House of Eratosthenes

A movie about Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation about global warming doesn�t sound all that exciting, but if you liked “March of the Penguins,” you�ll love “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore is as relentless in his travels to save the planet and faces almost as many obstacles as those penguins making their way across the tundra.

Getting the country to face up to global warming is his life�s mission, and it could be his ticket to the presidency.
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Gore has become the darling of the left, yet global warming is not, or shouldn�t be, a partisan issue. The days when the first President Bush mocked Gore as “Ozone Man” are over, relegated to the dustbin of history. Conservative evangelical Christians see themselves as stewards of the earth. When asked at a screening of his film in Washington this week what he would say to Bush�s claim that global warming needs further study, Gore quipped, “I hope he finds the real killer,” adding quickly, “I shouldn�t have said that.”

Let us assume, for just a second or two, that my third clever one-liner does not hold. Let us presume that the way you prove something doesn’t matter at all…what you end up proving, is all that counts. Let us presume, further, that “Ozone Man is relegated to the dustbin of history” and it is now an accepted, indisputable fact that man-made global warming threatens to doom us all. Let us award the benefit of any doubt, also, to those who apprehensively intone that we are entering our final days of potentially doing something effective to prevent it.

Now, do these presumptions not make Clift’s epistle seem all the more strange? For now, what we are presuming is that “An Inconvenient Truth” is, after all, true. Our ecosystem is in danger. We’re doing it to ourselves. The policies that are trashing the environment, will be left in place for another three years, because our current President is waiting to find “the real killer.”

So little angst about our final few days before ecological armageddon; so much exuberance about this “darling of the left” and his “ticket to the White House.”

If you really did think we were slowly killing ourselves by eighty-sixing our own environment, would it matter worth a hill of beans what darling Chicken Little Superstar was standing on the cusp of being swept into the White House?

This is the kind of thing that makes me believe the environment has nothing, not one damn thing, to do with anything. This article is all celebration, almost as if Gore has already won the Presidency. Hope springs eternal, I suppose — but where is the suspense? Where is the attitude of “Oh my God, I hope he gets in there in time to reverse these horrible policies and save our planet!”

Any change in our reckoning of global warming, should it lead to a change in our policies toward it, would have something to do with our continuing global survival. If that is presumed to be the case, the fawning over a 57-year-old future presidential candidate, even one deemed more worthy of having a shot than he had six years ago, seems strangely irrelevant. But it’s not irrelevant to Clift, and people who write articles like hers. The breathless anticipation of the electoral process that takes place quadrennially, amongst the apelike creatures that happen to infest this doomed ecosystem, is all that matters. The doomed ecosystem itself, merits mention only insofar as how the oncoming doomsday may influence the quadrennial election process.

So I don’t think this whole issue is about ecological doom, in other words, “what is proven.” I think what it’s all about, is that huge toothpaste tube full of the baby-killin’, soldier-slandering, unionized, mediocrity-promoting liberal mish-mash we’ll have shoved down our throats after Al Gore, or whoever, gets in there. And, it’s all about how you go about proving things…making people believe there is no God, simply because an elitist layer told them they should believe that. Making people believe the world is coming to an end unless something is done, because the elitist layer told them they should believe that. Making people believe Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman, because Bill Clinton’s friends tell them to believe that.

We’re in a dangerous time right now. By giving us precise instructions on what to believe, the know-it-alls are “proving” to us things they can’t prove; in fact, some things no one could ever prove. And if we show the slightest bit of reluctance to swallow what they’re feeding us, head-to-tail and every piece of fin and gut in between, we’re showing “hostility” to what is now being called “science.” Throughout history, science has been synonymous with a healthy skepticism to the prevailing viewpoint. What is called epistemology, has always been an important ingredient of it. Today, science has become the prevailing viewpoint, having nothing whatsoever to do with epistemology, and a healthy skepticism toward it has been re-defined as the know-nothing, knuckle-dragging, slope-foreheaded province of uneducated rednecks.

Since the real issue isn’t the environment, I think it’s captured by what’s written above. Science By Decree. Listen to the High Priests to find out what’s true. Who ya gonna believe, the council of wise village elders, or your lyin’ eyes?

Those who wisely counsel us about our impending self-destruction, are quite agitated about it…with glee, because their guy might get into the White House over it. Just before the world is supposed to go boom, according to their own arguments. Nevermind. The White House is the most important thing…on this doomed planet.

This is surreal. But not unusual. Not in the least.

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Earth in the Balance?Monday, May 1st, 2006

Earth in the Balance?
Monday, May 1st, 2006