Al Gore warned of heat stress while visiting Dubai last week, drawing admiration for speaking truth to power at a climate conference, COP28.
The fearless filmmaker (An Inconvenient Truth) and scion of a famous political family, the Tennessee Gores, assailed his hosts, the ruling dynasty of Dubai, for being filthy atmospheric polluters due to their ownership of a company that is a major supplier of oil and gas.
Much of the world relies on oil and gas for energy, but Gore — and others — view it as a source of earthly and heavenly pollution due to “emissions,” popularly known as “greenhouse gases,” that warm the planet. Gore’s stated goal, and the conference’s, would limit the rise in the earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP stands for Conference of the Parties; 28 refers to the series of annual parties that have been held since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed.
These parties are expensive affairs, with hundreds, if not thousands, of attendees rocking and rolling into the wee hours and engaging in all manners of acts while indulging in fancy dishes that the Gores of yore, austere Scots-Irish pioneers, would surely disdain. The hotels are high-end and rumored to be staffed by slave labor from sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Though Dubai is officially a dry state, a wink and an exchange of money will get you a quart of the best, and, for a small extra fee, a small child, your choice of gender.
This is normal procedure at the U.N., an organization dedicated to making the world a better place, for children as well as the aptly named international civil servants who spend the money (provided by American taxpayers).
Al Gore’s courage in speaking truth to power immediately places him at the head of the possible Democratic Party candidates for the presidency, assuming the incumbent is permitted to step down by his wife and Jake Sullivan.
Gore can consolidate his position while burnishing his reputation for fearless truth-telling by going beyond the 1.5 slogan, which, let’s face it, is small. He should aim for 2.0 or even 2.1.
And he can broaden his appeal. As a former — and highly distinguished — military officer, Gore is the man to announce that in view of the attacks by pirates based in Yemen on American naval and merchant vessels in the Red Sea, the U.S. should lead an expedition, in coordination with the Emirates, to clean up the place. (RELATED: Iran Is Backing Attacks Against US Troops)
This would rid the world of a gang of Iranian proxies (as are Gaza-based Hamas and Lebanon-based Hezbollah). Too, it would stop them from burning fossil fuel recklessly with the drones and missiles they aim at American ships and at our friends in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
At the same time, it would be a way for Al Gore to signal to the Emirati leaders who may have felt offended by his remarks that all’s well that ends well and the enemy of my enemy, etc. With money to burn, they might even make a discreet contribution to his campaign.
Just to make sure the message gets across accurately, Gore can add that while we are bombarding the Houthis in Yemen, our carrier groups in the Eastern Med should drop a few loads on the Hezbollah terrorists and put their batteries of rockets out of business, a preemptive strike against fossil fuel emissions and a way to save the lives of the intended targets, civilized people who happen to be our best friends and allies in the region.
And here is another thing Al Gore can do in the service of a zero-fossil clean emission can’t-free policy: attack Venezuela! (RELATED: Five Quick Things: A War With Venezuela, Maybe?)
If they lay so much as a finger on little Guyana, Gore should say, we will bomb them back into the Amazon. The Venezuelista Commies are threatening to aggress little Guyana, a charming tropical paradise, multi-racial and Anglospheric, in support of a phony claim on a territory named Essequibo, where there may be a trillion barrels of fossil fuel.
No way, José, says Big Al. We went to war to protect little Kuwait from a fatuous territorial claim by Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and you saw what happened. You think that if we would do this for some Arabs no one had ever heard of, we wouldn’t do it for English-speaking neighbors of ours?
Guyana is a ferry ride from Puerto Rico. And we will save their oil for them, and instead of using it and emitting emissions, we will hold it for them in escrow, paying them the value thereof for their economic development so that they will not feel they got had. We can use the money we might otherwise have given to the U.N., which we will tell to get lost so that their space (rent free, by the way) can be added to New York city’s Housing Authority and serve our own people.
And, plus, we will have denied the Venezuelista Commies billions of dollars they would have spent on wicked purposes, such as buying the rights to host a soccer World Cup. And for once since the 1940s, the United Nations will have served a constructive purpose.
That someone can be Al Gore. He has the voice. He has the looks. He has the pedigree.
We’re standing by, ready to throw our support behind his crusade.
