The speech, folksy and impassioned, opened with what Gore called “overwhelming and undeniable” evidence that global warming is a real phenomenon, leading to the premature extinction of species, rising sea levels and droughts. In a series of PowerPoint slides, Gore presented charts and photos, videos and anecdotal evidence all pointing to the conclusion that increases in greenhouse gases are damaging the planet. The Bush administration’s response to such evidence, he said, is to conspire to suppress the information with campaign contributors he described as “polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, out of fear that their profits might be affected.”
Gore accused the administration of crafting its environmental policy in secrecy and in cooperation with powerful special interests. “While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward,” he said. Without input from the environmental community, Gore said, the White House has: rejected the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce greenhouse emissions; revoked an Environmental Protection Agency determination that mercury emissions should be treated as air pollutants; eliminated the tax that polluters used to pay to finance the Superfund to clean up hazardous-waste sites; opened national forests to “destructive logging of old-growth trees” under the Healthy Forest Initiative; increased the amount of pollution allowed to enter the air under the Clean Skies Initiative, and worked to allow its “friends” to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The speech-cosponsored by MoveOn.org, the online liberal Washington-based activist group, and Environment 2004, a Democratic environmental group-was delivered to an overwhelmingly Democratic crowd that responded with several standing ovations. But not everyone who heard the speech responded positively. “I would say that from a scientific perspective the speech should be ignored,” said Amy Ridenour, president of the conservative think tank The National Center for Public Policy Research. “From a political perspective, it’s proof that [Gore] wants to run for president.” Ridenour claimed that Gore and President Bill Clinton “didn’t fight for Kyoto when they had the chance” and themselves went eight years without once regulating mercury. And as for global warming, the lynchpin of the address, Ridenour said, “If you listen to him, the story is over and nobody disagrees. That’s just not true. Even the models that agree with the theory disagree with each other. And he made it sound like anyone who disagrees with him is a whore, bought by industry.”
Gore, sounding at times more like a campaigning politician than a policy wonk discussing a topic of personal interest, observed that “in case after case, the policy adopted immediately after the inauguration has been the exact opposite of what was pledged to the American people during the election campaign”-and not just on the environment. Although the purpose of the speech was devoted to Bush’s environmental policies, Gore did point out, shouting and growling and making air quotes with his fingers, that “the promise by then-candidate Bush to conduct a ‘humble’ foreign policy and avoid any semblance of ’nation-building’ was transformed in the first days of the Bush presidency into a frenzied preparation for military invasion of Iraq, complete with detailed plans for the remaking of that nation under American occupation.” But foreign-policy criticisms aside, Gore stayed largely on message.
Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on building a space station on the moon or sending manned missions to Mars, as Bush proposed last week, Gore concluded his 90-minute speech by suggesting that money would be better spent bringing emissions down and exploring alternatives to fossil fuels. “Before we spend vast hundreds of millions of dollars on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the moon habitable for a handful of people, we ought to focus instead on a massive effort to ensure that planet Earth is habitable for future generations.”
“I was very impressed with Al Gore. He actually had more effervescence than at any point in his campaign,” said retiree Joe Schachter, 78, a MoveOn member and Howard Dean supporter. “He outlined a real vulnerability of Bush, which I hope can be exploited.” Others in the crowd felt that even Gore wasn’t far enough to the left. “I can be skeptical of Gore’s aims as much as Bush’s,” said MoveOn member Penny Vlagopoulos, 30, a graduate student who claims to see no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. “Still, it’s refreshing to see a politician who’s a great speaker and a smart man.”
In previous speeches, Gore, who has endorsed former Vermont governor Howard Dean as the Democratic presidential nominee, has accused the administration of chipping away at civil liberties since the September 11 terrorist attacks and mishandling postwar Iraq.
