Having completed my reading of Al Gore's essay "Climate of Denial," I offer a brief summary of the rest.

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                23  June 2011: Gore in Rolling Stone: "Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand"

I have completed my reading of Al Gore's essay "Climate of Denial," published online yesterday and on sale in hard copy tomorrow by Rolling Stone--the ironic outgrowth of fishing for a blog topic last week.

At that time, in what turned out to be a psychic development, I idly wondered what Al Gore thought of the progress we'd made since his famous challenge in July 2008, which was, in a phrase, "to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage in ten years."

I was pretty sure that he was bitterly disappointed. I emailed his office and asked them about this and the response was that an answer was imminent but that I should keep my mouth and blog quiet until this week.

Yesterday Gore affirmed his disappointment in no uncertain terms, without reference to his 2008 challenge, but blaming power and greed before focusing in more specifically on points where Obama's response so far has fallen far short of adequate.

Using the weather extremes that have plagued the globe in the last year to bolster his point about the damage already wrought by global warming, Gore enumerated the tornados, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, drought, wild fires, and more as symptoms of rapidly metastatizing global warming.

All these have come about not by coincidence, nor due to cyclical variations, but because of our rampant abuse of the environment. Fully 85 percent of our energy sources contain hydrocarbons that are destroying our ecosystem.

 Hydrocarbons are dispensed at gargantuan profits to a microscopic but extremely powerful and hugely wealthy, greedy percentage of the population, and hence this loathsome, ignorant bloc is doing all that it can to maintain this proportion if not increase it.

They are casting aside reason, the enlightened spring of our civilization, in favor of blind greed. Those ideals they profess in church on Sundays are being ravaged all seven days of the week.

Is this old news?

I searched the word "hope" throughout his document and found it twice, but in neither context did it offer us the hope that his 2008 challenge did.

Instead, the anchor word was "choice." We can choose to speak truth to power unrelentingly and creatively at the grassroots level. Progress has been made in several categories of renewable energy, including solar and wind power, photovoltaic cells, geothermal power, and sustainable forestry and agriculture.

We can choose to force aside that 500-ton leviathan, the market for oil, natural gas, and other pollutants, and reallocate our finances and motivations in a direction that will rescue our society from "ecological curses" that will last for millennia, infinitely and miserably sustainable themselves.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," Gore advised, quoting the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

And how can the force of our demand divert the economy from lethal to adjuvant supply?

Gore spelled out the steps, all up to us:

First, become an advocate and speak up when opportunities arise. Be part of the informed electorate.

Second, alter all destructive quotidian habits that seem incidental to better ones that help the environment. Use forms of renewable energy, avoid polluting the atmosphere as much as possible.

Third, join advocate organizations like Gore's own Alliance for Climate Protection--there is power in numbers to combat the tough, relentless lobbies of corruption that militate for destructive policies and expenditures constantly and forcefully.

Fourth, pummel the press, which is such putty in the hands of the persistent because, despite the pressures of corruption, "many of them are surprisingly responsive to a genuine outpouring of opinion from their viewers and readers."

And finally, as for "the forces that be," our political system, "it is not so far gone that candidates and elected officials don't have to pay attention to persistent, engaged and committed individuals."

Powerful images of ravished reality as well as hypotheticals should remain in the popular discourse--within observations like

"It is not uncommon for the nightly newscast to resemble a nature hike through the Book of Revelation"--

as much as Armageddon has occupied so many minds courtesy of yellow press.

Appealing to no less of a historical figure than FDR, Gore wrote that "[he] once told civil rights leaders who were pressing him for change that he agreed with them about the need for greater equality for black Americans. Then, as the story goes, he added with a wry smile, 'Now go out and make me do it.'"

It took awhile and much remains to be done to combat racism but, Gore warns, where the environment is concerned we are each day, more and more, spending whatever capital remains to us and it is time to act, not simply agree. Our thoughts and words must grow wings.

That dove I wrote about earlier today must come back to us with a scion of renewable energy in its beak, instead of a feather soaked in polluted oil.

As a politician, Gore has brought down much disapproval upon himself and I am full of questions he'll never answer, but in this area, the future of civilization as we know it, his findings are irrefutable and his unceasing efforts fully worth the Nobel prize he was awarded--the prize for peace--something we crave at every level of existence.

(c)

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.