Al Gore’s Rage Against The Machine
AL Gore has a plan. Al Gore wants 10 million volunteers to force politicians to act on climate change. There will be adverts on American TV. Lots of them.
The target is a big number. The Guardian says it’s twice as many as the number who marched against the Vietnam war or in support of civil rights during the heyday of US activism in the 1960s.
“The resources are completely unprecedented in American politics,” says Philip Clapp, of the Pew Environment Group. The Alliance for Climate Protection “has already reached out to organisations as diverse as the Girl Scouts and the steelworkers union to try to broaden its appeal”.
Steelworkers and girl scouts. The green movement is throwing up some unlikely bedfellows. Cookies and pig iron. The former Vice President of the USA waging war on the machines, one of which caused so many hanging chads and lost him Florida and with it the White House.
Gore hates machines, just hates them.
But Gore and green are going along nicely. Gore and self-promotion go even better. We saw the film and now we can watch the green TV adverts on, one presumes, our wind-powered TVs.
But are we all that interested in what Gore has to say? The Guardian says that last January, the League of Conservative Voters analysed transcripts of television interviews and debates with all the Democratic and Republican contenders for the White House.
By January 25, the candidates had been asked 2,975 questions on a range of issues, of which as many as six mentioned the words “climate change” or “global warming”.
Says the paper: “This is not much greater than the level of media interest in the candidates’ positions on UFOs. They were asked three questions on UFOs in the same study.”
Of course, this may say more about the journalists asking the questions than the politicians being called upon to answer them. The Al Goreans may even sense a conspiracy.
Or it may just mean that the masses are not that bothered about climate change, and although the film was good, it lacked jokes and guns, and no-one has been hankering for a sequel…
Posted: 1st, April 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
