy plans to sell the gas on the open market, but Robert Howard, vice president for gas transmission and distribution, said P.G.& E. may buy some gas itself. “This technology provides pipeline-quality gas and reduces carbon emissions, so of course we’re in favor it,” he said.

The environmental boons are many. According to Agstar, digesters are already keeping 66,000 tons of methane from escaping each year into the atmosphere, while generating enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes.

and economically:

The potential market is huge. Agstar officials say that at least 70,000 dairy and swine farms are big enough to support a commercial digester and could collectively provide enough energy to power more than 560,000 homes, while keeping more than 1.4 million tons of methane out of the atmosphere.

“The business model of producing energy along with food will transform the economics of rural America,” said Michael T. Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, based in Washington.

Indeed, anaerobic digestion yields not just methane, but leftover liquids that farmers can use or sell as fertilizer, waste heat that can heat their homes and barns, and fibrous solids that make excellent bedding for cows. Farmers also save the costs of controlling odors and treating waste. “Two years ago I couldn’t even convince farmers that digesters work,” said Melissa Dvorak, marketing manager for GHD, a company based in Chilton, Wis., that sells digesters. “Now, all they ask is what the payback will be.”

The full article is in the NYTimes, via Treehugger.

***

Crowd power is an equally interesting (and less messy) attempt at siphoning energy from the otherwise irreversible slide towards entropy. The imaginative idea is based on tapping into the restless, unceasing energy of the city itself; footfalls, vehicle vibrations, the general ambience of a busy day. Unlike Brown Power, this is still in the prototype phase, but it has received a lot of financial investment already. What they have so far:

[Project engineers] Bates and Price are now in the process of developing a joint partnership to make the idea a reality. The architectural team is working with university research groups to finish two vibration-harvesting prototypes by December. The first is a staircase that will contain hydraulic or piezoelectric technology in the risers. The technology will pick up kinetic energy from commuter footfalls and convert it into an electrical current.

Climbing stairs requires more force, which means there’s more energy to be tapped. Engineering experts from the University of Hull hope to develop a system that will convert at least 50% of the six to eight watts each person typically generates while walking. The current will be stored in a battery, which can be used to provide energy for lighting or electronic devices. The second prototype is a wireless lighting system that will use tiny generators with components designed to resonate at the same frequency as surrounding vibrations. The resonance will either move a magnet relative to a coil or put stress on a crystalline structure inside a generator to produce a current. Light-emitting diodes connected to such vibration harvesters could illuminate the underside of arches.

Full article is here. Also via Treehugger.

 

Two weeks ago, billionaire investor Warren Buffett announced that he will give away 85% of his wealth to charity. That’s $37.4 billion in liquid stock, $31 billion of which will pass on to the hands of Bill Gates (the only person on the planet richer than he is), who along with his wife Melinda, as you know, runs the formidable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (as you might also know, Bill recently quit day-to-day operations at Microsoft in order to administrate his charitable organization full-time).

Bravo to both of these guys — fat cats with soul. Buffett, the folksy, gnomic financial figure who belongs to a previous, more upright era of money-making, has some choice quotables in this NYTimes article:

***

“I’m not an enthusiast for dynastic wealth, particularly when 6 billion others have much poorer hands than we do in life.”

***

“I love it when I’m around the country club, and I hear people talking about the debilitating effects of a welfare society,” he said. “At the same time, they leave their kids a lifetime and beyond of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer. And instead of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds.”

***

Not that his children will be left empty-handed. Mr. Buffett said that the assets he is not giving to charity today will be divided up later between other philanthropic causes and his family. His children, he said, were not at all disappointed not to be receiving the lion’s share of his fortune.

“They’ve known all along my views on inherited wealth, and share them,” he said in a news conference this afternoon. “They have money that most people would dream of. They’re lucky, in that respect, when they selected their parents.”

 

2:15am, July 5. Yet another Fourth of July has come and gone — the 230th, for anyone who’s counting. How well have those declarations held up in all that time? Not too well, according to Robert Weissman, writing in the Huffington Post.

 

Like a great many people have done recently, I saw An Inconvenient Truth tonight and was shattered.

In it slow methodical science takes unusually persuasive and passionate form. It is truth-telling at its noblest and most highly effective. The enormous, planetary threat that Al Gore has been flogging since his college and congressional days (the latter of which was a 17-year tenure he began at age 27) go beyond the politicization that the right has tactically and instinctively — and predictably — resorted to in attacking the film; rather, global warming is, as Gore himself says, not a political issue, but an urgently moral one. That so many people have been packing seats to see it, and that the Republican counterargument is sounding more and more shrill and insane to more and more people by the minute signals, perhaps, that a tipping point in our collective consciousness has finally been reached. Whether or not we can make it past the next century still remains to be seen. If we don’t, will it perhaps be because we’ve reached the Rapture after all? A fossil-fuel-depleted, water-logged, carbon-soaked one albeit? Now that we seem to have eeked past 6/6/06, all bets are off …

