Al Gore Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

They can take issue with the presentation. They can shoot a few holes in the science. They can chalk it up as sheer anomaly, but for some reason, the ice is retreating about 100,000 years ahead of earth's regularly programmed schedule, and the obliquity of the ecliptic and the gyroscopic precession of the earth are a mite touchy about where all that ice-weight shifts to when it melts.

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have made people aware that Something's Up, and are deservedly sharing this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The picture above is of Mt. Everest. Without snow.

A Convenient Oscar

Al Gore is going to take a triumphant walk down a red carpet tomorrow to the thunderous cheers and applause of the most famous people in the world. Where? At the Academy Awards, of course. 'An Inconvenient Truth' is going to win at least one Oscar, for best documentary film. It only brought in $24 million in theater release, making it the third-highest grossing documentary of all time, but the waves it has made all over the world keep getting stronger. A man who has spent his time in the wilderness will return as a hero, and entertainment will finally, literally be united with politics. It will be one of the great Oscars moments, and I hope to watch it.

Other films nominated for best documentary feature include Deliver Us From Evil, about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; Iraq in Fragments, about the Sunni-Shiite conflict in that country; Jesus Camp, about a summer camp for evangelical Christians, and My Country, My Country, about the months leading up to the January 2005 elections in Iraq. Fine films, I'm sure. It's possible Gore will get edged out by one of them, demand a recount, and be overruled by a 5-to-4 Supreme Court vote. But I suspect this is Al Gore's year for Oscar; he'll take the adulation well, charming the crowd and the world. I'll go out on a rather sturdy limb and predict he'll win the Nobel Peace Prize this year, too.

There has been some speculation, as CNN reports, that Gore will use his Oscar speech to announce his candidacy for the Presidency. That would surprise me, but it would be a very pleasant one. I've previously speculated that Gore won't be able to avoid making a White House run, simply because people will be all over him to do so from now until the February primaries next year, and they won't give up even then. We desperately need his help, his vision is clear, and his solutions are acceptable to everyone but Big Oil. (Poor, poor Big Oil. "C'mon! Let's have one more war over it, and make it a big one! You've got one left in ya!) My un-famous voice is hereby added to the chorus: for god's sake, Al, RUN!

By the way, if you meet anyone (and you will) who is still on the fence about Global Climate Change, or openly poo-poos it, there are a couple simple ways to either open their minds or shut their yaps, both generally desireable outcomes. It's true: the science Gore presented in his movie and book has possible flaws in it, he is a politician, scientists are motivated to stir up fears for grant money, and climate change is scientifically unproveable anyway. But those points are pointedly irrelevant. Two realities make them so.

First, if the cause and effect relationships associated between emissions and climate change are unknown and Global Warming is unproven, then the dictates of common sense greatly favor conservatism in policy-setting, not radical optimism. Not having any policy at all is radical optimism, and that could get us killed because we're playing dice with the fate of our species while in a state of ignorance. Conservatism would be all for keeping the atmosphere the way it is, even for trying to set the clock back a bit. Second, when you burn a carbon-based material, you create waste products like CO2. Carbon dioxide goes up into the atmosphere. Too much carbon dioxide is the signature of a dead planet. Mars, for example, has plenty of it. As Elton John notes in his song Rocket Man, "Mars ain't the place to raise your kids...in fact, it's cold as hell."

If Gore announces his candidacy, his only viable competitor will be Barack Obama, whom he would gladly name as running mate. Yes, this is wishful thinking, but it would be both a brilliant way of bringing in the man with the magic and domestic policy passion and gain a bullet-proof vest at the same time. If some redneck hopped up on Rush Limbaugh were to shoot Gore, they would then have to endure the humiliation of seeing America's first black President. And we wouldn't want that, would we? Heavens, no.

Wishful thinking. I can already hear what the pundits would call a Gore-Obama ticket: Go-Bama. I checked the web sites for registration. They're already taken. And I'm hardly the only one wishing: there are a whole passel of people discussing the same thing over at algore.org right now.

