An Inconvenient, but altogether needed, Truth

I wasn't allowed to vote in the 2000 election, but if I could I might have voted for George Bush. This may shock people who know me, as they probably wouldn't call me a conservative, but at the time I didn't really like Al Gore. He struck me in much the same way he struck everyone else--dry, a bit wooden, unable to effectively communicate his role in the preceding 8 years of prosperity and good will. But another reason might be that he didn't fully stress an issue he had dedicated so much of his life as a public servant to: the environment. Since leaving office 8 years ago, Gore has relaunched himself as the crusader for the planet he had been before with his film on the dangers of global warming entitled 'An Inconvenient Truth.' I've done a little reading into it, and my eyes popped.

Diseases like malaria spreading to new areas, an increase in the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, melting of ice caps that could flood coastal areas, droughts, fires, hundreds of thousands of deaths. If Al Gore had related this to people when he was running for President he could have scared people shitless as to what will happen if we don't do something. I'm not a very liberal person, or rather I've met a lot of people in college who are self-proclaimed liberals and they annoy me, but this seems like an issue that should be central to Presidential campaigns. I also don't agree with people who say that the environment is a radical left-wing, hippy tree-hugger issue. It's about life and death. The environment is tied to energy policy, which is tied to national security policy, defense policy, economic policy, trade policy. It's also the starkest and most scary 30 second commercial you can make:

Your children are going to die in an enormous fire, or be drowned in a flood, or be killed by a bizarre disease because the other guy doesn't want to stop global warming. He doesn't even think it's real. But your kid dying--that's real.

I just made that up right now. It would sink a candidate who is still debating if global warming even exists. I like that Al Gore is a ballsy guy, but it pains me that on the campaign he never came across as anything other than supremely scripted and terrified that people would paint him with the "slick, equivocating, philanderer" brush that had been used to tar Clinton. Not having to run for anything tends to help with honesty and objectivity. Knowing all that I know now about Al Gore and George Bush, I would have voted for Gore. That being said, I hope he doesn't run, because he is doing a lot of good being unburdened with an election. He can educate more people and raise the level of debate if he is a fire-breathing outsider. Can he sometimes be a bit over the top? Sure, but I'd prefer he continue to throw haymakers than dampen it so much that he's a wet noodle.

Please, Al: don't run for President. Just do what you do now, make me think.