Captain Planet for veep

National Review, Sept 14, 1992 by Ronald Bailey, Danielle Allen, Lucian

And running throughout--the Great Crusade. On p. 39, for example, Gore courageously takes on the media. "In this case, when 98 per cent of the scientists in a given field share one view [on global warming] and 2 per cent disagree [see Ronald Bailey's article above for accurate statistics], both viewpoints are sometimes presented in a format in which each appears equally credible ... Feel the spine-tingling devotion to The Cause on p. 274: "Adopting a central organizing principle .. means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution . . . to halt the destruction of the environment."

What is it that has caused the problems in the world? We're a dysfunctional family! It seems (p. 230 ff) every culture is an extended family and "our civilization must be considered in some basic way dysfunctional .... we consume the earth and its resources as a way to distract ourselves from the pain . . ." But we don't have the only dysfunctional society-Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and Maoist China also qualify (p. 232).

Have you got an appetite for destruction? Turn to p. 177. "Now warnings of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent... Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin."

The brutal misogyny of technology appears on p. 213. We have emphasized those technologies "historically associated more with males than females ... [and] ways to dominate nature receive more attention than ways to work with nature." In fact, "part of the solution for the environmental crisis may well lie in our ability to achieve a better balance between the sexes, leavening the dominant male perspective with a healthier respect for female ways of experiencing the world."

And that should lead as well to a new respect for our society's children. "One of the most horrifying examples of our degraded appreciation of the individual is a new category among the homeless called throwaway children, thrown out of their homes because they have become too difficult to handle . . . And every so often we read about a newborn baby literally thrown into a ... trash (p. 161). Gore's emotion is palpable. "Throwaway children: nothing could better illustrate my strong belief that the worst of all forms of pollution is wasted lives." Gore is a co-sponsor of the Freedom of Choice Act.

Finally, there is policy, especially taxes (although, there is no listing in the index for "taxes"). A CO2 tax and a virgin materials tax pop up on p. 349. And a higher tax on fossil fuels is one of the "logical first steps" discussed on p. 173. Or just flip to practically any page in the chapter "A Global Marshall Plan," estimated at $100 billion of spending--with taxation to match. P. 320 is a gold mine. Gore wants: flax incentives for the new technologies and disincentives for the old. Research and development funding for new technologies and prospective bans on the old ones .... The promise of large profits in a market certain to emerge as older technologies are phased out."