Al Gore Urges Congress on Act on Global Warming

Here's a clip of Al Gore's opening statement this morning before a joint meeting of U.S. House energy subcommittees. He's presenting copies of more than 500,000 e-post cards gathered over recent days from citizens urging Congress to act quickly to address the serious climate problems we face. You can still be a part of this effort by signing up at AlGore.com.

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who used to chair the energy committee now led by Democratic Rep. John Dingell, wasted a fair amount of time complaining about parliamentary process and alleged rules infractions. He also saw fit to keep injecting bogus proof that global warming caused by humans is nonexistent. Big oil money talks. The facts he and others have to face are, I had to say it, inconvenient truths.

Al and Tipper Gore present the postcards from citizens urging Congress to act on global warming (AP photo)

I thought Gore came off as intelligent, very well informed, polite, reasonable, passionate, moving, nonpartisan, friendly and truthful. However, I found the hearing difficult to watch because my mind kept wandering to what ifs, as in, "what if our Supreme Court had allowed all the votes to be counted in Florida?" Imagine an America and a planet that hadn't just endured six years of ignorant, secretive, selfish, incompetent, dishonest, unconstitutional rule by an administration led by someone who's most important job previously was running a baseball team and who had never ventured beyond America's borders except, perhaps, to coke it up in Tijuana.

Here's the New York Times article reporting on Gore's testimony this morning. Excerpt:

Democrats and Republicans, he said, should emulate their British counterparts and compete to see how best to curb emissions of smokestack and tailpipe “greenhouse” gases that scientists have now firmly linked to a global warming trend.

Mr. Gore also proposed a 10-point legislative program, calling for everything from a tax on carbon emissions to a ban on incandescent light bulbs and a new national mortgage program to promote the use of energy-saving technologies in homes.

Gore will also testify before Senate energy committees this afternoon. As reported in an L.A. Times article, here's the kind of short-sighted attitude we can expect from way too many Republicans:

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is unimpressed by the new Gore mission. "Those who believe all his garbage are going to be excited to death," he said, "and the rest of us are going to ignore it."

... Gore could encounter flak when he appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose top Republican, Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe, has dismissed man-made climate change as a "hoax" and, like Bush, has said he won't see Gore's movie.