Exhibiting a curious mixture of nostalgia and irreverence, Al Gore returned to the halls of Congress yesterday to make the case for sweeping federal action to fight global warming.
Buoyed by his recent Academy Award triumph, Gore testified at hearings in both the House and the Senate. Audiences of hundreds lined the oak-paneled walls of the hearing rooms, crowded the aisles, and craned their necks for a glimpse of Capitol Hill's comeback kid. It was the kind of blockbuster turnout that Gore now draws at nearly every public appearance, yet in this case it felt particularly profound given that his last visit to congressional turf in January 2001 -- when he presided over the Senate in his final days as veep, after a foiled presidential bid -- marked the loneliest hour of his political career.
"It's an emotional occasion for me," Gore confessed at the outset of his House testimony. Throughout the course of the hearings, which together lasted more than four hours, he exchanged affectionate greetings and memories with many of the dozens of participants from both sides of the aisle -- former colleagues on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, both of which he served on during his 16-year congressional career.
But amid the niceties, Gore got down to business. While much of the media coverage has portrayed his visit as a largely symbolic attempt to raise the political profile of the climate issue, too little attention has been paid to the ambitious set of 10 legislative recommendations that were the centerpiece of his testimony. The recommendations were so ambitious -- so politically implausible, some might say -- that they could arguably disqualify Gore from any hope of again becoming a viable political candidate. Either that, or these high-flying goals could make him all the more unstoppable.
"First, we need to immediately freeze CO2 levels in the U.S.," Gore enjoined the crowd. He then proposed a cap-and-trade program that would slash greenhouse-gas emissions 90 percent by 2050. (This goal outstrips the most ambitious yet proposed in Congress, which calls for reductions of 80 percent by the same date, and is widely considered unattainable.)
Gore went on to recommend a program that would significantly cut income taxes and make up the lost federal revenue with pollution taxes, principally on carbon dioxide. "I fully understand this is considered politically impossible," he said, "but part of our challenge is trying to expand the limits of what is possible." When Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) questioned the need for both a carbon cap and a carbon tax, given that the debate is typically over one or the other, Gore argued for both.
Other items on Gore's legislative list included a new global post-Kyoto treaty that Congress should "sprint to ratify" by 2010; a moratorium on the construction of new coal plants that would not be compatible with carbon-capture and sequestration technology; stricter fuel-economy standards; a ban on incandescent light bulbs; and a carbon-neutral mortgage association (CNMA or, as Gore pronounced it, "Connie Mae") that would help homeowners finance energy-saving technologies and renewable-energy installations.
Capping off his list was a proposal for a so-called "electranet" -- a distributed network that would enable small-business owners and homeowners to become individual electricity producers, feeding their excess renewable energy back into the grid.
Gore had floated most of these proposals casually in past public presentations, but never in such a comprehensive package or in such a visible context. If his list of recommendations was surprisingly gutsy, more surprising still was the fact that few of his Democratic colleagues even blinked at their scope. In fact, most scarcely commented on the specifics, instead offering him good tidings and praise for his climate work.
"Welcome back, welcome home old friend," smiled Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who had invited Gore to the hearing. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called Gore "a prophet" on climate change who has long "had [his] finger on the pulse of the 21st century."
"You really are a role model for us all," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who presided over the Senate hearing. "It's not every day that this committee has an Academy Award winner testifying!" kvelled Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). "This has been absolutely wonderful!" beamed Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of the hearing.
The effusive praise clearly overwhelmed Gore, and he groped for some alternative to the litany of thank-yous he'd been expressing. "You don't give out any kind of statue or anything, do you?" he deadpanned, in a spoof of his recent Oscar success. Boxer did have a trophy of sorts, in fact -- a bound transcript of a recent Senate hearing on climate change. When she presented it to him, the congressional paparazzi went wild.
In between the two hearings, Gore met with top Dems -- he lunched with Boxer, and took meetings with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
But perhaps a better indication of Gore's political potency was the half a million protest messages he brought with him from citizens who had called for congressional action on climate change via AlGore.com. A sampling of the letters were on display in two huge crates that sat next to Gore during his testimony.
Further reaffirming Gore's sway were the discomfort and dismay he seemed to effortlessly inflict on a handful of skeptical Republicans. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, was beside himself at the House hearing, complaining that Gore hadn't handed in a copy of his testimony 24 hours in advance, thereby leaving committee members at a disadvantage. "How are we supposed to prepare questions?" he griped. Groaned Texas Rep. Ralph Hall (R), "Today we are witnessing an all-out assault on all forms of fossil fuels and energy!" Later in the day, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate's most die-hard climate-change denier, fumed when he felt Gore was taking too long to answer his questions. "You had 30 [minutes to speak]," he squawked. "I had 15! You've got to let me have my 15!" Gore came out of it all looking like an elder statesman while his detractors looked like fearful, squabbling teenagers.
