Monday, November 27, 2006

Netflix

I learned nothing new from Al Gore's mildly wonky documentary, but his slide presentation was effective and alarming. Gore finishes on an optimistic note, but I'm going to bed thoroughly depressed and further convinced the end is nigh.

One inconvenient truth Al conveniently forgot to mention: he and Bill Clinton allowed the SUV exemption and the deterioration of fuel efficiency standards in the US in order to bail out struggling auto manufacturers and to reward union supporters. All Al's talk about saving the environment being good for the economy if only we had the political will was therefore nothing more than air pollution coming from him. Of course he doesn't have to give these speeches; I respect Al Gore much more now than ever before, and suspect he's actually changed stripes since the Florida recount. Those pre-war MoveOn speeches were excellent, as were his passionate critiques of torture and wiretaps and other Cheney Admin forays into illegality. But, nevertheless:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's dissapointing, but YES,(maybe to secure support for NAFTA) Clinton's Admin didn't do ANYTHING to stop SUV's from being so prominent on the roads. Then they made a lot of noise about how SUV's caused more injurious accidents.......

Geoff said...

They also approved a lot of mining on formerly protected lands, and Bruce Babbit was up to some shameful corporate malfeasance that James Watt could have never pulled off. Alexander Cockburn covered it in the Nation for quite some time.