Over the din of all the harsh criticism, all the movie-bashing and other silly news stories involving not-so-clever titles that follow the formula "An Inconvenient X," Al Gore has come away with a Nobel Peace Prize. I'd rather not talk about the award itself, but rather use it as a springboard to get to what really matters: his ideas.
Though he is undeniably a radical in the environmental realm and some of his ideas may not be practical or even reasonable, his sensible ideas carry enough merit to make him an important intellectual pioneer.
In the continuing battle between the "it's natural" and "it's going to turn Earth into Hell" global warming policies, Aristotle may have discovered the answer thousands of years ago. His "Doctrine of the Mean," arguing that the truth in a debate is found in the middle ground, is just what we need to fight the more outlandish policies.
Perhaps Gore's most absurd proposal to Congress is a comprehensive ban on Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulbs, an extreme step for all but the greenest of us. Scary dystopias always taught me to fear future technology, not past technology. While we ban less efficient light bulbs, why not ban postal mail after e-mail, or vinyl after CDs and even CDs after iTunes.
The concept of "carbon offsets," which Gore purchases to make his home "carbon neutral," also seems archaic at best. I'll take a page from writer George Monbiot and agree they have the dingy smell of the religious indulgences of Dante's time. Carbon credits tell me "I'm not in the least bit interested in changing my lifestyle, but I will give you money if you help me cover it up!" Last time I checked, the point of environmentalism was to stop polluting.
Gore, nevertheless, has some truly progressive and utile proposals. One extremely positive quality that Gore possesses is creativity and independent thought (perhaps even sentience too), which can't be said about many other public figures.
One example of a good proposal is Electranet, a theoretical electrical network that would allow small businesses and homes to feed solar power directly into the power grid and generate revenue like a miniscule power company. Your rooftops are just getting hot every day anyway, so why not capture what's yours and sell it? It seems like the perfect capitalist, money-making scheme that we as a nation (especially the business-savvy Republicans) seem to embrace so dearly.
Let's not undervalue the impact of Gore's documentary. No, it wasn't as cool as The Matrix or as mind-bogglingly absurd as The Notebook, but it was an educational film, and, shockingly, people watched it! Even if they only went to see what the controversy was about, they learned something, and probably for the first time. What we have as a result is an educated populous, which would have brought tears to founding father Thomas Jefferson's eyes.
And of course I have to address the Kyoto Protocol. Vice President Al Gore, of all people, signed the treaty in 1997, yet Congress didn't ratify it. The concern is that because India and China aren't subject to some of the protocol's measures, we shouldn't abide by it. Apparently we've become the biggest tattletale on the global playground. China is suffering major calamities because of its pollution, and I am to believe that we are willing to do the same just because they won't clean up their act? When did we make other nations our standard for achievement?
So why should we accept Gore's sensible proposals, despite his relative extremism? I believe President Bush said it best when he stated (according to The Washington Post), "the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem."
Personally, I like the climate that dominated the last 12,000 years of our present interglacial. It seems to be rather favorable to human growth, wouldn't you say? Who knows, maybe global warming will lead us to a better climate or perhaps back to the Garden of Eden. There's this nagging voice, though, that's telling me we shouldn't really gamble with that. The last thing I think we want is for Hanover to get even colder after various climate reversals.
So far, Gore has the ideas to keep that from happening, but that doesn't mean all his ideas are great. We must separate the wheat from the chaff.
(Didn't someone else win the Nobel Peace Prize, too? Oh well, it doesn't matter.)
