23 June 2011: The Gore Score
Unsurprisingly, it looks as if we have flunked the Gore challenge of July 2008 to clean up the world and save humanity. I was there when he compared that 10-year window to JFK's challenge to put an American (man, of course) on the Moon in ten years.
But there is a difference. Few in this country opposed that romantic venture that would put us on top of the world and erase the humiliation caused when Yuri Gagarin beat Alan Shepard--as I recall, "manning" a space capsule hadn't even been a priority for us at the time--had it? Surprise!!
So "we" met JFK's challenge. But what is sexy about cleaning Augean stables dirtier than even Hercules' task?
The Europeans are way far ahead of us, but competition isn't even an issue this time around. Except between us and China, soon, for the lion's share of oil.
Al's article, published yesterday in Rolling Stone online and due out tomorrow in hard copy, is a harsh chastisement, a furious attack on Obama and the right-wing ideologues and greed that extend farther. Gore's supporting examples are wrenching and irrefutable for the choir. Rome is burning--the worse the fires become (literally as well as otherwise), the more oil the pyromaniacs throw on it.
Even if they have dug bazillions of acres of bunkers deep underground, first of all the pollution will reach them there one of these days but, more important, won't they miss the light, even with the stunning replicas of sunlight developed so ingeniously by theatre and others?
AND WON'T THEY NEED ENERGY TO POWER THEIR SUBTERRANEAN "CIVIZATIONS"?
A limited commodity, that, even with the encouragement "they" draw from Pennsylvania's abundance of shale for sale and all that drill-baby-drilling Obama is condoning--what did he and his golf buddy Boehner really discuss as they beat his real buddy Biden? Look how Boehner can come between his opponents in a game that is so real, that golf game of life, busting it even as his GOP is being splintered by so many dwarves.
It is true that dialogue with the enemy is better than hostile silence. Will Boehmer ever accept that dinner invitation from Obama, as Priam dined with Achilles in the throes of the deepest act of hostility imaginable, the profoundest grief a human could endure?
The golf dialogue may represent progress. Does Boehmer have children? At least his crocodile tears have ebbed as we shed them ourselves, the choir tone-deaf enough not to be doing more.
Exactly what can we do?
Prioritize our issues. Is this number one on our agenda? Should it be? The solution lies with the grass roots, if there is a solution.
Al, three years have passed since your challenge. Europe is light years ahead of us, but are they even doing enough? Time is telling.
Will we adapt, as some of the opposition smugly argues? Who cares about all the rabble the oceans will devour? The rich people will move away. I thought to the Midwest, until the tornadoes blew that solution to smithereens.
But who cares where they go? God maybe, who loves them still, as some of their mothers may no longer.
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