Gore Launches Ambitious Advocacy Campaign on Climate

By Juliet Eilperin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001880.html?hpid=topnews

Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.

The Alliance for Climate Protection's "we" campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from "American Idol" to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It highlights the extent to which Americans' growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

"This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it."

Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he said. While Gore declined to quantify his contribution to the effort, he has devoted all his proceeds from the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," the best-selling companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and several international prizes, such as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which add up to more than $2.7 million. Paramount Classics, the documentary's distributor, has pledged 5 percent of the film's profits to the group, and some of the money raised through the 2007 Live Earth concerts will help the campaign, along with Gore's proceeds from an upcoming book on climate change.

Our oil fueled, highly consumptive consumer driven lifestyles are very, very addictive.

These ads are a good start and will certainly point out our bad habits, but knowing we have a bad habit is a lot different than taking action to quit the habit. Most smokers will freely admit that smoking is bad for them, but few actually quit.

does Gore need to spend $300 million to persuade them about anything? These are the people who rank with flat-earthers, although that demeans them a little.

Why doesn't he just ignore them if there are so few of them?

Isn't the $300M just the advertising budget for Gore's carbon offsetting business?

http://www.generationim.com/philosophy/

so you need a campaign to fool people.

I expect it to be something like...

for rich people, flying is a necessity,
therefore, jet fuel for international flight must
continue to be tax free,
but,
poor people driving a car by is a luxury,
so motor fuel taxes should go up.

As in another thread, unless someone is willing to call it what it is('Eco-System Collapse'), we will not have any chance of saving life on this planet.

People still don't believe how serious this is, it reminds me of Horton Hears a Who, or the Zen Koan about the Tree in the Forest(no Observor, etc.).

I already know it's probably too late, I think we'll know within two years most.