In an interview yesterday with Ezra Klein, Al Gore compared the fight to have his “climate change” theories accepted to the civil rights, apartheid, and gay rights struggles.
Well, I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.
Gore went on to explain that “climate change” has not caught on because “it’s like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace.”
The good news is that the tide is turning, much like when “the late Frank Lautenburg was crazy for proposing a ban on smoking in airplanes, but he was rewarded politically and then politicians began falling all over themselves to do the same.”
Fortunately, there is a group of secret Republicans who are uncomfortable with the “deniers” in their ranks. “A lot of Republicans have shared with me privately their growing discomfort with the statements of some of the deniers in their ranks. Even though they’re not yet willing to come back to advocate constructive policies, there is definitely movement.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.