Al Gore, Rock Star

Al Gore is not going to the Academy Awards by bicycle, as a satyric Nashville column would have it.  And he’s not shaving his head to radiate more heat out into space. 

I saw him Tuesday night, here in New York, giving a talk organized by Scientific American.  (Several members of their staff posted comments; take a read HERE and HERE.)  His hair has thinned a bit over the years, and–forgive me, Mr. Gore–his middle has thickened some as well, which mitigates against the bicycling-across-America idea.  But when he talks about his main subject, climate, he’s in his groove. He’s tended not to use the term "global warming."  Too simple, he said when I noticed and asked him years ago.  He preferred to call it "climate change"–the better to accomodate changes in weather patterns, oceans, sea ice, and (he brought this up; I didn’t) places where there would be cooling. His language has gotten stronger.  Today Gore talks about the climate "crisis" and uses the word "emergency," even as he adds in the next sentence that "these words sound shrill to our ears." He gets a standing ovation from the invited audience at Columbia University–an audience that includes some big-time climate scientists from Columbia’s Earth Institute and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a few blocks away.  He insists, after he’s finished with the "crisis" part of his talk, that there is also opportunity–new industries, new jobs, new ideas–that do not demand tremendous sacrifice.    "It’s not a guilty, sinful pleasure," he says, pausing for effect, "to sit in a traffic jam for two hours." Simply by bringing up Gore’s name, I’m sure I’ve stirred things up, and I welcome your comments as always.  By the way, he was in Toronto and Montreal yesterday to give similar talks.  If he’s really biking to the Oscars, he’s headed in the wrong direction. But what if "An Inconvient Truth" wins one, and Martin Scorsese doesn’t?