Al Gore needs to be the next president. I don't care if we have to mobilize a fucking write-in campaign. Short of a
Diebold disaster, the man should have it in the bag. He deserves an Oscar and then he deserves the White House.
Remember The American President?
Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
Al Gore is genuine leadership. So is Russ Feingold. All Americans - except for the 1% of parasites who have power now - care about the environment. Feingold's popularity when UP when he called for censure of Bush - even though only a handful of Dems joined him.
Litigatormom, you have an incredible daughter. She brought tears to my eyes yesterday. Tears and a huge smile as I read through every single one of the comments.
Absolute sheer terror over global warming isn't something new to me. It won't be new or different when I see the Al Gore movie. Sadness over what we do to our planet isn't new to me either.
But NOT BEING ALONE is new to me.
Before now, what was I? The fringe left? A weirdo? A hippy? A kooky environmentalist? And that's what I've been since junior high. Maybe that's what some of you Kossacks reading this are too. Since I was an awkward 13-year-old wearing dolphin earrings and some sort of nature T-shirt and organizing hemp shirt sales to the student body, caring about the environment just didn't fit in. I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to save the whales.
I've learned how to fit in since then. I have friends. I wear normal clothes. Don't tell anyone I ditched my PVC shower curtain for an organic hemp one. Don't wear your environmentalism on your sleeve. God forbid anyone knows you care.
There's a demographic who visibly cares. Society thinks they are weird. They come up with innovative ways to avoid wasting tampons. I've heard them talk about dumpster diving. Or composting toilets. They wear organic hemp clothes. Some of them, god forbid, don't shave. They participate in the WWOOF program or they go couchsurfing. If you are reading this and that is you, don't take this paragraph as an expression of my contempt. People like you are kind and they care about the good of the earth. When others actually give you a chance and listen to what you say, they find out you aren't weird at all (usually).
For some reason, and I don't know why, these people are a threat to the mainstream. Maybe it's because as long as they exist, they force other people to think uncomfortable thoughts about their own lives. Maybe because they think for themselves and society can't control them.
In some ways I am a threat to the mainstream. But on the whole, I am "acceptable." I have an IT job. I own a Corolla. Sure, it's weird I don't have a TV. I eat tofu. My parents like to constantly offer to get me a flat screen TV or an iPod. I am what they call a "guppy" - a Green Yuppy.
Why do the children care? What happened to the other generations? That was a topic of discussion brought up by litigatormom and her daughter yesterday. The real world hit, that's what. You'd like to conserve gas but you live 45 minutes from work, you can't get another job (other than Wal-Mart greeter), and there's no train. You would bike around town but not with four kids to cart from ballet to soccer practice.
I've lived it too. Living in DC on nothing just doesn't work. How can I buy organic if I'm lucky to buy food at all? It's not easy to get solar panels when you have just enough to afford a room in a two-bedroom apartment in a poor area. It's hard to get EnergySTAR appliances when your washing machine is a coin operated thing in a basement. I cry poor, but I wasn't even that poor! I can hardly imagine the life of someone who is actually poor.
Is that what happens to us?
It's hard to look far enough in the future to see peak oil when you can barely look two weeks in the future to see your next paycheck. It's hard to care about Mt. Kilimanjaro's snow when it takes every bit of strength you've got to deal with your mother's chronic illness or your child getting bullied on the playground.
I don't say this to make excuses for people or to accuse them. These are just the realities of life. If you starve to death or lose your house or your job today - who gives a flying fuck what happens to the polar bears and the icecaps tomorrow? We as liberals are especially sensitive to this. We are the ones who talk and talk about expanding the middle class and giving women reproductive freedom and bringing universal healthcare to America. Environmentalism and our other goals should not conflict. They should go hand-in-hand.
I can make an individual effort to help. It's my luxury as a guppy. But on the whole, Al Gore is right. We need the government to turn it around. Once society functions in a way that conservation is easy, we can all do it. We probably won't even call it conservation.
If toilets used less water per flush, we'd use less water. Better yet, if they have two buttons (less water for #1, more for #2), we'd save even more. If the processes used to make consumer goods were less wasteful or if the things we buy didn't have excess packaging, our shopping habits would have less of a footprint on the earth. If the power companies all used wind, tidal, solar, and animal poop power (what's the real name for that one?), we'd continue to get our electricity, just the same as always, and we'd think our lives were no different.
If gas was expensive enough to reflect its true cost, we'd drive less. (The other side of the coin there is that people like my grandmother who live on fixed incomes would have their lifestyles seriously compromised. I'm not convinced yet that is the liberal solution.) If our cars got 60 miles to the gallon and even Hummers managed to get 40 mpg without losing any of their Hummerness, we'd all use less gas. We might call it being frugal. We might just think we're living normal lives. We wouldn't be kooky environmentalists. We'd just be normal, mainstream Americans.
And what else would be better? The weather extremes we're experiencing might ease up from the Old Testament-like wrath of the past few years. I can't promise you no more Katrinas, but if we restored the wetlands in the Gulf, the next Katrina could have less impact. Our health would improve. We'd have less childhood asthma. The economy would expand into new industries and create more jobs. And not just low paying service industry jobs.
Of course - with true leadership, we would stop starving FEMA (or the next iteration of FEMA after the Senate gets done with it) and the Army Corps of Engineers so that the next hurricane could do less damage and those needing aid afterwards would be taken care of. With univeral healthcare, we would instantly improve the financial situation of our uninsured. With better education, today's children can have a better chance at succeeding as adults. With sensible economic policies, the middle class would expand. It would be this synergistic awakening of our nation as everything got better all at once.
It's going to take guts to do it. It's going to take guts to stand up to the Kenny Boys, the Halliburtons, and the Bush Pioneers. The modern day robber barons. The Rove way to do things is to play right into the pockets of the haves and the have mores - and to distract the rest of us with the unsettling thought of two men kissing, Terri Schiavo, and god forbid, teaching science in science classrooms. Operation Look Over There tells us there is a war on Christians. War on Christians MY ASS. What is the makeup of America - 90% Christian? 85% Christian? Leaders get elected by talking about Judeo-Christian values. There's a war on BRAINS.
If we have leaders who can stand up to the parasites and talk to the people about real issues that matter - not wedge issues that get out the wacko vote on Election Day - we'll get change. If they can do it with a strong voice, a backbone, and a clear message, it'll happen.
I think Gore can make it happen. Starting with An Inconvenient Truth. For every person who sees the movie, we are a little bit less alone. Of course, there will be that 1% of people who see it, get scared shitless, and write a check to the GOP for a few mil before they even finished their popcorn. But the Dems have all of us. They have $20 at a time, coming from a broad base of people.
We need to vote for environmentalism so we can stay wrapped up in our lives while the government ponies up the cash and the commitments to do what needs to be done. Litigatormom's daughter is an amazing young woman - but if things were right, she could be thinking about boys, friends, school, and parties at her age, not the end of the world as we know it.
A little less than 1000 days from now, I want to be in DC, watching Al Gore pledge to uphold the constitution as our 44th president.
Al, just please promise me one thing. You can kiss Tipper all you want, but NO BJ's.
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One last note: If you are as distressed as I am and you want to do something, please visit my website http://www.dailygranola.com I realize I pimp it around here probably too often to be polite but if you are searching for something you can do immediately to help, it's a great source. If you are looking to reduce your effects on the environment by eating less meat, look on my veg recipes website for some simple vegetarian recipes. It's about all we can do with this imposter in the White House and the criminals that are on capitol hill.