An inconvenient truth

Houston was the first stop on Al Gore's book tour to promote his new book and film, An Inconvenient Truth. We joined the sold-out crowd at the Hobby Center in downtown Houston to listen to the man who should have been president talk passionately about what we, human beings, have done to this planet and what we must do to save it.

And I'm so glad I did. The man portrayed as "stiff" from 1992-2000 was anything but. He was greeted with thunderous applause — clearly there are people who long for a different presence in politics. He was energetic, lively, captivating and funny; he spoke with great enthusiasm and ardor about his crusade to bring awareness to global warming and educate people about what must be done in order to turn this potential cataclysm around. The talk was fascinating and entertaining. Which leads me to wonder:

Where was this guy in 2000?

The statistics were alarming. The damage done by our misuse of carbons is astounding — most of it in the last 30 years. Of the records set for 25 hottest years on record, the top 25 have all been set in the last 30 years. Glaciers and mountaintop snows are disappearing; Greenland and Antarctica have seen significant losses. We will all pay a price, with elimination of species, global climate, storms, and loss of land mass as ocean levels rise.

Experts in the field — scientists and climatologists — universally agree: This is real. There are no skeptics among those in the know.

But the good news is, it's not too late to change. We have the knowledge and the technology available to change trends and make a difference in the well-being of our planet.

Granted, anyone who heads out on the lecture circuit with an agenda will use only the facts they know will support their claim. And I suspect Gore is no different. But it's hard to discount the overall message of what he said. He used a lot of canned stories in his opening, but it was funny nonetheless. And in the Q&A, when asked about Iraq, he responded that Iraq is the single worst strategic decision ever made by the United States. A bold statement — one that, I confess, I would have to think about long and hard before making. But I think a case could be made. We're in a quagmire, with no end in sight — today's developments not withstanding.

But I digress. Overall, it was an empowering evening. I am revved up for midterm elections, for the campaign season of 2008. Something has to change; do Democrats have the power to retool their message and show that they really are the party with our best interests at heart?

Go see the film. An Inconvenient Truth — it's an eye-opener.