Al Gore is asking every American who cares about global warming to join together in a group called wecansolveit.org so that by the time a new president is elected in the fall of 2008 there are several million Americans assembled who can pressure our government for immediate action on this issue.
I can do that. Join a group with my countrymen to actively pursue policies that keep our planet healthy. There's no cost. I just receive their email mailings. Will you join us? It'd be a lot easier than trying to do this on our own.
The issue of climate change has been very confusing in America because there has been no federal governmental leadership. I actually know more about what energy policy oilman T. Boone Pickens wants us to pursue because he tells me several times a day in commercials that we are engaged in the largest transfer of wealth from one country to another with our addiction to foreign oil (four times the annual cost of the Iraq war).
Even Exxon is busy telling me what needs to be done and they constantly extol their new technologically-advanced battery in the works.
NBC had an entire week where every single show on the network discussed green living and they sent their Today show crew to the four corners of the earth to show what global warming is doing to the environment. But on this subject of climate change my president has been pretty silent.
Two things I do know about my administration's view:
1) It has finally gone from denying global warming to admitting it exists.
2) The president wants to open drilling in the Artic Wildlife Refuge and off the coast of California to "reverse the psychology" of the markets so gas prices go down. That's it. That's his whole energy policy, I think.3) Oh yes, I forgot, the occupation of Iraq to set up no-bid contracts for global oil companies. How could I forget that?
I've never seen an international issue that business leads on rather than the government. I honestly can't think of another one that's happened in my lifetime. Frankly, it's confusing and more than a little, ahem, whussy/alarming/depressing to see my government standing around rubbernecking on this. America is supposed to be the knight on the white horse leading the charge.
The first action that Al Gore has asked from us individually is to know what sort of power we consume. My utility company actually gets more power from nuclear power than most American towns: 47%. It buys 42% of it's energy from other companies that use coal.
I like that they don't own the coal-fire plants so that when I and others ask them to switch to another source, they can! That's Al Gore's second request. Call your utility company and demand clean technologies for your power. I can do that. Can you?
Third is to contact every single one of our elected representatives and demand clean power. I can do that. Actually I love doing that. It's shocking what you learn when you call and write your reps. They often tell you stuff that doesn't hit the mainstream media.
Both of my parents were elected representatives. They used the rule of thumb that if one person contacts the office concerning a particular issue, 100 other people are thinking that way.
Al Gore's fourth request is to recruit 25 people to join the cause. Link on my title to reach the website put together to organize all of us to demand action from our government. Let me know if you sign up. I'll count you as one of my 25!Let's saddle up that white horse!
