Critical Times

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nobel prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore launched a three-year, $300 million advocacy campaign calling for the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The “We” campaign by Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection will combine advertising and online organizing with grassroots groups. It is aimed at educating the public about global warming and urging solutions from elected officials.

“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 told The Washington Post.
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Gore said the campaign will be funded, in part, from all his profits from the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and its companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and his $750,000 share of 2007 Nobel Peace Prize cash award.

“The options available to civilization worldwide to avert this terribly destructive pattern are beginning to slip away from us,” Gore said. “The path for recovery runs right through Washington.”

The Alliance for Climate Protection was founded in 2006 by Gore, who currently serves as the chairman of its bipartisan board of directors.

In a fact sheet describing the campaign, the Alliance said its goal is to enlist “10 million citizens to become climate activists” by using “a robust paid media campaign, cutting‐edge online activation and partnerships with mainstream civic and religious organizations.”

The advertising campaign will equate the climate-change movement with other grand historic endeavors, like stopping fascism in Europe during World War II, overcoming segregation in the United States and putting the first man on the moon.