Gore brings inconvenient message to Congress
Submitted on March 21, 2007 - 5:20pm.
Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
WASHINGTON - Movie stars often champion favorite causes on Capitol hill. But it’s the rare movie star who was once a member of the very committees holding the hearing.
And when the star is former vice president Al Gore, Congress listens.
Gore spoke before House and Senate committee hearings Wednesday, urging Congress to find a bipartisan solution to the climate crisis.
“Our world faces a true planetary emergency,” Gore said. “What we’re facing now is a crisis that is by far the most serious we’ve ever faced. The way we’re going to solve it is by asking you on both sides of the aisle to do what some people have, as you know, begun to fear we don’t have the capacity to do anymore. I know they’re wrong.”
Gore’s lecture about the environment became a movie and won an Academy Award last month.
He sat beside several boxes in the House committee room that he said were filled with messages and petitions from 516,000 people who support his cause. He wanted to show he is not alone in his fight to end global warming, he said.
Gore testified before a joint meeting of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and air quality and the Science and Technology subcommittee on energy and environment. Later in the day, he spoke before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
He called for an immediate freeze on carbon emissions and then a reduction from current levels. Gore also had a long list of recommendations for Congress, including banning incandescent light bulbs, raising standards for auto emissions, negotiating a new international environmental treaty and starting a national mortgage program to promote the use of home energy-saving technologies.
Gore’s words were met with support from many committee members. They offered greetings of, “Welcome home,” or “Welcome back,” to the former vice president, who served on both the House and Senate committees as a representative and senator.
But some Republicans’ tone was cooler. They said that, while they supported some of Gore’s recommendations, they were concerned about the cost.
“Who’s gonna pay for it? Ask China what they think about paying for it. Ask Mexico. Ask India,” said Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.
Gore agreed some of the solutions to the climate crisis would be costly, but he said others would save money by adding to the economy, creating jobs and reducing energy spending. The key is to pick and choose among strategies, he said.
Other Republicans were concerned that the research behind Gore’s statements is too uncertain for them to move forward. They challenged many of the claims in Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The House committees also invited Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist at the Copenhagen Business School and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” to testify. In his prepared remarks, he said many of Gore’s claims are “wildly exaggerated,” or “simply incorrect.”
“Global warming science is uneven and evolving,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas. “We need to be deliberative and careful when we talk about so-called scientific facts”
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who once called global warming, “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people,” echoed those concerns.
But Gore urged critics in both hearings to act now.
“The planet has a fever,” he said. “If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If your doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem. If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame retardant, you take action.”
Recent Comments