The Specialist

Watching Gore, I realized that other emerging candidates for 2008 may have ideas on a range of issues. But there may be one problem that, in an actual triage sense, must be solved before any other.
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Watching the film An Inconvenient Truth was an odd experience. Aside from
the fact that it is hardly a film at all, with no observable cinematics or
narrative to speak of, the reappearance of Al Gore in a starring role is
compelling. Gore, who limped off of the American political stage after the 2000
election after being gang raped by Dick Cheney, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and James
Baker, as well as their election-stealing goons in Washington and Florida,
returns to face public gatherings to discuss his unbending assertions about
global warming and the urgent need for America to take the lead in combating its
causes and, perhaps, its effects.

Nearly forty years after the birth of the mainstream environmental
movement in this country, all Americans know what global warming is and suspect that
substantial sacrifices on the part of all developed countries in the coming
fifty years and beyond will be required to begin to reverse the problem. If
that is, indeed, possible. This recognition comes in spite of the best efforts
of major industries, primarily oil and automobiles, to quiet or outright kill
the discussion. (For a more vivid picture of how that game has been played,
see Who Killed the Electric Car, if only to watch how the California Air
Resources Board and General Motors drove the US electric car program off the cliff in
one of the most shamefully misguided and corrupt environmental decisions
allowed by a government body in the history of this country.) Most Americans
today accept that a meaningful attempt at solving the problem will require an
adjustment in our foreign policy, our taxes, our regulations and our standard of
living.

Which brings us back to Gore. Gore has been standing there with his
finger in the dyke for some time now, patiently and insistently exhorting us to
come to the aid of the ailing planet. In spite of a perceived Clinton fatigue in
2000, and Gore's own baggage as a less-than-captivating frontman, it took an
impossibly anomalous set of circumstances, led by that ever-reliable
Democracy-hater and Bush family hit man, Baker, to deny Gore his shot. Gore won, no
mistake. But like a kid on a corner with his shiny new bike on his birthday,
Gore was no match for Baker and Company, who proved they can steal whatever they
wish, with impunity.

And yet, Gore is still here. Still on message. Still demanding that
America must do great things and make great sacrifices in order to remain a great
country. Gore, who wants to remind Americans that every so often, we must
reset the dials and knobs, compressors and gauges of our system in order to
better balance capitalism and the Constitution. Watching Gore, I realized that
other emerging candidates for the 2008 election may have ideas on a range of
issues that confront us today. But there may be one problem that, in an actual
triage sense, must be solved before any other. Just as the patient with
multiple fractures but one truly life-threatening injury must be treated promptly and
effectively, global warming may be the thing we have to address before we set all of
the other broken bones. And for that job there seems, at least for now, only
one specialist to call on.

Watching Gore, I couldn't help but think how we owe him, and ourselves,
another look at the man.

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