Footnote to doomsday February 8, 2007

FRANKLY, I don’t know why the Democrats are limiting their choices only to people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for 2008. Of course, I’d like nothing better than to see the first woman president of America. About time it had one. And given that Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House, has broken the barriers, Hillary seems to have a good crack at the White House. And, of course, I’d like nothing better than to see the first mulatto become president of America, which would break an even bigger American taboo.

But there is better. It comes in the person of Al Gore. I don’t know why he shouldn’t be shoo-in.

It’s not just because he will be fighting a Republican foe laboring under George W. Bush’s jagged shadow. It’s also because hindsight has shown that Bush did not just lie about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he lied about the votes he got in Florida. Gore should have been US president way back in 2000. I don’t know why he can’t get a bagful of sympathy votes for that alone. Surely the American voters know how to pay back someone they owe, and owe big?

But far, far more than that, it’s because Gore has not just become the biggest thing in America of late, he’s become the biggest thing on the planet of late. That is because his crusade to save the planet from its biggest scourge, which is its annihilation by man-made global warming, has just been given a terrific push by the recent report of a UN panel of scientists saying global warming is real, global warming is dire, and global warming is here. There are no ifs and buts about it: The planet is dying even as we speak.

Of course, that report comes well before the American presidential election of 2008, but it is not likely to be forgotten -- neither by the American voters nor indeed by the citizens of the world. The reason for it -- a most frightening one -- is that there will be no lack of terrifying reminders of it over the next couple of years. The report predicts that in the immediate future, we are going to have intolerable heat waves and droughts along with storms, hurricanes and cyclones of mind-boggling fury. And further on in that future, unless something drastic is done to stop it, another Ice Age. The super storms that hit this country late last year, packing winds of more than 200 kph, already gave a hint of the shape of things to come. As does Hurricane Katrina, which flattened out New Orleans a couple of years ago. If the report is to be believed, things won’t get better, they will get worse.

That makes Gore not just the most winnable president of the United States, that makes him the most relevant one. That makes Gore not just the most tenable president of the United States, that makes him the most important one. What is at stake is not merely America’s ability and authority to lead the world to progress, what is at stake is America’s ability and authority to lead the world to survival. What is at stake is not just the future of America, what is at stake is the continued existence of humankind.

Of course, George W. Bush’s people have been quick to spin the report and conscript it to their cause. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the report confirmed what Bush had been saying all along about “the nature of climate change, and it reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues.” Well, Bush does share one quality with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which is the ability to lie through his teeth. And which, as in these parts, has been imbibed by his lieutenants.

The Republicans, in fact, had been harshly condemning Gore for making the predictions he did, which they are now claiming as their own. Bush’s father, George Sr. said of Gore then (Gore had been campaigning for saving the earth way back): “This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American. This guy’s crazy.” Well, Bush Sr. must know something about crazy that we don’t. He offered a toast to Marcos for his adherence to democracy.

This guy’s crazy? Well, Gore was crazy enough to be saying -- well before it became popular to do so, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that there was no doubt about the reality, immediacy and direness of global warming except the doubts Exxon et al. were trying to spread about it, in the same way that the cigarette companies tried to spread doubts about the ironclad medical finding that smoking caused lung cancer. Gore was crazy enough to be saying -- well before it became relevant to do so, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that America was the number one polluter of the earth’s atmosphere, and that unless it curbed its carbon emissions, it would plunge the planet into a state beyond resuscitation. Gore was crazy enough to be saying—well before any American politician dared say it, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that if we want to stop the earth from being murdered, let’s compel his country to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

What’s crazy for the Bushes, of course, is the sanest thing in the world for the rest of the world. Indeed a completely literal life-and-death agenda for it. One can only hope that what has been a kiss of death for any American politician, not to speak of presidential aspirant, will turn out to be the breath of life for Gore’s future—as well as that of the human species. In the end, the American elections of 2008 are of monumental concern not just for the American voter but also for the citizen of the world.

The UN report reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues? There’s only one way that can be true: with Gore in charge.

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