I’ve said it before, but just to reiterate … Gore in 2008! We need you ever so desperately now … 

On a lighter, but nevertheless related tip, check out this ingenious and entertaining (and alas, depressing) animation called A Bad Case of the Humans …

June 6, 2006, is about as appropriate a time as any to discuss Ann, Satan, end-times, and religious demagoguery as any. Davis Sweet’s terrific rant in today’s Huffington Post argues that us godless secularists have to stop tolerating religion for the sake of tolerance, and bring us back from the collective brink. Some quotables:

To the extent that there’s any discussion of religion’s role in America, it’s a biblical flood of mumbo-jumbo from one side meeting a crumbling dike of condescension and self-censorship on the other. We see proponents of competing superstitions killing each other and conning their kids into killing each other, and we call it “religious tension” or “sectarian violence” or some other sanitized phrase that doesn’t reflect the truth: nonsense kills.

…

Most Americans don’t think about how con schemes work or how people allow themselves to be hoodwinked. And because so many on the left wouldn’t dream of being intolerant to even the most profound injustice as long as it was wrapped in the radioactive label “religion,” nobody talks about the elephant in the room: it’s deadly dangerous to allow magic-believers to apply their childlike gullibility to public policy. It’s almost as if we understand that religion is divorced from honesty, so we feel like we can’t talk about it honestly — at least in public; at least in America.

…

So on this day of rampant superstition (and probably some pretty cool parties — 666! Whoo!), here’s some honesty: fearing god is just silly. It’s absolutely indistinct from fearing elves. And chalking up human success to any god is no more admirable. No god ever ended a war or fed a hungry kid. When religious people say “I know,” especially when they’re looking all beatific, they mean “I hope.” “God” is a stone-age proposition that serves no purpose in the twenty-first century other than to rain money from the pockets of self-indulgent fools onto the heads of id-coddling hate mongers — be they priests or pundits.

In response to dipshit Chertoff and the Dept. of Homeland Security’s decision to cut NYC’s counterterrorism funding by half, citing, among other reasons, that New York has no landmarks worth protecting, Hillary Clinton (and subsequently, the New York Post) has started a NY postcard writing campaign …

Send Chertoff a postcard of the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, or the Empire State Building. Ha!

Raise a Bronx cheer from here and here.

***

Speaking of New York postcards, here’s a blast from the past (our old web project, 23¢ Stories, still alive and kicking)

Last weekend was Memorial Day. The sense of gravity that comes with the imminent passing of another generation of veterans — pretty soon there won’t be any WWII GIs left whose stories we can make ‘noble’ war movies (as opposed to cynical, tripped out, navel-gazing ones) – is joined by the outrage that people right now are killing and dying on foreign shores for illegitimate wars, and that with no end in sight, we can only make do with these craven, non-serving, true-believing criminals in charge of it all:

• President George W. Bush - served four years of a six years Nat’l Guard commitment, some say after daddy’s friends pulled some strings to keep him out of Vietnam. The circumstances of his early separation from state-side service are still controversial (details)
• Karl Rove, occasional Deputy Chief of Staff and alleged full time smear artist, escaped the draft and did not serve
• VP Dick Cheney - several deferments, by marriage and timely fatherhood  
• Former VP Chief of Staff I. Lewis Scooter Libby - did not serve
• Secretary of State and former NSA Condaleeza Rice - did not serve
• Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve.
• Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - did not serve.
• Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay - did not serve
• House Majority Whip Roy Blunt - did not serve
• Majority Whip Mitch McConnell - did not serve
• Rick Santorum, third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve.
• Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott - did not serve

And likewise, these blowhards in the mediasphere are masqerading their ignorance and hatred under the flag. The searing contradiction between their talking and their NOT-WALKING cleaves one’s cerebellum in two:

• Rush Limbaugh - did not serve
• Sean Hannity - did not serve
• Pat Buchanan - did not serve
• Ann Coulter - did not serve
• Ralph Reed - did not serve
• Bill O’Reilly - did not serve
• Michael Savage - did not serve
• Bill Kristol - did not serve

Sigh. 

[via DailyKos]

Bush is now at 29%. Given this mandate to show Republicans out the door, will the Democrats’ take advantage? Or must more profiling and polls and framing be conducted?

The Democratic leadership’s timidity has been chronic over the past six years. Considered against the widespread perception of a demographically-pervasive rightward tilt (as well as the country’s rally-around-the-flagpole mentality following 9/11), that was almost forgivable. But with Bush’s 29%, as well as a congressional approval rating of 20% for Republicans, it is perhaps time to hang up the helpline and get some business done.

So argues Bob Herbert in this terrific NYTimes op-ed from Thursday:

In 1948, when Harry Truman had already been dismissed by the political geniuses as a certain loser, he got on a train and took his case to the American people. Truman told his sister: “It will be the greatest campaign any president ever made. Win, lose or draw, people will know where I stand and a record will be made for future action by the Democratic Party.”

