This reply wouldn't be so absurd if you didn't look at the poster's name: "Peta's on Crack". THis guy is talking about parents who loved them and negativity...oh yeah...and looking at happiness. Interesting.
SPONSORED BY:
The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
SPONSORED BY
Critics will find much to attack in Our Choice, most likely for downplaying the barriers to a low-carbon economy. Gore was pilloried for supposed errors in An Inconvenient Truth. The Web site of one climate skeptic lists 35, but they're points of scientific dispute, such as the extent and timing of sea-level rise. The only outright mistake is in verb tense: Gore says some Pacific islanders "have all had to evacuate to New Zealand" due to sea-level rise, but that is a projection, not a current fact. For Our Choice, he has scientific backing for every chapter, albeit not unanimous backing.
Gore is a canny-enough politician to know that change of this magnitude takes time, and that politics tends to trump science. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found sharp declines in the numbers of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world is warming (57 percent, compared with 71 percent in April 2008), and in how many believe it is because of human activity (36 percent vs. 47 percent). Gore blames this on the boatloads of money the coal and oil industries have spent to muddy the science and confuse the public. (Disclosure: in the book, he praises NEWSWEEK for a 2007 story on greenhouse deniers.) His favorite quote in Our Choice is from the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power … has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."
"You know, the political system is [like climate] also nonlinear," Gore says. "I've been waiting a long time for that tipping point," when politicians and the public recognize the threat of climate change and act to avert it. "But I think we're closer than ever. Reality does have a way of knocking on the door."
Walking back through the house, I ask Gore again whether he believes the sanguine vision of Our Choicewill come to be. He points to solar panels on his roof, and to his driveway, 300 feet beneath which seven geothermal wells gather the planet's warmth to heat and cool his house. "I have to," he says.
Sharon Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor and author of The Plastic Mind: New science reveals our extraordinary potential to transform ourselves and Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves .
© 2009
Discuss