The Zong

As you probably know, I really want Al Gore to run for president. Of the United States. I want him to run so bad, it actually kind of makes me angry. The reasons are all pretty obvious, from the fact that he was right about global warming and Iraq way before it was cool to his invention of the internet. He likes to say he’s part of a “different campaign,” but where on earth could he do a better job fighting climate change than as leader of the free world?

Well, Al marched confidently up the Hill today, Tipper in hand, and gave a mostly sympathetic audience of congressmen and women the business about climate change.

Mr. Gore, accompanied by his wife, Tipper, delivered the same blunt message to a joint meeting of two House subcommittees this morning and a Senate hearing this afternoon: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, and meaningful cuts in emissions linked to warming will only happen if the United States takes the lead.

In the House of Representatives, there was relatively little debate on the underlying science; the atmosphere was more that of a college lecture hall.

Not so in the Senate, where James Inhofe continues to think global warming is a hoax, and perhaps also thinks that cavemen used to get around by riding dinosaurs.

“It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements,” Mr. Inhofe said. He then estimated the cost of proposals to reduce emission of heat-trapping gases at $300 billion and said: “The poor pay for it and the science isn’t there. We just can’t do that to America,” Mr. Vice President. And we’re not going to.”

$300 billion to save the entire world? How much is the War in Iraq costing us?

Inhofe isn’t the only guy in the Senate who has prayed himself retarded. Check out this crazy bastard:

Later, Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, raised the question of whether sunspots are the cause of global warming. He also argued that the carbon-controlling legislation favored by many Democrats would send his poor constituents’ heating bills up 80 percent.

I’ll ask it once again: Why do conservatives ever pretend to give two shits about the heating bills of the poor? I’d respect them a lot more if they just came out and said “The corporations that helped get me elected don’t want to spend the money on this shit, so go buy an air conditioner and leave me alone.”

It was really awesome when Barbara Boxer waved her gavel at Inhofe during the proceedings.

Inhofe asked Gore for his reaction, but then quickly cut him off saying Gore had taken up too much time. When Gore tried to go on, Inhofe repeatedly interrupted, adding, “I don’t want to be rude, but from now on, I’m going to ask you to respond…in writing.” Inhofe said Gore could respond verbally only if it was a “very brief response.”

Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) finally intervened. “Would you agree to let the Vice President answer your questions?” Inhofe said Gore could respond when he was done talking, but Boxer wouldn’t have it: “No, that isn’t the rule. You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules.”

You go, Babs.

It must be frustrating for Gore to run up against these guys again and again, when he’s obviously trying to separate the subject from politics. I’d love to ask these conservatives why they think Al Gore has been doing this for so long. What reason does he have to lie about this? Is he part of some vast conspiracy to make things harder for the energy lobby? The thing is, they know he’s telling the truth, and that’s why they’re more scared of him than they are of minorities who vote.

I know he still says he has no “plans” to run, but if you saw him say this stuff today, you’d have to think it would appeal to people of both parties.

Waving his finger at some 40 House members, he said, “A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions.”

Either, he said, “they will ask: what in God’s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”

- M.G.