Ready, Set, Gore!

Former veep to rally climate change activists 8

Al Gore is stepping up his efforts to train an army of climate change activists.

The Climate Project, the grassroots activist group Gore started in 2006, today announced it will gather several thousand volunteers in Nashville this May to prepare a new push to persuade lawmakers to pass significant climate legislation this year. The group will also hold training summits in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, with plans for a training meeting in Beijing in the near future.

Project Executive Director Jenny Clad announced the plans in a State of the Organization address today. “Our organization is ready to embark on a new era of advocacy and activism,” she said. “Now we are challenging you to take action. It is time to become more vocal in your communities to engage others to join our movement and to emphatically advocate our message to elected officials and business leaders to make the changes we need to solve this crisis.”

The push is designed to strengthen lobbying in time for the international climate meeting in Copenhagen this December. The activists who will gather in Nashville are people who have been trained by Gore to give the presentation on climate change made famous in the 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Here’s the announcement straight from the Goracle:

Jonathan Hiskes is a Grist staff writer. He reports, tweets, eats, asks questions, self-promotes, looks out windows, and wonders if it could be like this.

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  1. oldgeek64 Posted 2:03 am
    06 Feb 2009

    gore I still wish he was in the whitehouse

    but atleast there is someone there that will listen to him

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  2. ThompsonMT Posted 7:23 am
    06 Feb 2009

    Really badI'm a big supporter of Gore's work, but as friendly criticism, they gotta get a better PR person and spokesperson. This video is truly awful from start to finish. Too long, completely uninspiring, visually deader than a climate-cooked frog.
    Why did they have Gore sitting in an unidentified living room? Anything outside would be better.
    The strange blurry background for Jenny Clad is even worse, and her segment is easily three times too long. Also one of the worst readers of a television script I've ever seen - repeatedly stumbles over words, no rhythm, monotone, and furrows her brow as if her lines are either confusing or hard to see. Grade: F.
    Sorry, but the issue is too important to mince words. We can't afford to waste opportunities like this.
    Thompson Smith

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  3. Whiskerfish Posted 6:34 pm
    06 Feb 2009

    holy crudthis is one of the most terrible vid clips I have ever seen. Gore is his 'old' wooden self and Jenny Clad is fire-ably awful. She is the most ridiculous caricature of a hung-up charity NGO do-gooder imaginable -- the kind of admin droid that should be safely locked up in a back room doing the accounts. Get her off the program! Send her to work for the RNC!
    This is depressingly bad and should immediately be yanked from the airwaves.
    Whiskerfish

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  4. Jon Isham's avatar

    Jon Isham Posted 3:05 am
    07 Feb 2009

    Putting this video into perspectiveRemember that this video was only intended as an in-house message from Jenny and the rest of the Nashville staff to TCP volunteers.  Folks in the the Gore orbit (Gore-bit?!) are actually doing a much better job these days with messaging: for example, http://www.thisisreality.org/ is really strong.
    And it's important for the Grist community to understand the many strengths of the Climate Project.  Thanks to Gore, Jenny Clad and many others, tens of thousands of climate-change talks have been delivered worldwide.  And groups of TCP volunteers, regionally, have built alliances with many other leading grassroots activists: those working with Energy Action, Focus the Nation, Eban Goodstein's great National Teach-In, 350.org, and PowerPastCoal.org, for starters.
    So keep this video into perspective and check out http://www.theclimateproject.org/ for a good snapshot of the strong state of the global climate movement.

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  5. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 10:55 am
    07 Feb 2009

    GortexHopefully "The Climate Project" have plenty of fleeces and parkas in the company store.
    Falling temperatures and all that...

    Obama The Vapor President ?!?

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  6. Envirowarrior Posted 12:11 pm
    09 Feb 2009

    Not professionalA statesman of Gore's stature and influence needs people more competent and less embarrassing than Jenny Clad. I know that the video was intended only for internal distribution, but...here it is, on the world-wide-Interweb, making The Climate Project look much worse than it deserves to. Ms. Clad can't be blamed for being an awful script-reader. But, as someone charged with making the Climate Project a world class organization, she can be blamed for the decision to publicly immortalize her deficiencies on The Climate Project's dime and reputation.

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  7. peapack Posted 6:10 am
    10 Feb 2009

    innie or outie, it's a dudRegardless of who was the intended audience here, the background art is horrendous, and Clad is bad. I'm a Gore fan, but if I were a volunteer with this group, I'd want someone to give a more invigorating (and shorter) update than Clad is droning. A lot of the rhetoric she's using an insider would already know; if I were thinking of joining up (and isn't that what they'd want?) hearing this kind of soporific would make me think twice...
    And since Al invented the Intertubes, he should be aware that all sorts were going to see this. After all, who hasn't seen that guy lose his pants on the ski lift?

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  8. carolsings Posted 12:16 am
    14 Feb 2009

    Ready, set, GoreAl Gore is Al Gore.  Jenny seemed to be out of her most comfortable communication mode.  We all want everything that goes out to be good so others will be attracted in but.  I think there are many people out there who would find Jenny's comments helpful,even though too long-winded.  She is clearly passionate about her work and she has done a lot of it.  That counts for a lot and is something we can recognize.

    Carol B.

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