Former Vice President Al Gore, ever since he lost the 2000 race for the presidency, has been entertaining the world about his views on climate change, the theory that the Earth’s temperature is inexorably rising due to humans pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. He has made a number of remarkable statements about the polar ice caps melting and other disasters waiting for us if we do not shell out a lot of money, get rid of fossil fuels and switch entirely to renewable energy. Recently he compared the fight to stop climate change to the battle to end slavery, to give women the vote, and to give gay people the right to marry.
The statement has gotten him into a lot of trouble from an unusual source.
Comparing one's cause de jure to great causes of the past
Gore is not the only person to try to link his pet cause of eliminating climate change, to some great social movement of the past. The pro-life movement has linked its campaign to end abortion to the fight to end slavery. However, Gore was quite promiscuous in appropriating three of the great progressive movements of the past two centuries. As it turns out, the attempt has roused the ire of some African Americans.
It turns out that Al Gore’s father was on the other side on the civil rights issue
Horace Cooper, a former assistant law professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, noted that Gore’s father, Senator Al Gore Sr., a Democrat from Tennessee, was a rabid segregationist and voted against Civil Rights Legislation when he was in office.
Cooper is a conservative African American and is the co-chairman of Project 21.
The fact that Gore Jr. is invoking abolition to support his campaign against climate change, not to mention an upcoming sequel to his smash hit documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” is perhaps a minor example of hypocrisy. A better one is the fact that he has the carbon footprint of a small, developing world country, tooling about the world in private jets and living in mansions with eye popping electric bills.
Gore has claimed that this lifestyle is fine because he buys “carbon offsets,” the modern equivalent of medieval indulgences for the rich and energy profligate.
Gore used to be a serious politician. He came within a few hundred votes of winning the presidency at the dawn of the 21st Century. One can only guess how history would have turned out if things had gone the other way. As horrible as the past 17 years have been, things could have been a lot worse.
