Gore nutshells the G8

"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."

- Al Gore on the G8 climate "summit"



yep that sounds about right - see it's not only the Democrats...




image: eccentric toast

We're all red states now

Looks like a Red State sensation sweeping the nation!
Who wants to put money on the NYC Blackout of 2006?
I'm betting its starts around rush hour tomorrow....

its only the natural summer cycle for you enviro-fascists out there - 110 is normal for the northeast.

More Gore...

Low and behold I ran into Al Gore again last night on Charlie Rose. Obviously the discussion centered on the film but some themes were expanded. The tipping point discussed was a 10 year grace period that Gore firmly believes we have - God I hope it is more than that. He still thinks radical change is possible which is an optimism I wholly embrace even if I don't fully believe it. Being a "half-full" person ain't so easy for me these days. The whole time you watch the interview you realize just how poorly our government is performing and just how disasterous a mistake it was to have Bush enter the White House. The race should have never even been close. Gore again comes off as flexible and agile of mind and quite honestly, a very feeling person. Some might call it Presidential.

Here's the episode if your interested - Al Gore on Charlie Rose.

On Edge

Well I finally got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday. Its an important film and I was nicely surprised as to how much I like Al Gore - I never imagined him so personable. Things are missing from the discussion and there are a few too many gauzy close ups of his Mac - which feels a bit infomercial - but I'm happy this film is getting into the public. Its a good continuance of (though not related) Bill Moyers' Earth on Edge from a few years back. My hope is that it can get into each classroom. The saddest part of all is that we know what's wrong - unlike so many other areas of the human tragedy, we can actually measure and see what is going wrong. There just isn't the political will from our leadership and I think our followership is nearly as guilty. Go see it and email your reps about it. Its a worthy film.

So Sunday, like a parrallel universe of denial, Tim Russert had three of the top four oil giants on board - resulting in hand wringing and crying about how hard they work delivering energy. See the full transcript here. They also kept on point that they need 100 years to fully divest of oil - if then! Forget the 40-50 year tipping point cited in the Gore film and endless scientific "report cards" administered by multiple independent bodies ( even the UN) that consisitently state we are in crisis mode. The oil boys insisted on not being energy independent but rather part of the global community. It was laughable to say the least. These Corps created the world oil economy in the first place, made the rules and continue to re-make the rules while consistently undermining international law and human rights efforts in hot spots. Anyway, you know that. I'm just glad they got a free 30 minute commercial courtesy of NBC/ General Electric. The lack of vision is appalling - just regular millionaires working under the ever increasing burdens of demand from thankless and Selfish consumers!

The tri-fecta today- there is a story over at MSN via Huffington about the doomsday Seed Vault. 100 nations have decided to lock away all the earth's seeds near the Arctic Circle. Effectively storing the history of human plant domestication. Its pretty amazing when you think about it and quite prudent, but it is frightening to think this is what has to be done NOW as a safety net. I'm sure future mutants will enjoy corn on the cob as much as we do.