Gore is to spend $300m in a bid to force politicians to act on climate change. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Whenever Al Gore is in the news, I always find myself humming these lyrics from Paul Simon's 1987 song You Can Call Me Al. That Gore used this song when campaigning in 1992 for vice-president somehow seems to add to the irony of these two lines today.
Critics of Al Gore have long claimed that ever since he narrowly lost out to George Bush in the race for the White House in 2000, he has been wanting just such a shot at redemption. Gore's subsequent "climate crusade" has gifted him this chance and, with an Oscar and Nobel Peace prize now wedged under each arm, you could argue that he's already had his fill of redemption.
But now we learn that he's pouring all his profits from An Inconvenient Truth and the Nobel prize money into a three-year, $300m advertising campaign in the US aimed at kickstarting some serious debate about climate change among the presidential candidates.
The ads will begin airing this week and should certainly be noticed given that they have paired up some figures from opposing ends of the political spectrum to come together and announce that the one thing they have in common is their concern about climate change.
For example, in the first ad, we see the Reverends Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting together on a sofa on a beach expressing their collective wish for some political action on the issue. For anyone outside of the US not familiar with these two firebrands, this is almost in the same league of hell freezing over as when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were seen joking together in public last year.
It seems a little disheartening that we need to rely on TV adverts to get people impassioned about this issue, but needs must and these ads should certainly cause ripples of interest. (I'm sure many Gore fans wish instead this $300m was being spent by their man on another tilt at the White House.) Gore's masterplan is that anyone who feels inspired to act by these ads will join his Alliance for Climate Protection which, he says, aims to mobilise 10m volunteers who will unite in their call for meaningful political action.
It's easy to knock Gore - for example, the blogosphere is always awash with don't-ya-know talk about his family's connections to Occidental Oil, his mega mansion or jet-setting tours - but it's hard not to be impressed by his vision and, more importantly, ability to stoke interest in the US about climate change.
I'm now beginning to buy his line that he actually has a better chance of forcing change by remaining outside the straight jacket of mainstream politics. Or as he puts it, acting as a "PR" agent for the planet.
What do you think?
