Democrats [are] in an awkward position. If they were to follow the lead of the Nobel committee, which commended Gore for recognizing “the measures that need to be adopted” to remedy the problem, they would commit instant political suicide.
Gore advocates drastic, immediate measures to end global warming. As he wrote in an op-ed on the eve of this past summer’s Live Earth concerts, if we do not act “within 10 years,” we are likely to reach a “tipping point” making it impossible “to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization.” In response to this dire situation, he would have the United States “join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global-warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide.”
The pitter-patter you hear, behind the earnest applause for Gore’s Nobel Prize, is the sound of Democrats in flight, running from such ideas as fast as their feet can carry them. A radical shift to clean energy is on the agenda of no mainstream politician, least of all those now on the stump in Iowa and New Hampshire. For all the talk of a growing consensus about climate change, the only point that commands general assent is that the planet is growing warmer and that human activity is responsible in some measure. All agreement disappears when it comes to how seriously to take the problem and, especially, how to deal with it.
Let’s make climate a culture war!
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
