Al Gore's Nature Hike Through The Book Of Revelations

The slideshow on global warming, and the film, are clearly motivated by the desire to "tell the people." In particular, U.S. people, who have been living in a fact-free bubble. When it comes to what Gore calls the climate crisis, we're in danger of coming in last. (Less than 20% of our current crop of cars and trucks would meet China's 2008 fuel efficiency standards.) Though the current administration has been no friend to the environment, reminds Gore: "In America, political will is a renewable resource." And in crisis lies opportunity.

Despite all the partisan bickering, Gore's message is that responding to global warming has no right or left. It's a moral imperative for all people to come together and fight for our survival -- in all seriousness, Gore warned the audience that we may only have 10 years before a point of no return. (Just the idea that there is a point of no return is eerie, if you think about it.) But he wants to scare no one from denial into despair: there's plenty we can do, he says. It's just that we've got to get started now. So he's made this movie, there's a book coming out of the same name, and he's going to train 1,000 people to go around giving his slideshow.

"Damn," we mused. "Al's become a global warming bodhisattva." It all fits: the final, crushing ego-defeat of the election, his coming back to his roots, and the fervor with which he's pursuing teaching others about global warming, worldwide. The bodhisattva slays the dragon of indolence, apathy, and "that's just the way it is," with compassion and insight. We made sure to shake his hand and say thank you.

As a postscript, here's a little more local politics:

For his introduction, Mayor Nickels retailed his global warming "Aha!" moment: during a meeting with Seattle City Light about hydroelectric power projections, they mentioned that their numbers were based upon "normal" snowfall. Nickels couldn't think of a recent year that had been normal, and when they checked, they found that since the 1950s the snowpack had decreased 50%. Thus was born Green Greg and the Seattle commitment to the Kyoto Protocol--a city-based movement which now has 226 U.S. mayors representing 44 million people in 40 states and D.C. (In 1999, the graybeards in the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol because they're too old to care what the planet looks like in 50 years. "You kids stay off our oil-soaked lawn!" they shrieked and went back looting the future.)

Then he handed over the mic to Ron Sims, his "good friend and longtime colleague" (take that, Brodeur) whose environmental work is "a little less at the forefront because he's been at it such a long time." (Oops. Backhanded compliment. Point for Brodeur after all.) Ron let it go, though. He held up the TIME magazine with the admonition about global warming: "Be worried."

"Don't be worried," Sims said. "I tire of worried people." He suggested the Nobel Prize-winning Kenyan, Wangari Maathai, as an example: "She never accepted that she couldn't succeed." That phrase came back to us as we watched the film, and Gore recounted all the times he'd failed to get people to pay attention to global warming, over decades -- and yet, at the end of the day (and it was almost 10pm), here he was, at it again.