Many thanks for bringing the Yale report to Grist as well as news of Gore's climate alliance, since the issue that generated both--how do we get everyone to the table--is the pivot on which environmentalism teeters. Our perpetual re-enactment of junior high level social skills when it comes to raising issues inevitably generates camps. In the face of climate change there can be no camps. How can we laugh at schmaltzy disaster films (okay, sometimes vomit) yet remain incapable of assimilating the simple concept that, in the ultimate stakes game, drawing lines will get you killed. While it's thumbsucking comfortable to be amongst ourselves, we must be as willing to shake hands with the reasonable as well as the unreasonable. (tip of the hat to the gristmiller who trotted out the G.B. Shaw quotation.)

I'm not exactly sure what the new PR campaign will have to tell the American people about Climate Change, but I'm afriad what ever it is it will not have any effect on changing American's all-comsuming behavior. Lets face it, what's causing the earth's climate to warm is the LA's, Chicagos, Atlanta's etc. of the good OLE USA. I understand that any change toward less consumption is good change, but I'm afraid it indeed will be too little, too late. The only thing that's going to force Americans out of there vehicles and into efficient public transportation is the economics of scarcity. It is indeed merely an 'inconvenient' truth that the climate is warming, so much so that we won't have to inconvenience ourselves by getting on the bus until it is absolutely necessary. People have actually started to carpool in decent numbers where I'm originally from in CA, however the vast majority of the drivers are still going solo.
Refer to the website museletter.com and clic on the link to the authors book regarding industrial society. He lays out the most realistic scenario I've yet seen about the dwindling future of carbon resources, and even better how governments must cooperate on the largest scale imaginable to achieve harmonious results. If this is too much of an organizing challenge, then we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

The way I see it is if 10,000 years ago ice sheets a mile thick covered the majority of North America, that must have required a bit of global warming. The question is now, what change is in store for us now. Its hard to imagine a more dramatic change from the Ice age till now, but who knows, maybe the next age will be the fire age.

Messengers that benefit from this message can not be trusted.  Politicians, business people, environmentalists, religious titans, inventors, journalists, framers, and ranters against all sorts of bad behavior can use the global warming message for personal gain.  And that contradicts the message.  All those institutions will cease to exist once we pass the tipping point of global warming, if we haven't already.  When the messenger understands that nothing else matters, then the message comes from the heart and stands alone.  That is what makes Gore and core so important.  Self interest can not coexist with the message that climate change threatens the future of all civilizations around the world.  Nothing else matters.

The climate change message is the killer of all messengers.  

I hope editors and journalists get this most important message.  It should be reported like an earth killing asteroid on target with Earth.  If not deflected within 10 years it will be too late.

Gore's positioning himself for a run at the '08 democrat nom has reached new heights of absurdity.  After eight years of abetting the corporate-owned Clinton administration's rape of the environment, suddenly we're supposed to buy into this newer, greenwashed Beltway Al?

Screw that.  Al can stuff his empty promises right up his NAFTA.

While we environmentalists seem to agree that alliance-building is crucial if we ever expect to tackle climate change, I hope we can aspire to a more broad-reaching definition of the "average American" than Gore's inventory: "NASCAR fans, churchgoers, labor-union members, small businessmen, engineers, hunters, sportsmen, corporate leaders, you name it."  

I'm betting that list conjures up a room full of men in your head, too.  

Here's hoping that a marketing scheme aimed at saving our very planet from destruction can figure out a way not to alienate 51% of the population right off the bat.