Klimaatverandering 33

Newsweek bericht: 'Al Gore on why America - and even George Bush - is close to a tipping point on global warming. Al Gore has launched his new campaign-this one to battle the effects of global warming. At its center is a new film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which stars Gore and has been winning surprisingly positive press. It opens May 24. The former vice president, who has abandoned a relatively low profile to promote the movie, spoke to Eleanor Clift about the environment, technology and politics in America. Excerpts:
Newsweek: They say timing is everything. Has the moment arrived for this issue?
Al Gore: I hope it has. I hope that we are close to a tipping point beyond which the country will begin to face this very seriously and the majority of politicians in both parties will begin to compete by offering meaningful solutions. We're nowhere close to that yet, but a tipping point by definition is a time of very rapid change-and I think that the potential for this change has been building up, with the evangelical ministers speaking out, General Electric and Republican CEOs saying we have to address it, grass-roots organizations-all of these things are happening at the same time because through various means people are seeing a new reality. The relationship between our civilization and the earth has been radically transformed. Global warming is by far the most serious manifestation of the collision-and Mother Nature is making the evidence ever more obvious. Scientific studies have been coming out right and left over the last several years that connect various parts of the overall picture to the whole. And by whatever means, a lot of people have been absorbing this message, and they're now saying, "Wait a minute, we really have to do something about this." (…) In 2000 and in 1988 when you ran, you really didn't talk about the environment that much. I think you were counseled that it was not a good issue. Any regrets about that? AG: That's the conventional wisdom that I want to challenge because in both cases I talked about it extensively. And to take 2000 as an example, there were numerous speeches and events and proposals and multipoint plans that were not considered news, and if a tree falls in the forest and it's not heard, then later on people think it didn't happen. John Kerry went thru a very similar experience in '04 because the way the issue has been covered has been plagued with some of the adjectives that you began with-it's marginal, it's arcane, it's irrelevant, ridiculous-and so if a daily news cycle is devoted to that issue, then one candidate has his message out there and the other is mysteriously missing. There's another factor that's often overlooked in 2000. Then governor George W. Bush publicly pledged to regulate CO2 emissions and to forcibly, with the rule of law, reduce them-and publicly said "this is a serious problem and I will deal with it." Now, the other way that issues get covered in the media is if there's conflict, and if there's a sharp difference. And one is tempted to conclude that [Karl] Rove crafted those positions that were immediately abandoned after the election-in the first week after the inauguration, the first week-one is tempted to conclude that Rove wrote those positions in order to take from that issue any sense of contrast or conflict and thereby make it non-newsworthy. It certainly had that effect, whether it was intentional or not. I can't look into their hearts-I'll let the grand jury do that. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. The mainstream media still ruled during your campaign in 2000. It's a very different world today with the Internet. How do you see the new media changing upcoming campaigns? AG: The old cliché about six months being a lifetime in politics is probably out of date now with the new technology coming wave upon wave. But I have a slightly different view from what I hear a lot. I think that television is still the dominant medium, and I do believe that the Internet has brought about a continuing and accelerating revolution in the technique of politics and the way candidates reach out to connect with individual voters and groups. But where the wholesale messaging is concerned, television is still completely dominant. One statistic that illustrates that is that last year according to this new study Americans watched on average four hours and 39 minutes of television per day-and that's up four minutes from the previous year,even with the increased use of the Internet. And the vast majority of Internet users are watching television while they're using the Internet. I have a television network. I've spent a lot of time looking into these things. And the characteristic of television that is so different from the printing press that was the medium dominating America's birth is that television is one-way. The individual has no way to get into the conversation. My point is that television may not be dominant in 2008, but I wouldn't bet on that. I think that it is still the most powerful medium, and the reason is it's quasi-hypnotic. One of the most valuable things in the television business if you're a content creator is to have a good lead-in show before you. Why?
People don't get up.
Not only do they not get up - a significant percentage are incapable of moving a thumb muscle to hit the remote because there's a quasi-trance that sets in. I don't want to overdramatize it, but the fact is that people just sit there entranced - and that's why most of the money in politics goes to television.' Lees verder:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12535460/site/newsweek/ Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042906A.shtml