Al Gore on global warming

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Al Gore was interviewed on the BBC Two's The Daily Politics show earlier today. The interviewer is co-host Jenny Scott. Next to Gore is Virgin founder and rebel billionaire philanthropist Richard Branson (who, as The Washington Post is reporting, has "offered a $25 million prize... to anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by removing at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the Earth's atmosphere"). The topic is global warming. Here's the YouTube clip. It's quite long -- 8:41 -- but well worth it. Gore is an impressive and impassioned advocate for action to combat the climate crisis.

It ends -- starting at 5:48 -- with left-versus-right commentary back in the studio. The global warming denier is Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday, a popular right-wing British tabloid. Peter, younger brother to Christopher (another pompous ass -- how did their parents manage it?), is a former Trotskyite and now an independent conservative whose positions are generally rightist (particularly on moral and cultural issues), nationalist (he opposed the Iraq War), and at times oddly libertarian (and anti-government). His argument here, common among the deniers if never quite expressed so blatantly, is relativistic: This is just the current view. There have been other views. No view is superior to any other view. So who is to say that global warming is true? (Who is to say that anything is true? My, how conservatives have come to resemble postmodernists. Sad, pathetic, dangerous, and utterly irresponsible.)

Please watch. It's important.