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Gore stars in movie campaign to protect Earth Thomas Ferraro
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Gore brushes aside talk of another run for the U.S. presidency and wages a new campaign to protect the Earth that he says must be won.
The former Democratic vice president sounds the alarm as a citizen activist armed with his old slide show turned into a Hollywood movie about the threat of global warming.
"We face a planetary emergency," Gore told Reuters in advance of next week's opening in U.S. theaters of his critically acclaimed documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." It makes the case for the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change.
At a special showing in Washington on Wednesday night that drew many members of the U.S. Congress, Gore said, "This should be a priority of the U.S. House and Senate."
"It's a powerful movie," Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut said afterward. "If enough people see it, it could move Congress."
Having narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, Gore faces new speculation because of the movie, he may make another White House bid.
"I have no plans to run for president again," Gore said. "I have found other ways to serve and I'm enjoying them."
Gore has been hailed as an articulate innovator and mocked as a boring exaggerator. His movie blends the story of his life with a downright scary assessment of global warming.
In it, Gore displays pictures, computer simulations and studies on the greenhouse effect that scientists worldwide contend is heating up Earth.
'THIS IS A MORAL ISSUE'
So-called greenhouse gases -- notably carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels -- trap heat around Earth like a blanket, contributing to global warming, scientists say.
While some long-term uncertainties persist, global warming has been blamed for melting ice caps, rising sea levels, spreading of disease, more severe hurricanes and, with shifting weather patterns, increased floods and droughts.
The United States is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, but efforts to get Congress to put mandatory caps on them have repeatedly failed.
As vice president, Gore helped negotiate the Kyoto treaty on climate change that he noted 132 advanced nations ratified. But Bush rejected the pact to reduce emissions after taking office.
Gore said he's encouraged, though, by a number of recent developments, including some of U.S. companies taking steps to cut emissions and more than 200 U.S. cities backing the Kyoto treaty and meeting the restrictions.
Still, critics persist.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative advocacy group that reflects the Bush administration's free-market approach, unveiled a TV ad campaign this week that denounces efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
"It is nothing short of an attempt to suppress energy use, which in turn would be economically devastating -- all to avert an alleged catastrophe whose scientific basis is dubious," said Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the institute.
Gore rejects such talk. He cites a broad consensus in the scientific community about the existence of global warming, and the widespread contention that it needs to be curbed within the next decade before "we pass a point of no return."
He said he has shown his slide show on global warming more than a thousand times in the past 30 years. He began showing it again, more frequently, after the 2000 election.
The movie grew out of one such showing in Los Angeles that attracted the attention of Hollywood producers.
"They said they could take the message to many more people in a shorter period of time," Gore said. "This is a moral issue."
Reuters/VNU
Released on: May 18, 2006
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