Not surprisingly, Gore was barraged in the hallways with questions about whether he would mount another presidential campaign in 2008, to which he flatly replied, "I don't have plans to run for president again."
Indeed, his gutsy, devil-may-care attitude would seem to indicate that he doesn't intend to jump back into the political arena. But then it's this very lack of concern for political pragmatism, this willingness to take big risks, that would enable a true leader to weather and rise above the current political climate.
News and views on the Kerry-Boxer climate bill
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
Comments
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ExtremeTrek Posted 11:36 pm
21 Mar 2007
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oceanutmeg Posted 1:04 am
22 Mar 2007
See list of members here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Members ...
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Sustainable Bend Posted 3:16 am
22 Mar 2007
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rainking Posted 5:26 am
22 Mar 2007
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katwink Posted 6:14 am
22 Mar 2007
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TheSSG Posted 7:16 am
22 Mar 2007
Because Rainking, YOU'VE NEVER, EVER, in your WHOLE LIFE been a hypocrite!?
We're all Hypocrites.
I don't understand why his being a hypocrite renders his argument null.
Oh wait, it's because you don't want to have to do anything to help, and you can't find a justifiable reason, and you're grasping at straws...
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HelenK Posted 7:41 am
22 Mar 2007
If anything a large amount of energy consumption at his house is a good thing because it means a lot of money going toward alternative energy.
I think it's very telling of the mindset of the "skeptics" that they are now scraping the bottom of the barrel with these inaccurate personal attacks on a man who has stuck his neck out to try to help us all help ourselves.
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rainking Posted 9:57 pm
22 Mar 2007
Actually, um, no. It's because I don't go around guilt tripping the entire world (with inaccuracies I should add) about how they should be living and then doing the exact opposite in my private life.
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jonabbott Posted 11:38 pm
22 Mar 2007
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rainking Posted 12:24 am
23 Mar 2007
you can't be serious
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susannaheanes Posted 6:39 am
23 Mar 2007
this list of comments sounds just as carpingly immature as the whining republican squabblers on Capitol Hill yesterday.
onward & upward --go get 'em, Big Al! and thanks for a great article, amanda --more informative & better written than some others i've read today on the same subject.
Best regards,
Susannah B. Smith
http://www.susannaheanes.com
"Begin. And begin again the next day." --Julia Cameron
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Rune Posted 7:23 am
23 Mar 2007
Carbon offset credits are ripe for abuse. The standards are minimal and likely to get watered down by big, polluting industries, much as standards for "organic" food have been gutted, as time goes on. There is no proof that they work even under the best of circumstances, especially to the extent that many of the credits amount to planting trees and such, which will take decades to offset carbon emissions that are adding to a crisis today. And carbon offset credits are likely to create opportunities for gaming the system as shady accounting practices and greed lead to false claims of emissions reductions, much as Enron was able to falsify energy trades for years before the billions of dollars of fraud was exposed to the detriment of tens of thousands of victims.
Read yesterday's column about Al Gore's Oscar Performance before Congress, as described by Michael Donnelly. I am all for Al Gore doing what he can to make people aware of the serious problems of carbon emissions and their link to today's climate destablization, but I have no respect for his attempt to quietly enrich himself by promoting a "market solution" that will probably allow big business to escape responsibility for promoting carbon pollution for another twenty or thirty years, by which time the opportunity to take meaningful action will have been all but lost. And Al Gore's accommodation of nuclear power and "clean coal," as described by Russell Hoffman's CounterPunch article, today, only lowers my trust and respect for him.
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Rune Posted 7:34 am
23 Mar 2007
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JBLyons Posted 11:34 pm
23 Mar 2007
You go Al!!
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Mmimika Posted 5:05 am
26 Mar 2007
You can't argue facts, so you smear and attack the the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument. The weakness of your logic has a name: ad hominem. Yup - its a form of lying thats so old, the is in latin.
Fact: Global warming is happening. Fact: Gore has no consumption issues. You can address these, and the substance of the arguments, or stop posting.
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Mmimika Posted 5:15 am
26 Mar 2007
You're attacking carbon offsets because they're... market based? And Al Gore for being... a capitalist who puts his money where is mouth is? Are you an environmentalist or an economic activist?
Most Americans are capitalists - so I think a "market solution" is a good thing. I just have the feeling that if you had a carbon rationing... or carbon welfare checks... most Americans would dislike the policy for purely ideological reasons. And then where would the environment be?