There are no Trumans in sight in this Democratic Party. Democratic candidates and potential candidates are still agonizing with their analysts over exactly what to say about this issue or that. (They’re trying to figure out ways to talk about the war, for example, that will offend neither hawks nor doves.) What’s almost funny is that the patient has been doing this for years, and keeps losing election after election.

Why not try something new and liberating, like the truth? Forget the theorizing and strategizing. Tell the truth about what’s happening now. Let the electorate know how much the Iraq war is really costing — in human treasure, loss of influence around the world, increases in gasoline prices and cold, hard cash. Tell the truth about the monstrous buildup of state power by the Bush crowd, which has undermined the freedom and privacy of innocent people here at home, and angered many conservatives.

Let us roll, as it were.

Two pieces in today’s Times …

This discusses the green building movement in New York, and features SOM’s recently completed 7 World Trade Center, and Sir Norman Foster’s Hearst Building. When they say ‘green,’ they mean it in more senses than one:

Of course, it isn’t just environmental consciousness that is motivating developers. Because green buildings use from 30 to 70 percent less energy, they can be run for less money — but leased for more, because companies want healthy offices, which several studies have shown lead to increased productivity.

This op-ed by Jamie Lincoln Kitman of Automobile Magazine applies some lucidity to the hype surrounding hybrid cars:

Several bills floating around Congress, for instance, have proposed tax incentives to buyers of hybrid cars, irrespective of their gas mileage. Thus, under one failed but sure to resurface formulation, the suburbanite who buys a hypothetical hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source would be entitled to a huge tax incentive, while the buyer of a conventional, gasoline-powered Honda Civic that delivers 40 miles per gallon on the open road gets none.

And under some imaginable patchwork of state and local ordinances, the Durango buyer might get a special parking space at the train station and the right to use a high occupancy vehicle lane, despite appalling fuel economy and a car full of empty seats, while the Honda driver will have to walk to the train from a distant parking lot after braving the worst of morning rush hour traffic on the highway just like everybody else.

*** 

Holy hyperlinking! While we are discussing the Times, I was pleasantly surprised when I saved the above article and received this smart, Amazon-style followup — a long-overdue feature, for sure:

 

If you listen hard enough these days, you can hear the trees whispering: Al Gore, Al Gore …

Is he our man? And if he can’t do it, then who out there can? Hillary? Meh, fuggedaboutit. John Kerry? Next. Mark Warner? Only if your glass reads half-full and not half-defensive capitulation. It’s not a field of good options for the Democrats in 2008, and the idea of a McCain presidency, which at one point may have been tolerable, even desirable, seems to be growing more and more gangrenous everyday; at the rate he’s been feeling out the rightwing nutjob fringes, the ’straight-talking’ liberal centrists and moderate Republicans will have to amputate, and soon.

I’ve been talking to friends who have begun getting excited about a possible return for Gore into the fray. In the last six years, freed from the cultural constraints of beltway politesse, Gore has been aggressively outspoken in his views ranging from the Iraq war to the environment to the sorry state of contemporary journalism, and has conveyed a charisma and ferocity that was entirely missing from his milquetoast 2000 run. Now, do his newly forged lefty credentials translate into a viable presidential run? That’s hard to say, but the question is not as opaque as it was in the fall of 2004; since then an unceasing accumulation of Republican-branded bad news has fermented into a thoroughly toxic stew for the GOP that has resonance not just for the 2006 midterms, but quite possibly well beyond. Iraq, Katrina, Abramoff, global warming (and the Bush administration’s reluctance to deal with it), and Bush himself’s southbound approval ratings have created buoyant conditions for an electable Democratic insurgent, a scenario which was unthinkable when Kerry and Edwards took their turns on the sacrificial pyre of ‘domestic insecurity’ and ‘out-of-touch liberal’ two short years ago.

So then the question is: who can stake a liberal position on good faith, who a) doesn’t have a contradictory or ambiguous record having signed on to the Iraqi misadventure in 2002, who b) has the name-recognition and gravitas to not easily get called out on opportunism or so-called coastal liberal detachment, and who c) is actually experienced enough in administration and statecraft to deflect charges of inadequacy and softness? Well, arguably, Al Gore.

This intriguing piece in The American Prospect about the ‘new new Gore’ is a really thoughtful primer for the fanboy and the skeptic alike. I recommend it mightily.

His official line, btw, is that he’s out of the running. His non-official 2008 netroots site is here. And later this summer, Gore’s documentary film about global climate collapse An Inconvenient Truth (produced by the smart and progressive Participant Productions, production company for Good Night, Good Luck and Syriana) will be released.

It’s spotty like swiss cheese, but delicious nonetheless: 

‘Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.’

[thanks Meredith]