December 23, 2007
Christmas, Al Gore and Italy
I get the message. The fact that my last post attracted all of nil comments suggests to me it is time to go on holiday. I intend to fall silent for the next 10 days or so - before re-surfacing in the US, on January 3rd - the day of the Iowa caucus. If I blog before then, it’s probably a bad sign.
But before I quit, here are a couple of things I would like to draw to your attention. First, a delightfully unreverential account of interviewing Al Gore, by my friend Stephen Sackur of the BBC. I normally hate that back-scratching formula, "my friend x of the x". But Stephen really is a friend, he had the office next door to me in Brussels for several years. However, I have learnt that I have to be cautious about admitting friendship with Stephen Sackur. Although he is naturally a rather mild-mannered person, he is the host of a television show, "Hardtalk", which demands an aggressive and adverserial pose from the interviewer. This often leaves the interviewee distinctly pissed off. When I interviewed Michel Platini of Uefa recently and mentioned conversationally that Sackur is a friend of mine, Platini’s face darkened _"Ard Talk..", he exclaimed contemptuosly and I realised it was a good idea to drop the subject.
I probably shouldn’t mention Sackur to "my good friend, Al Gore" either - to judge from Stephen’s account of their post-interview chat.
Sackur writes: "As I learned in Oslo, Al Gore doesn’t take kindly to those who question his climate crusade. My interview with him in the stolid surroundings of the Grand Hotel was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh since I chased him around America during his run for the White House in 2000. Actually ‘in the flesh’ is a misleading phrase. When Mr Gore entered the Nobel suite his face was so heavily powdered I momentarily mistook him for the late Marcel Marceau…
The former vice president harrumphed when I cited a British High Court judge who had concluded that the Gore epic ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ contained a valuable message, but was marred by several exaggerations and distortions. His pallid complexion darkened even more when I mentioned the name of his long-time political foe Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, who claims that the resources spent on curbing global emissions would be better spent on adaptation and miligation strategies. The rest of our encounter was marked by Mr Gore’s heavy sighs and deep frowns …
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But when the cameras stopped rolling the peace prize winner from Tennessee let me have it with both barrels. I’d compromised my journalistic integrity. The BBC had lost its nerve. As politely as I could I begged to differ." I wish I’d seen the programme.
Finally, another interesting article - this time from the New York Times, on the sense of malaise in Italy. A post I did on the relative fortunes of Italy and Spain - more than a year go now - seems to have the longest after-life of almost anything I’ve done. Italians and Spaniards are still occasionally bickering on the comments section of the blog. The most recent comment on the blog was from a Spaniard claiming victory - Spain’s GDP-per-capita, he claimed is now higher than that of Italy. To which I would reply - possibly - but Italy are world football champions, AC Milan are European champions and Italy have won the World Cup four times to Spain’s zero.
And happy new years to you!
As for this great American hero Al Gore, an oldie but a goody.
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=eScDfYzMEEw&feature=related
Posted by: jeannick | December 24th, 2007 at 12:31 am | Report this commentI think the reason you got no replies to your last post is explained by the post from Damian Carrington, your online editor: The responses are in his inbox and he is away!
In other words, the blogees are even sadder than the blogger
Anyhow, Al Gore’s reputation was saved by the fact that the election results were stolen from him.
With a vice-presidential nominee such as Lieberman at his elbow (and probably equally surrounded by war-mongering advisors), he probably would have made many or most of the egregious foreign policy mistakes of George Bush and would be the current title holder as the most hated man in the world, a title that all American presidents attain, ex officio.
Happy holidays,
P
Posted by: Pacifist | December 24th, 2007 at 4:23 pm | Report this commentGideon:
Gore, Sackur: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/7144042.stm
Christmas isn’t really all that inordinately linked to a single religion; this is the festival of light, the hope that light and life will return to us after winter. It’s a good bet they will, so far the planet and our sun haven’t been in the habit of breaking their habit. I know I’d get bored of it after a few years let alone the billions of years theyve been at it. Anyway dear Gideon and readers I’d better be off but I felt an obligation I should say hi and wish you all merry festivities and a most peaceful new year.
Posted by: Felix Drost | December 24th, 2007 at 11:31 pm | Report this commentPoor Al Gore, by all acount an upright and dedicated stateman, like Cassandra, he warn us of coming disasters Cassandra was cursed by Apollo to foresee the future but never be believed, Al Gore is pretty much believed but it matter not, the needs and wishes of 6,6 Billions people drive us to our fate like a lone bystander in a clearance sale crowd.
Posted by: jeannick | January 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm | Report this commentSackur’s interview with Gore is actually a bit better than his account of the post-interview chat. I fail to see why the latter was published at all. It does compromise Sackur’s journalistic integrity and it does a disservice to both the interviewer and BBC, smacking of petty accounts squaring after a fight. What does Gore’s heavily powerded face have to do with global warming? And his heavy sighs and frowns are quite understandable given that in the past 7 years he has to answer again and again the same, at best, not very bright questions and marvel at the conservative nature of human common sense, of which many journalists are such a perfect example (tight deadlines may be to blame).
Sackur’s interview was characteristic of this. He asked all the same questions which had already been asked before by his colleagues (e.g. CNN’s Michael Mann): about Gore’s election plans, his opinion of the current candidates, uncertainty of IPCC results, British judge’s ruling, Gore’s private power bills (raised not in the interview but in the post-i. account which, to my mind, is plainly unprofessional and borders on diffamation as an accusation to which Gore could not respond here; fortunately he did it elsewhere; but even if his bills were outrageously high, does Sackur think this undermines the global warming science?) and a host of other past-by-date questions. There were a couple of more interesting ones: whether our conviction of unrelenting economic growth should be revisited, or about the campaigners’ optimism. However, Sackur failed to address some bolder and harder issues, like the one of overpopulation - should not we have caps on population growth before we reach 10 or 15 bn, and people in Africa or Asia, or Europe for that matter, start dying out “naturally” of hunger or malnutrition? Pity that mild-mannered Sackur was not agressive and adverserial enough to interrogate his guests on this or other similarly difficult issues in his “Ard Talk” instead of pissing them off with the same old banalities.
Posted by: A Russian | January 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm | Report this commentAs for overpopulation , it is a basic fact that no population can exceed its resources, no population can exceed for long its sustainable resources and population decrease is proportional to the rate sustainable resources have been exceeded also known as population gravity or the road runner scenario, the faster one go over the edge the harder the fall.
Posted by: jeannick | January 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm | Report this commentBest wishes!
Posted by: A Russian | January 4th, 2008 at 9:30 am | Report this commentIt seems that in the past century we somehow formed two illusions: 1, that surrounding resources are unlimited, and 2, that a single human life is invaluable, and civilisation’ prosperity is equal to each individual’s (or individual nation’s) prosperity. The world’s arguably most advanced and prosperous (and most polluting, for that matter) nation, the US, still debates whether abortion should be outlawed! While the realisation of the finiteness of the world’s resources is slowly daunting on us, we still believe that the growth/survival of civilisation is equal to the growth/survival of its individual members. In reality the current civilisation’s survival is plainly jeopardised by the uncontrolled swarming of the inidiviuals. However, I do not remember any credible politician speaking out clearly in favour of population control measures. Gore certainly stressed the impact of human masses on the Erath’s environment in The Inconvenient Truth, and it would be interesting to hear his solutions to the problem. However, Stephen Sackur found his energy bills and British judge’s ruling much more important.