Daily Kos Diary: Al Gore Is Not Saving The Planet!!!!! (It's good, not a hit piece)

[Pirate Smile]

Al Gore Is Not Saving The Planet!!!!!

by huntsu
Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 07:27:54 AM PDT

OK, so I am a fifth grader using all those exclamation points, but hopefully you'll excuse me for that. But I'm frustrated at the continued need for the media -- and actually for many others -- to portray environmentalism as some sort of wishy-washy exercise that has no impact on human beings. Today's culprit is the Times of London in an article on Al Gore's Nobel Prize possibilities:

The environmental campaigner Al Gore is being tipped as a favourite to win the Nobel peace prize in Oslo this Friday in a controversial move that could place saving the planet above saving people from war and conflict.

So working to prevent increased hurricanes, massive famines, flooding of coastal cities is saving the planet and not saving people? For goodness sake, who the hell cares about the planet? It was here before us, and it's going to be here after us. Life will go on even if there are no human beings. The whole point of stopping global warming is because massive climate change is bad for human beings!

huntsu's diary :: ::
Global climate change will not only impact the lives of millions based on changes to rainfall, rising ocean levels, melting ice, salinity changes in coastal waters, etc. It will also impact them by changing the locations the good land and bad land for farming and transportation and recreating and other economic good stuff.

And that's what most wars are fought over. Not every war is because someone's Daddy was an assassination target or over religion. Most conflicts are based on where the resources are, and who controls them.

Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 not just for the oil but for the ports and waterfronts. Those will change if the seas rise due to global warming, as will others and trigger a lot of countries trying to protect or expand their ports.

The war in Sudan is somewhat over oil and religion, but also over food production. The arable land and available water sources will change over time, creating more stress and potential war over time.

Al Gore's pioneering work making the world (or really just the head-in-the-sand Americans) aware of the realities of global climate change are efforts at saving human lives and reducing human misery. By preventing massive upheaval and economic stress due to climate change, we will prevent and minimize war and it's terrible cost.

The planet can take care of itself, and nothing we can do will eliminate all life on the planet. It's recovered from massive solar flares, huge asteroid strikes, volcano eruptions, and worse to produce the vibrant and growing world we see around us. Al Gore isn't working to save the planet.

Al Gore is working to save the human beings.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/8/1090/58047

[bryant69]

1. That's a good article that could be titled better - although I suppose it draws you in

Thought it was one of them politico style pieces that portrays Gore as a hypocrite.

But yeah the planet will probably do just fine if it manages to wipe us out.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Pirate Smile]

2. The title was meant to be provocative, I assume. I'll add to the title

so it doesn't scare people off.

[Jim__]

3. It's sad that The Times doesn't know that climate change will cause human conflict - n/t

[Pirate Smile]

4. It is a Rupert Murdoch rag so I suppose it isn't surprising.

[splat]

5. What if "the sky IS falling" and we can't change that?

Then we're making ourselves feel better, furiously flapping our wings in the face of the future.

[Pirate Smile]

6. kick

[ananda]

7. The planet is the planet.

It will still be here when humans are gone.

[PaulaFarrell]

8. If he's only working to save human beings

then he's lost my support. Not that I think he is, but for some reason people seem to take 'saving the planet' to be meant somehow literally, instead of being shorthand for 'saving the current environment on this planet as we know it from wanton destruction'. I mean, I guess the 'planet' will survive for quite a while, but that doesn't mean any of the life on it will. This poster is wrong to day that nothing man can do will eliminate all life on earth. If runaway global warming occurs, then that could end all life. See: Venus.

But what really irks me is the poster somehow seeming to imply that environmentalism must be about people to be acceptable. Maybe he doesn't get outdoors enough.

[SlowDownFast]

9. Kick.