You Want Change?

Do you remember how long it has been since you heard something this positive and meaningful from the President of the United States? I don't.

A president who’s taking climate change seriously:

President-elect Barack Obama met with former vice president Al Gore in Chicago on Tuesday to discuss climate change, declaring after the meeting, “The time for denial is over.”

The meeting, also attended by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, came as Obama prepares to nominate his administration’s top environmental officials — decisions that could come as soon as this week.

“All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over,” Obama told reporters as he sat between Gore and Biden at the transition headquarters after the meeting.

“We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now,” Obama said, “that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do.”

Gore Endorses Obama

Not that it is any surprise but it is always nice when the big guns sign on to the campaign. In Detroit last night Gore did the deal and endorsed Obama. Al Gore recognizes the challenges we face and knows that the only choice for America is change. McSame is not change and he repeatedly reminds us that beyond a somewhat more aggressive foreign policy he is not going to change the disastrous course we are on.

As the old saw says " Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is insanity".

Generational Mission

Highly recommended way to spend about 28 minutes today.

Al Gore has a new presentation that has just been released on TED. In it he talks about how new evidence shows that the effects of Global Warming may be happening faster than we thought. It is worth seeing and acting on. There are some pretty powerful slides and some discussion on the current politics and the lack of focus on the issue in the mass media.

Congratulations Al Gore

Update: Jim DeRosa alerted me to this piece of agenda reporting at ABC news. I find it very hard to believe that one of the major American networks would focus their reporting on the ruling of some obviously biased British judge instead of the honor of winning the Nobel Prize. What a bunch of crap. Goddess I hate what our press has become. 10/12/07 1332

Original Post
I am late getting to this for numerous reasons which I will get to later but The Nobel Prize Committee announced early Friday morning that it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.

Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

They were chosen to share the $1.5 million prize from a field of 181 candidates.

“Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control,” the citation said of rising temperatures that could bring more droughts, floods, rising seas.

“He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted,” the committee said of Gore.

“The IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming,” it said.

This is a much deserved recognition as Al Gore has dedicated much of his life to informing the world that the planet faces a serious threat from global warming and it is not an exaggeration to say we face a mega-disaster if something doesn't begin to change with respect to our stewardship of our only home.

Gore released the following statement :

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

CNN’s running poll on whether Gore deserves the Peace Prize was running about 58 percent in favor. You might want to visit.

We in America can be extremely proud today that one of its most distinguished and respected statesmen, and a Progressive Democratic, won the Nobel Peace Prize. I want to add my Congratulations to Al Gore to the scores of others from around the Internet and the world. I am interested to see the response from the wingnut world and global warming deniers. It will be fascinating to see what tactics and arguments they will take to diminish this signal honor.

Live Earth and Rats

I hope everyone had a great weekend and that everyone got a chance to spend some quality time on Saturday watch the Live Earth event. Being the huge techno freak that I am I have a plasma HD TV and HD cable as well so I managed to spend quite a bit of time in front of said TV and basically being a couch potato for the environment for a day. (with Al Gore's permission, of course). It was really an amazing piece of organization. I would think the the Department of Homeland Insecurity would look into hiring the same outfit for the next hurricane relief effort.

Needless to say Saturday was a wasted day for the most part. I did manage to get to the farmer's market in the early morning and get a few yard chores done but otherwise I just "boob-tubed" it.

Sunday was the rush to get up with the chickens and use my one legal watering window to try and save the garden. I felt kind of foolish standing out in the light rain with a garden hose but we weren't getting any serious rain and the plants wouldn't get another chance until the next Sunday. We did probably get a half an inch or so in a couple of brief showers but we are still way behind.

Sunday afternoon was a rare "out for the movies" to see Ratatouille. Cute enough and worth the price but I must admit that the hordes of rats streaming out of the drain into the kitchen and over the counters was a bit much and unsettling though. I can recommend it for some light hearted fun but I wouldn't say it was really a kid's movie. If you are a "foodie" you might get a kick out of it.

As it is plain to see I am not traveling again this week and I might have some thing more substantial to say later in the day but right now I am going out for a walk while it is still only 74 degrees. Later.

