On why Al Gore should be the next president of the United States
An op-ed piece written for an assignment (read: not published), but worthy of being blogged -- and it's my blog, so I can do that kind of thing (which is pretty cool, right):
Al Gore, left, at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. (CBS)
An epochal opportunity has come to the fore in recent weeks for both a man, and by extension, the world.
Al Gore, the effusive champion of climate change awareness, has before him the chance to win the next United States presidential election in 2008, and in turn, spearhead international efforts to defuse humanity’s looming climate crisis.
For both Gore and the planet, the portents are numerous that the 2000 presidential candidate should try his hand again next year.
The former vice-president has become the indisputable icon of a reinvigorated green movement, after his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won best documentary honours at this year’s Oscars in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Even more dramatic is Gore's Nobel prize nomination on Feb. 01.
He is one of the most popular figures in America right now, while his political adversary in 2000, President George W. Bush, is a lame duck that will leave office in roughly 100 weeks with a legacy history is sure to punish.
What’s more, any Democratic candidate for the presidency in ‘08 will surely benefit from an American electoral mood that seems likely to treat Republicans the same as it did in the mid-term elections last November –- by handing them their pink slips --according to the British magazine, The Economist.
For the planet –- or at least the parts of it we humans value most –- a President Gore could mark the first step in a doubtlessly long and labourious process of recasting current industrial models along less pollutant and more sustainable trajectories.
With clear evidence of polar melting and weather distortions now, it’s become an international imperative (this week marked the beginning of the “broadest scientific investigation yet” into the implications of polar melting, according to a Reuters report, involving 60 national governments).Global warming is no longer the overwrought fears of altruistic scientists -- it has become the central issue for several governments; the next federal election may hinge on the issue here in Canada.
The threat of submerged cities (like Tokyo, New York and Amsterdam to name a few), and increased frequency of destructive weather patterns like Hurricane Katrina (that leveled New Orleans in 2005) has forced even the most titanic emitter of all, America, to say that it must find substantial energy sources beyond oil, as Bush himself suggested in the last State of the Union address.
It says here that the Democrats should be vehemently urging Gore to run again.
He is the party’s ideal candidate: he’s the figurehead of the most pressing issue of the coming decades, is riding a wave of unparalleled popularity, and still has plenty of political capital in Washington, DC, as a former vice-president.
It too, would be a mistake for Democrats to believe enough American voters are progressive enough to elect the party’s other leading candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (Ohio polls indicate Clinton is favourable there, but what of even more traditional swing states?).
What’s more, as president, Gore could be a powerful trigger for the rest of the world –- including China and India -– to take necessary measures to overcome the gravest threat civilization has ever faced outside of nuclear war.
For the sake of the planet’s inhabitants, it’s an opportunity we hope he accepts.
-JS
"Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line."
- Warren Bennis
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