The Leader With A Thousand Faces: Ancient Archetypes And The 2008 Presidential Elections

A prince wounded by the treachery of usurpers was banished to the wildernerness, where he became a hairy man. People said they could hear his voice sometimes out in the wilderness, prophesying nonsense. Only a curious little orphan who was hungry one day started going into his leaky old rowboat to fish and listen to his stories. Then one day the hairy man's prophecies started coming true, so the villagers hurried back to find him, and said, "Come, speak to us, tell us the secrets so that we may be saved. All else we ask of you is that you bathe." The prince thought about the villagers offer very hard, and finally said, "Ok. I'll bathe. But the beard stays," and he came back to claim his true throne.

The archetypes above are straight out of Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," harking back to the tales little children have heard since stories were only remembered, and not written. It's a powerful archetype, a fable of leadership and wisdom watered down into our popular culture as the storybook comeback. Al Gore fits it.

He's going to have a hard time not running for President, because people are begging him to. Not just little people, either. Big people. Hillary Clinton is great at raising money from special interest groups, hundreds of millions, but each check has a ball and chain attached. Al Gore could raise $2 billion from just two individuals, with no strings attached other than "go get our democracy back." I don't mean to say an election is all about money, only to indicate how much it matters where the money comes from, and how much more energy and passion would be behind Gore. If he entered the Presidential race, money would not be an issue.

Back in late 2000, when only an election was in the balance, and not the earth, over lunch I told my entire development team that if the election was decided for Bush, they should seriously consider making plans to leave the country or obtain a second passport. It was something along the lines of, "I don't know exactly how bad it'll be, but Dubya's going to be worse than I can imagine." Never having voted in an election, and having little knowledge of GWB or Al Gore, and no qualifications as a political prognosticator, they were still kind enough to not laugh. But that's how portentous the 2000 election seemed to my intuition. It's impossible to say what would've happened if things had gone differently, and as another Gore (Vidal) says, there's only one political party in the United States, and it's called the Property Party. That may be. But good leadership matters. You can't have good governance with bad leadership.

The alternate reality game above is pretty powerful stuff, and if Gore steps up to run, I'm not the only one who will think, "No. Really. What would have happened if Gore had been sworn in back in 2001?" Here's what I wouldn't be alone in thinking: 9/11 wouldn't have happened. The Global War On Terror wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't be in Iraq. The United States would have an energy policy. We wouldn't be torturing US citizens. We wouldn't be playing the next rounds of "Double That Deficit" and "Flush The Country Down The Toilet." I'd probably be able to find a good set of solar panels, put them on the roof of my house, put a windmill in my back yard, and get a tax break for it. The floundering US car companies might even have developed some good hybrid vehicles by now.

Maybe that's all dreaming. The important thing is, it's natural conjecture which will occur if, and more likely when, Al Gore decides sometime in 2007 to run. Love him or hate him, believe you or not in inconvenient truths, Gore learned much in the wilderness, and he likes it there. He can take or leave the Presidency, and will only run on his terms, which means he'll be genuine. If he runs and is not shot, he will be elected President. And I don't think he would be: Gore offers what might be called "Better Energy," which is a solution corporate elites, public companies, private citizens, utilities, and politicians can all line up behind. It's a New Deal for what we'll use to power the country.

But back to our archetypes. What of the curious orphan? Barack Obama was born for the part, and would make an excellent Vice President. Indulge me for a moment. Ralph Nader as Energy Secretary. Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of Defense. Ha. I really am dreaming. There are a lot of hurdles here, and even more trenches. But what be dreamt, may be done.

Oh, and Hillary Clinton? I'm not sure what Joseph Campbell called her archetype. But there is a more recent perfect fit for her: she was was born to play Evita Peron. Or, if she would accept the role, a Secretary of State who could out-do Kissinger on his best day.