Yet, the success of Gore’s speech can be best characterized not by the abundance of roaring laughter and vigorous applause, but by the murmured conversations of Marin residents as they filed out the door, asking, “Can you imagine if he were President?”http://www.marinscope.com/news_pointer/news/article_8392b13e-7bc7-11e2-b18f-001a4bcf887a.html
He's really the liberal Rumsfeld in reference to Gore the known unknown about the known facts are factually known.
"...He mentions the prospect of women being engineered to produce sperm, making men obsolete, and sounds almost pro-life in his concern for discarded embryos... On the other hand, he notes the many upsides....allowing gay and lesbian couples to have children who are biologically their own..." Wall Street journal Book Review
It is easy, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, to dismiss Gore as a bloated blowhard – a swag-bellied hypocrite who campaigns against Big Oil while selling his Left-wing television network (the little-watched Current TV) to the gas barons of Qatar, in a deal that has reportedly left him richer than Mitt Romney.
The trouble is, he makes a worryingly convincing case. Gore’s essential argument is that the world is rapidly spinning out of control – that we have entered a turbulent new age, in which technology is running amok, the planet is being pillaged ever more rapaciously, and governing institutions have been suborned by vested interests obsessed with short-term gain rather than long-term sustainability
This is one of those books that will never be 100 per cent right – and certainly, I can think of several counter-examples to his prophecies of doom (for example, rising prosperity does increase global warming, but also leaves poor countries better able to cope with its consequences). But even if he is only 10 per cent right, we’re in for a tough old time. Maybe then, at last, we will come to see the wisdom of Al Gore’s words – and appoint him to the role for which he has long been auditioning, as philosopher-king of a ruined Earth.
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