Al Gore is spending $300 million on ads to tell us some more about climate change and what we can do. It’s called “we.” Doesn’t that sound like fun?
Actually, does anyone else find this a little insulting and/or disturbing? Who hasn’t gotten the message? Wasn’t An Inconvenient Truth a big, giant ad for how fucked we are?
We get it! Why spend three years and $300 million to tell us some more about global warming? The mainstream media appears to have stopped calling the climate change nay-sayers. Global warming is now an acceptable dinner party topic, not something your partner rants at you for ranting about in public. It’s even transcended traditional party lines, but Al Gore’s group, Alliance for Climate Protection, is still pulling together a huge chunk of change to inundate us with advertising.
Three hundred million bucks could buy solar panels for 3,000 buildings the size of the Guardian’s, or 15,000 average homes. For $300 million Al Gore could identify the 13,200 longest commuters in the country and buy them all Honda Civic hybrids. He could set up a microloan-style fund for lower and middle-income people who really want to change their ways but just can’t afford it. They could apply for financing for solar panels, better insulation for their homes, new cars, more efficient water heaters, whatever it is they’ve identified in their lives that they could change if they could just friggin’ afford it.
The Washington Post runs down more details of the program, which seems aimed at riling the masses and asking them to harass their elected officials. According to the Post: “This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”
BTW, for anyone who can’t wait for the ads, or hasn’t seen the movie it’s screening at the San Francisco Public Library as part of their Environmental Film Festival.
The deets:
Thursday, April 24, Noon
An Inconvenient Truth (2006, 96 min.)
Koret Auditorium, Lower Level
Main Library, 100 Larkin Street (at Grove)
All films are shown with captions when possible to assist our deaf
and hard of hearing.
All programs at the Library are free.