Sherry Chandler » Some Musings on “An Inconvenient Truth”
Some Musings on “An Inconvenient Truth”
We’re in trouble. Our ice caps are melting. Polar bears are drowning and or becoming cannibals. We have floods in Houston, drought in Darfur, New Orleans is a ruin, forests are burning in Arizona and all over the southern hemisphere.
Al Gore wants us to tighten our belts and do something about it. This has been the Democratic message ever since Jimmy Carter. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, even Bill Clinton, wanted us to tighten our belts and take care of one another. But Americans have preferred the Republican message: Don’t worry. Be happy. Shop like there’s no tomorrow.
Well, our tomorrows are in short supply. But I don’t have a lot of faith that we’ll listen to Gore.
Al Gore has aged. He’s got a suspicion of a little tonsure-like bald spot. He’s heavy, puffy even, his fingers thick. And he’s still stiff and earnest, somewhat clumsy in his attempts at humor.
But he’s also what I think a leader should be: intelligent, informed, and passionate, with real plans for solving real problems. He has handled a crushing defeat with a great deal of grace. He’s an ex-tobacco farmer, has worked in those hot gummy fields, and his tobacco barn is as delapidated as ours. He is the president we might have had. The president we elected. The grief of that loss made even deeper the grief I felt seeing what we’ve done to our planet.
I have seen “An Inconvenient Truth” described as a campaign bio-pic and if it is, then good. We need Al Gore right now, who doesn’t have to be timid because he has nothing to lose.
Whether he runs for President or not, we need him. We need real leaders. Statesmen.
We need farmboys, not cowboys.
Surely the country is hungry for this.
But I fear not. I’m worried that the Bush years have not energized the American people, but made them more cynical, less engaged. I am worried about turnout, which was 30ish per cent in California to elect a replacement for Duke Cunningham, and something like 4% in the Virginia primary — on a sunny day.
I am very worried.
Update: from the Lexington Herald-Leader for June 20, 2006:
A study from a national research group says Kentucky is among the top 10 states where carbon dioxide emissions, a primary global warming pollutant, more than doubled in 41 years.
In the report, titled “Carbon Boom,” Kentucky ranks No. 7 with an increase of 98.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from 1960 to 2001, a 209 percent increase. Texas ranks No. 1 with an increase of 427.8 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to the United States Public Interest Research Group.
Al Gore on Charlie Rose. Via Atrios.
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4 Comments
1. MW replies at 19th June 2006, 10:47 pm :
This isn’t over the top at all. I think it’s very well written.
I agree. This country definitely needs Al Gore, and people like him. No one should be elected to high office on the basis of personality alone, which is what happens all too frequently in this country, and no one should follow any leader based on superficial reasons. I sincerely hope that this is a lesson that people have learned in the last few years. I’m worried about the demoralizing effect of the Bush administration, too. But I still think that things can be changed for the better.
2. Helen Losse replies at 19th June 2006, 11:09 pm :
Hi Sherry,
I just found your blog on Headlines Poetry. Interesting subject matter but also interesting because I wrote Gathering the Broken Pieces (Poets on Peace #5 from FootHills Publishing) and was suprised to see you’d written #4.
Yes, too bad Dabya’s bro came up with the chad deal and stole the presidency from Gore. Unlike Dubya, Gore has a brain.
3. poppysmatus replies at 20th June 2006, 9:11 am :
William Blake executed a terrible painting –Old Father Time, or some equivalent god eating his children, one of the less savory Greek creation myths. I suppose that cannibalism, especially that of one’s own children, is one of those visceral horrors humans contemplate in order to keep themselves inside the pale of humanity. When we begin to sacrifice our own–our children, our freedoms, our ecosystem– for insufficient reasons we step beyond that pale–the pole that marks the bounds of our little village of humanity. But we step further beyond the pale when we begin to savor the idea of such atrocities. The media ridicules Al Gore and compares his concern over the environment with Hitler’s obsession with the Jews. Our deranged pundits delight in contemplating the extinction of problematic species: owls and voles and liberals. The media chortles over this excess of wit. Oh my.
Reports out of Iraq indicate the the bodies of the two kidnapped American soldiers have been found. The reports contain none of that pornography of atrocity so beloved by the media and the American people. Yet.
4. sherry replies at 20th June 2006, 12:38 pm :
Welcome, Helen. I hope you’ll come back to visit often. And I hope folks here will check out your blog and your poetry.
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