File under “With friends like these”. This is what former Vice President Al Gore has had to say about President Obama’s record on climate change:
[Obama] has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community, including our own National Academy, to bring the reality of the science before the public.
In a 7,000-word article for Rolling Stone, Gore maintained that the President “has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis”. Ouch. The piece is equally, if not more, critical of the media and of America’s law makers in Congress but Gore does not stint in his criticism of Obama and in particular his inability to make the case for action.
While acknowledging the nature of the task in hand (“Those of us who support and admire President Obama understand how difficult the politics of this issue are in the context of the massive opposition to doing anything at all”) Gore nonetheless concludes that Obama has “failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change”. Gore adds:
After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority.
And for good measure:
He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States, apparently in an effort to defuse criticism from those who argue speciously that ‘drill, baby, drill’ is the answer to our growing dependence on foreign oil.
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