In an interview published in Politico Magazine this past week, former President Vice President Al Gore talked about the challenges of making climate change the cause of our generation in the context of unprecedented amounts of money in politics, and how information is smothered on networks.
PM: So you see climate change reaching a tipping point like civil rights or gay rights?
AG: Absolutely. No question about it. … [W]hat [all three causes] have in common is that ultimately, when any question is resolved into a choice between what’s clearly right and what’s clearly wrong, the outcome is foreordained, just because of who we are as human beings. And most of the effort by the climate deniers has been to delay the arrival of that binary choice. To cloud the issue. To create false doubt. To sow confusion. Just like the tobacco industry did in hopes that they can delay the clarity of the choice. It’s clearly wrong to do what we’re doing. It’s clearly right to change. We will change. It’s just a matter of time. And again, how long? Not long.
[...]
PM: Will it take a Republican in the White House – a Jeb Bush or Chris Christie – to make it easier for the party to work on climate change?
AG: I don’t know that any Republican who is in favor of solving the climate crisis can get the nomination.
[...]
AG: Here’s an analogy. You think of a family of an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time the word alcohol is mentioned. Well, the rest of the family sometimes learns to never mention the gorilla in the middle of the room in order to avoid the rage. Well, that is what happens to some in the news media. … they get told by the conglomerate owners and managers hitting the bottom line: Our ratings go down if you make this percentage of people so angry that they switch the channel.
I don’t pretend to understand all of it, but I know that virtually every news and political talk show on television across the dial, one of the three largest advertisers is the American Petroleum Institute, the coal industry, the oil industry, the oil companies, the gas companies. [...]
From 2013 to 2014, as usual, oil and gas corporations have given 3-1 to Republicans, making the GOP the industry’s lobbyist party.
But, according to media reporting, Al Gore is the polarizing figure in all of this.
Politico Magazine suggests that maybe a republican president, like Jeb Bush, or Chris Christie could make it easier to bring the country together to address climate change.
The last two Republican party presidential tickets included the half-witted phrase, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” and praising the CEO of Murray Energy while using coal miners as props:
The last Republican party president was an oilman and his evil oil overlord who ran America and its energy policy from an undisclosed bunker throughout their co-presidency.
But this follows along the subtle media narrative that if you want to end all of this right wing obstruction and Louis Gohmert-level of insanity, it’s going to take a totally, not-at-all polarizing Republican to get something done, while placating a party base beholden to big oil and coal and dreams of a “permanent majority.”
In other words, the party of oil corporations are the only ones who can bring the country together to guide the type of energy policy we need to compete in the 21st century.
Democrats should end this polarizing obstruction, stop hurting the country with their partisan-partisanship, and trust a Republican to do the opposite of everything their party represents.
Your media at work.