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Rune Posted 4:54 pm
26 Mar 2007
Unlike, say, the market for hog bellies, most of the business people buying carbon offsets, which is where most of the action expected to be, not only can't tell if they got what they paid for, they don't care. They just want to get the credit for offsetting their carbon emissions so as to avoid the penalties for not doing so that Gore advocates.
We don't really know if a bunch of trees planted today will grow up to take out a given amount of carbon over the next few decades before climate change brings pests and diseases that kills them, for example, but we do know that if we emit tons of carbon today but take decades to slowly sequester it, most of the damage will be done and will carry forward by the time those trees do their job--if they ever do.
We don't really know if a factory in Poland that installs some carbon scrubbing technology today will pay to maintain that technology throughout its lifetime so that it does what it should. In fact, we don't know if that factory in Poland will ever be inspected or, if it is, whether it will turn around and sell its equipment to another factory, that will then turn around and sell a full history of expected carbon offsets, only to later sell the equipment again, in an ongoing sham not unlike the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s, in which reserve requirements and security behind loans was badly abused, leading to financial disaster of the sort we are starting to see in the sub-prime mortgage markets today. Only we aren't talking about mere financial losses in this case, we are talking about the loss of the ecosystems upon which we all depend for our very lives.
Seems to me we should learn from these examples instead of nodding off and assuming that all markets are functional and efficient markets when we can clearly see that is not the case. Given what is at stake, I think we should be doubly cautious about being scammed.
One sign that a scam might be afoot is when the people at the top of the businesses that are making the markets are encouraging everyone to buy in, but they turn out not to be telling anyone what they are doing to enrich themselves. That was the case in the Enron debacle, one may recall. And it is the case as pertains to Gore, who never mentions his role as the owner and chief executive of one of the firms making a market for carbon offset credits (whatever those may prove to be, someday), or his political and economic interest in going along to get along with some other power players who have a less than stellar reputation when it comes to telling the truth and putting the public's welfare first.
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Pathos Posted 5:52 pm
30 Mar 2007
Second, and more importantly... And I want people to visualize with me on this one...
If you were suddenly to become the possessor of several million dollars, what would you do with it? (After you finish spending like a maniac on pointless crap just because you can, I mean.) Personally, I'd put a sizable chunk of it into a business that would help solve the climate problem. Call me crazy, but I have a feeling I'm not the only person on this blog who'd do that. What approach would we take? Does it matter? Personally, I'd probably choose renewable energy production. And if someone ever told me I didn't have the right to advocate renewable energy, because I'd made it my bread and butter... I have a very diplomatic, well-thought-out answer to that. I'd tell them to shut the %#&!! up, and go on with my day.
I'm curious how many people agree with me on this.
Gore chose carbon offsets. That doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to advocate them.
Finally... There's a reason the environmental community spends so much time worshipping Al Gore these days. It's not because he actually is some kind of saint. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't; most of us will never know him well enough to judge. The reason we stand behind him is, he's the best hope we have for success. He's the highest-profile name we have speaking for our cause, and quite possibly the best public speaker, too. If we're going to save this world we live in, we need him. If it turns out he's also making money--or gaining power, or just racking up personal glory--off of this... Frankly, I don't give a $#%@.
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Rune Posted 10:44 am
02 Apr 2007
An article in yesterday's L.A. Times starts out with the following observation:
Economists, some environmentalists and a growing gaggle of politicians are pushing a grand strategy that a market mechanism -- known as "carbon cap and trade" -- can rescue us fastest from a climate catastrophe. But early evidence suggests that such a scheme may be a Faustian bargain.
You can, and I think it would be great if everyone participating in discussions of carbon credit trading would, read the article yourselves, but here is a sneak peak at the conclusion:
These problems may soon infect the cap-and-trade system of the five Western U.S. states. In July 2006, Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced their intention to join together to address global warming, possibly by linking emerging markets for pollution credits in the U.S. with established ones in Europe.
U.S. industry and environmental leaders recently joined together under the catchy name USCAP, for U.S. Climate Action Partnership. Among the participants are Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, General Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The group called for some form of carbon cap and trade, but its reduction targets, in effect, would keep atmospheric carbon dioxide at roughly current levels over the next five years.
The EU experience doesn't augur well for the effectiveness of a global carbon-cap-and-trade scheme in a world characterized by growing economic inequality and enormous differences in governmental capacity to provide oversight, let alone regulation. The risk is that by the time it's apparent such a scheme is not working, extreme climate change will already be wreaking havoc.
Like I said . . .
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