As history dictates and fiction mirrors, leaders (both good and bad) exert their influence on people, thereby bonding them with a common vision and mission. Very often this also involves giving the people under them a common enemy.
Barack Obama leads by extolling change, thus for the Americans, the common enemy is the previous administration.
Adolf Hitler, famed now for his mass extermination of European Jews, had a strong and united Germany, willing to live and die for the Third Reich.
The Archbishop, leader of the Christian world, unites the Christians in not only exalting and serving God, but also in deriding Satan and his ways.
For those who read Wicked, the Wizard of Oz used Animals (and later, Elphaba) as the common enemy, and as such he controlled the Ozians well.
And for High School Musical fans, Troy led the East High Wildcats to victory by giving them the West High Knights as a common enemy.
As one can see, leaders everywhere need common enemies (read: WAR ON TERROR).
And so does Al Gore.
Al Gore's leadership is a unique one. Like the examples here, his leadership does indeed have a common enemy - ourselves.
And as such, the villain of this story never goes away. It never disappears, and it can never be vanquished. Hitler may have, if he was extremely zealous and got many more people and much more technology in on it, actually removed completely the Jews of Europe. Obama may end up completely revolutionising the American ways of government. Wildcats might crush the Knights into the ground, never for them to rise once more. Elphaba died. And one day, maybe the works of Satan may be annihilated in the presence of God.
But for the leadership of Gore, the common enemy will never perish. For any and every organism on this planet that lives and breathes is an enemy. Anything that can respire (CO2), that can fart (CH4), burp, pee, shit, and/or decompose, they are all enemies.
That includes youuuuuu, Mister Polar Bear. Stop clinging to your summer iceberg and drown yourself now, you don't deserve to live.
That also includes youuuuu, Mister Tree. That's right, when you decompose you release greenhouse gases into the air too. I'd ask you not to die, but your leaves fall and those decompose anyway.
Don't even get me started on our basic needs. If I were to follow this climate change shebang completely, I would curse the day Thomas Alva Edison gave us the gift of the incandescent lightbulb. Why didn't he make it environmentally friendly? Why did he make it at all? Look at the disgusting mess it's put us in! I would sleep at night without air conditioning (CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS OHNOES!), or even a fan (FOSSIL FUELS, PEOPLE. FOSSIL FUELS!), and I would kena mosquito bites all over my body, not that I don't already have them. I would go to school and use a quill pen (markers are made in factories, which burn fossil fuels, and so are ballpoint pens, gel pens, and pencils, and most other stationery), I would use ink (As if it wasn't inconvenient enough, OH HEAVENS NO, making ancient India Ink means burning tar! Think of the greenhouse gases!), and I would write on papyrus. And what are Twisties and nachos and potato chips? Come to think of it, I'd have died of hunger by then, because you can't so much as light a fire without carbon dioxide going into the air.
I won't even bother continuing on that.
In any case, there's evidence it's not our fault.
Solar activity is at a high now. Models created to predict climate on our planet from the sun’s activity show that the planet will continue to cool over the next 500 years with sporadic periods of warming. In addition, the sun has shown very few sunspots so far this year and the Earth’s northern hemisphere recorded record cold and frozen precipitation.
For people who didn't bother to read that...
WE'RE COOLING DOWN.
Further proof... the Antarctic ice caps are growing, so you don't have to worry about the sea level rising and destroying the world. Just look at this.
Also, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Neptune's moon, and Pluto have all been experiencing signs of global warming, none of which have been set foot on (defiled?) by human presence. And if they're having global warming, then we're really not the issue here, are we?
And what are carbon credits for anyway? They look more like a feel-good mechanism to me, there doesn't seem to be a place for all that money you're giving away to go to, other than into pockets of guilt trippers of course.
Now I'm not going to deride environmentalists and call them stupid or misguided or anything. They're very free to believe that the world is in great epic danger, and that we're going to all die, and it's all our fault (and theirs too, no matter how hard they try). I'm not going to be defeatist and tell everyone that there's no point saving energy by buying eco-bags, or using energy-efficient light-bulbs and air-conditioners, or taking three-minute cold showers, or recycling waste, or never ever using plastic bags, since we're still breathing, farting, burping, passing biological waste, and hence are still an issue. I'm not going to tell people that they should kill themselves to decrease the world population for the greater good of retarding climate change.
I'm going to not care, because there's enough proof out there for me to say global warming isn't really my fault (3-5% perhaps, if you want to be anal, but seriously). If I save the environment over the course of my life, like by buying a Borders bag or that disgustingly expensive Anya Hindmarch bag that says "I'm not a Plastic Bag" (how irritating), I most probably won't be doing it consciously, and if it makes my environmentalist acquaintances happy, good for them.
And a final note before I finish this... the environmentalists may be following their plans to save the world, but their leader sure isn't.
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