Gore's Disastrous Green Agenda

On Friday, Al Gore declared that "prosperity is on the ballot" and described himself as "the right ... choice to keep it going." But those who are watching his campaign more closely just got a reminder of who the real Al Gore is: an environmental zealot out to shut down our industrial economy.

So far in this election, Gore has run as a moderate. Viewers who watched the presidential debates would never guess that this is the same man who wrote the anti-industrial screed "Earth in the Balance," his 1992 book which called for us to "reorganize our civilization" around the global warming scare. But that's not what voters have been hearing; all they've heard so far is Gore talking about how he wants to maintain the nation's prosperity and what he would do to bring down the price of gasoline.

But Gore now finds himself competing with Ralph Nader, who is splitting the vote of the hard-core left in key states like Wisconsin and California. So Gore is running back to his green roots, selling himself as the candidate who will "do something" about global warming. Why Gore wants to do something, and what it is he wants to do, ought to frighten the American voter.

The trigger for Gore's new campaign theme was the leak of a summary of a United Nations report on global warming. The summary claimed not only that catastrophic global warming is occurring -- a dubious claim to begin with -- but also that human beings are definitely to blame.

But the UN report's summary is a notoriously politicized document. In the words of Richard Lindzen -- an MIT climatologist and global-warming skeptic who co-authored one of the chapters in the body of the report-the summary misrepresents the real science and is full of "waffle words designed for one thing, to ensure that the (global warming) issue remains important enough that it not be put on the back burner." In other words, the summary isn't a scientific report; it's a spin doctor's press release.

This shouldn't be any surprise. The whole reason for the UN panel's existence is political, not scientific. Its job is to manufacture a scientific "consensus" -- regardless of the scientific facts -- and justify massive new government controls. For politicians like Gore, such reports are merely a rationalization for the agenda they've been pursuing for decades -- long before there was even a pretense of scientific proof.

That Gore would exploit distorted science to promote a political agenda is bad enough. The political agenda he's trying to promote is even worse.

In campaign speeches, Gore says that we have to do "something" about global warming. He doesn't say what that something is, and for good reason: if they heard the specifics, voters would recoil in horror. As vice president, Gore was a crucial backer of something called the Kyoto Protocol, a UN treaty that would require countries like ours to slash their use of fossil fuels.

Under this agreement, America would be required to cut its carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels. Myron Ebell, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, estimates this would mean cutting our current fossil fuel use by as much as one fourth.

What does this mean? The economy runs on power -- especially today's booming, high-tech information economy. So when Gore wants to slash power use by 25 percent, what he's really asking us to do is cut our prosperity by 25 percent.

And that's an understatement. How would Americans be convinced to cut their use of oil, gas and coal? Gore would have to shut down power plants, jack up gasoline prices, and impose a whole network of controls designed to turn off our lights, turn down our thermostats, and black out the power grids. Gore's attempt to force America to comply with the Kyoto Protocol would plunge the nation into a self-made energy crisis that would make the 1970s look like a utopia.

Of course, Gore claims that we can compensate for this disaster with "conservation" and "alternative fuels." Well, Jimmy Carter said the same thing back in the 70s. It's a claim every bit as speculative and imaginary as the science behind the global warming scare.

In "Earth in the Balance," Gore described industrial affluence as an unhealthy "addiction" that must be broken. Remember that when you hear him talk about how to "keep the prosperity going." Whatever he may say during the election, Al Gore's real goal is not to achieve prosperity, but to sacrifice it.

Robert Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute from 2000 to 2004. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Mr. Tracinski is editor and publisher of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily, which offer daily news and analysis from a pro-reason, pro-individualist perspective. To receive a free 30-day trial of the TIA Daily and a FREE pdf issue of the Intellectual Activist please go to TIADaily.com and enter your email address.