Live Earth Pledge

Al Gore has an op ed in today's New York Times. Read it.

It is estimated that over 2 billion people will watch Live Earth on 7.7.07. That's a quarter of the earth's population. You need to get involved as well.

Now if you haven't done so already then let me help you

Sign the 7.7.07 Live Earth Pledge:

http://liveearthpledge.org/algore.php

The 7.7.07 Live Earth Pledge:

I PLEDGE:

1. To demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth;

2. To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

3. To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2;

4. To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation;

5. To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal;

6. To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and,

7. To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Sign the Live Earth Pledge by visiting:

http://liveearthpledge.org/algore.php

Nobody's Driving

Al Gore continues to call point out the lack of leadership we are suffering and is once again on target.

"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps."'

This is Insane and Shameful

I just turned on the TV to check the Weather Channel and see what was the extent of this shower we are now getting. Yeah! some rain. Unfortunately, just a quick thunder shower and not a good rain but better than nothing.

It appears ,however, that the most important thing in the universe today (if you believe CNN) is that Paris is going back to jail. The cable news networks are camped out in front of her house and speculating on this and that. Live while we watch. It is absolutely insane. What have we come to as a nation when this is what our news organizations find the most compelling thing to put on TV. It brought to mind the introduction to Al Gore's new book.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I'm not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hopes it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half the American people still believes that Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just unfortunate excess --- an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsession that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Late in the summer of 2006, American news coverage was saturated with the bizarre false confession of a man who claimed to have been present at the death of JonBenet Ramsey --- the six-year-old beauty queen whose unsolved murder eleven years before was responsible for another long-running obsession. A few months prior to John Mark Karr's arrest in Bangkok, the disappearance of a high school senior in Aruba and the intensive search for her body and her presumed murderer consumed thousands of hours of television coverage. Both cases remain unsolved as of this writing, and neither had any appreciable impact on the fate of the Republic.

Like JonBenet Ramsey, O.J. has recently been back at the center of another fit of obsessive-compulsive news, when his hypothetical confession wasn't published and his interviews on television wasn't aired. This particular explosion of "news" was truncated only when a former television sitcom star used racist insults in a night club. And before that we focus on the "Runaway Bride" in Georgia. And before that there was the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy. And of course we can't forget Britney and KFed, and Lindsay and Paris and Nicole, Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch and married Katie Holmes, who gave birth to Suri. And Russell Crowe apparently threw a phone at a hotel concierge.

In early 2007, the wall-to-wall coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death, embalming, and funeral plans and the legal wrangling over the paternity and custody of her child and disposition of her estate, served as yet another particularly bizarre example of the new priorities in America's news coverage.

And while American television watchers were collectively devoting a hundred million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness.

Defining Moment

Sunday's Oscar program may be a defining moment for the future of the country and, in fact, the world. Sunday is when Al Gore will probably stand and accept an Oscar for Best Documentary and also have a billion people worldwide listening to his every word. What better moment? What more
could one ask for in a moment pregnant with the power to set the world on a new course? I know he has said over and over that he has better things to do than run for President again but the more I see of what we will have to pick from in 2008 the more I see a need for a seasoned, ready to hit the ground running guy like Gore.
This from CNN:

"There's even some speculation that he would use his Oscar as the occasion to announce that he's running," Martin Kaplan, director of the University of Southern California's Norman Lear Center, told CNN. "Imagine that: a billion people worldwide! Take that Jay Leno, as an announcement venue!''

Could it happen? Gore's producer thinks a potential Gore speech would be a historic moment, but not the way Kaplan envisions.

"It's electrifying, not politically, because is Al Gore going to run or not going to run. There's nothing going to happen like that," Bender told CNN. "It's electrifying because the man who is responsible for solidifying the forces around global warming is going to'' be acknowldged.

But could an Oscar start the momentum for a draft-Gore movement? USC's Kaplan thinks it could.

"People think that he's paid his dues, he's had more of an impact on issues that people care about than many people who have been in office and there's a feeling that he's finally lost that student council condescension that was fingernails on a blackboard to a lot of supporters," Kaplan said.