kuniform

Of the five points former Vice President Al Gore made at the end of a question and answer session tonight, that final one sticks with me the most. After watching “An Inconvenient Truth”, I believe it. In slide after slide, fact after fact Gore lays out the case for our impact on the environment. “We’ve met the enemy, and he is us,” as Walt Kelly’s Pogo would say.

My friend, Saul Delage, had a spare ticket so I didn’t know quite what to expect. We were let in after the VIPs, so there were few seats left open. Saul was on the end of row 3, I was in the front row. The seats were comfy, but I did a lot of looking upwards.

The movie and the message is a powerful combination of moral, factual and economic information portrayed oftentimes in a stunning visual fashion. Friends of mine on the Right may dislike sitting through the mini-bio sessions where Gore explains where he’s coming from. Whatever, I didn’t like “Mission Accomplished” when it happened. Just ask them.

The rest of the movie feels a bit like National Geographic interspersed with charts and a few Simpsons-esque animated shorts. I will go and see it again, because even though he makes his case with only the most compelling of facts, it is a world wide problem. He also addressed its critics and the consequences of solving this problem. There is a decade left to address this issue before things get really bad. Bad. Catastrophic. Grim. Decade left.

The bottom line is we need to launch a campaign of national greatness, something to restore our honor and our place of leadership in the world. It has to be like Kennedy with the space program, and putting a man on the moon, and like Henry Ford and the creation of the automobile industry (though maybe not the part with Hitler and all), like Jobs and Woz with software and Martin Luther King with religious conviction. Everyone has to play a part, especially Americans, to undo the wrongs our people have committed upon this world.

We may have initially done these things through ignorance, as everyone, including the third world in places now is doing. But American ignorance on environmental issues is enforced through protectionist legislation and weak-kneed media coverage bought by corporations and the ultra-rich, who don’t necessarily like it when things change, including markets and economies. After all, Hurricane Katrina didn’t affect them much, did it?

In any event, I urge you to see the film, and to see it opening night. The more people who see it then, the more distribution it will get to the rest of the country. I am thinking we should call local high schools and colleges or something and have them watch this film. It is their world to inherit.

After the film, the neck-craning became totally worth it, as former Vice President Gore came before the audience as Al Gore, the man for a question and answer session. No secret service detail, nothing. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been patted down or something to get near him, seriously. I had several questions to ask him about his new investment fund with that Blood guy, to what Apple’s environmental responsibility is, since he sits on the board, but I couldn’t find a good way to phrase it. I’d read this Wired article and this flare-up the previous two nights, and suddenly here he was in front of me.

I was nervous, in my ratty jeans and sandals, a few feet from a man who has been a Representative, a Senator, a Vice President in the heart of political power in this country for decades. So, I snapped away a bunch of pictures with the camera I brought in. Nobody cared, but one annoyed guy when I was taking a picture of a person asking a question and forgot to turn off the flash. I’ll be posting them to flickr in a bit, since I figured schilling a bit for Mr. Gore’s movie would make up for being “that guy” with the camera.

I have never been in the presence of such an accomplished person, and I had a brief flash-back to my feelings in the year 2000. Gore made quite a few mistakes in his campaign in 2000, none of them or their scars were evident tonight.

I made a mistake, in 2000, too. When I heard the Republicans were acting up and scaring election officials, I pondered with a friend getting in a car and going down, too, to peacefully observe. I would’ve been peaceful about it, but what went down there was fraud, pure and simple, and it should not have been done. When I got out the vote for Kerry in 2004, it was to atone for that mistake and all that followed after it.

Gore would have led that program of greatness had he won in 2000, I have no doubt about it. Thos ideas had led me to vote for him in 2000, despite cringe-inducing moments like the Tipper-kiss or a few personal gaffes. I knew I had a sentence to say to him, but I couldn’t find my tongue to ask a question after I said it. Despite his accomplishments and/or despite those gaffes, he was very approachable, warm and real while speaking, and transparently good at presenting and being in public.

As Gore walked past the front row, he shook all of our hands. I told him, “You will always be my President.” He thanked me. That was my original title for this post, but “It’s a decade left” is most fitting. Despite what I said about politics, this movie is about far more than that. It’s about our survival as a species. See the movie, learn about the issue, take action. Gore asked each of us to take five friends. I’ll take ten; did I mention I have a daughter?

Update: The photos from this event are up on flickr.com now.