One Sky. One Climate. One Future. One Chance.

My partner saw 1 Sky listed on a lawn sign at a neighbor's house today and I like what I see. Global warming/climate change/"the greenhouse effect" is not JUST a serious risk and challenge to us all, but also an incredible opportunity to recognize and reach out as global neighbors all under that.... 1 sky.

Check it out.

Draft Gore!: Will The Nobel Prize for Peace Be The Latest To Name Al Gore Winner?

In the "here's a vote Bush & Cheney, Florida and Ohio can't (literally!) steal from a Democrat!" department.

Also noted at All Things Democrat (by the resident grump - me):

Wish Al Gore the best tomorrow when the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.

In a year when Bill Clinton’s Veep brought home awards at Cannes, from the Academy AND Emmy awards mostly for his work on educating America and the world about global warming, I would love the tighty righties to have reason to deal with another “Inconvenient Truth” on Friday if the man many want to run for Democratic candidacy for president in 2008 wins. Nods to the folks at DraftGore, too.

[Now if only we could get Henry Kissinger’s peace prize recalled!]

Nods, too, to Doris Lessing, who at 88 today became the oldest person (let alone woman) to win the Nobel prize in literature. Lessing’s work is considered - uh… can you say seminal work when it comes to feminism? - important stuff in understanding women and women’s power.

Bob Herbert: "The Passion Of Al Gore"

[Ed. note: See my post at All Things Democrat for more of what I see as the important differences between true leaders and politicians.]

Herbert has written many powerful columns, but this one hits me just at a time when I find myself (for the first time) really wanting him to run for president in 2008 because I think he may be more than a leader than many of the politicians who do want the job.

Al Gore is earnestly talking about the long-term implications of the energy and climate crises, and how the Arctic ice cap is receding much faster than computer models had predicted, and how difficult and delicate a task it will be to try and set things straight in Iraq.

You look at him and you can’t help thinking how bizarre it is that this particular political figure, perhaps the most qualified person in the country to be president, is sitting in a wing chair in a hotel room in Manhattan rather than in the White House.

He’s pushing his book “The Assault on Reason.” I find myself speculating on what might have been if the man who got the most votes in 2000 had actually become president. It’s like imagining an alternate universe.

The war in Iraq would never have occurred. Support and respect for the U.S. around the globe would not have plummeted to levels that are both embarrassing and dangerous. The surpluses of the Clinton years would not have been squandered like casino chips in the hands of a compulsive gambler on a monumental losing streak.

Mr. Gore takes a blowtorch to the Bush administration in his book. He argues that the free and open democratic processes that have made the United States such a special place have been undermined by the administration’s cynicism and excessive secrecy, and by its shameless and relentless exploitation of the public’s fear of terror.

The Bush crowd, he said, has jettisoned logic, reason and reflective thought in favor of wishful thinking in the service of an extreme political ideology. It has turned its back on reality, with tragic results.

So where does that leave Mr. Gore? If the republic is in such deep trouble and the former vice president knows what to do about it, why doesn’t he have an obligation to run for president? I asked him if he didn’t owe that to his fellow citizens.

If the country needs you, how can you not answer the call?

He seemed taken aback. “Well, I respect the logic behind that question,” he said. “I also am under no illusion that there is any position that even approaches that of president in terms of an inherent ability to affect the course of events.”

But while leaving the door to a possible run carefully ajar, he candidly mentioned a couple of personal reasons why he is disinclined to seek the presidency again.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t really think I’m that good at politics, to tell you the truth.” He smiled. “Some people find out important things about themselves early in life. Others take a long time.”

Read the rest here.

On Alabama, The Deep South, Killer Tornadoes, and Climate Change

My condolences to all of those severely hurt in Thursday's tornadoes, including the great tragedy at the high school in Enterprise, Alabama.

What I post here is in no way meant to demean what happened, but I feel compelled to say something on this subject.

The number of tornadoes and other manifestations of extreme weather phenomena have increased sharply for decades now, and have been even worse the last seven or so years. That is a given.

Ironically, in recent weeks, I've seen various news outlets talking with people, often in the deep South, including school children and young adults in Alabama and Georgia - two of the states very hard hit by yesterday's killer tornadoes - about climate change/global warming/"An Inconvenient Truth" (Cheney mocked that title earlier today, btw) weather changes. Time and again, I heard these folks - and not all of them were young - pooh pooh the notion of climate change and global warming.

To paraphrase one young man I remember seeing, "I think maybe it's like what the prez and Vice President say, that nobody can tell if the weird weather's got anything to do with a little extra car exhaust and using an air conditioner. Nobody can prove climate change is happening."

Now, I'm not suggesting I hold a 16- or 17-year-old culpable for global warming, I don't. I do hold the Bush Administration at fault, however, for helping to keep people stupid on the subject, with columnists like George S. Will ("Who says we aren't supposed to be this new temperature average? Who says it will harm us?") adding to the dumbing down of America.

But I do think it's the responsibility of every citizen of the globe, including those teenage Kool-aid drinkers in the Deep South, to educate themselves about what is going on with global climate change. And, until they do, perhaps they shouldn't ridicule what they don't understand.

Paul Krugman: "Colorless Green Ideas"

I found this Paul Krugman column (available in full at Welcome to Pottersville, btw) terrific, but also reminded me of a major columnist (who shall go nameless until his lawyer supposedly talks to my lawyer) who took a certain degree of embrage in an email to me because I mocked some of his views, including one on global warming. Ah, the ties that bind, especially when they're power red ones.

Anyhoo, trying to conserve energy - whether because of global warming and the effects our "temperature adjustment" mechanisms affect it or simply to preserve supplies on non-replenishing fuel sources - should be non-partisan AND color (as in blue vs. red) blind. Here's a snippet:

The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.

Aside from a few dead-enders on the political right, climate change skeptics seem to be making a seamless transition from denial to fatalism. In the past, they rejected the science. Now, with the scientific evidence pretty much irrefutable, they insist that it doesn’t matter because any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible.

Behind this claim lies the assumption, explicit or implicit, that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live. To be fair, some people in the conservation movement seem to share that assumption.

But the assumption is false. Let me tell you about a real-world counterexample: an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

There’s nothing heroic about California’s energy policy — but that’s precisely the point. Over the years the state has adopted a series of conservation measures that are anything but splashy. They’re the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive, if still well short of what we really need to do.

The energy divergence between California and the rest of the United States dates from the 1970s. Both the nation and the state initially engaged in significant energy conservation after that decade’s energy crisis. But conservation in most of America soon stalled: after a decade of rapid progress, improvements in auto mileage came to an end, while electricity consumption continued to rise rapidly, driven by the growing size of houses, the increasing use of air-conditioning and the proliferation of appliances.

In California, by contrast, the state continued to push policies designed to encourage conservation, especially of electricity. And these policies worked.

People in California have always used a bit less energy than other Americans because of the mild climate. But the difference has grown much larger since the 1970s. Today, the average Californian uses about a third less total energy than the average American, uses less than 60 percent as much electricity, and is responsible for emitting only about 55 percent as much carbon dioxide.

Read the rest here.