Climate Crisis & Al Gore

There's a terrific piece about Al Gore at Wired. Here's an excerpt that shows both his self-deprecating humor and dedication:

Reality is just as funny. Last year, while traveling on business, Gore stopped at a restaurant. A woman kept walking slowly past his booth to stare. Finally she stopped. "You know, if you dyed your hair black, you'd look just like Al Gore," she said.

"Why, thank you, ma'am," Gore, ever the straight man, responded.

"And your imitation of him is pretty good, too," she said.

This spring marks a coming-out of sorts for Gore, no longer a candidate for anything, but campaigning nonetheless to change American attitudes about global warming. Gore says he will channel earnings from his upcoming book and movie into a "mass persuasion" offensive. Together with An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David and a coalition of major environmental, business, labor, and religious groups, Gore wants to make climate crisis a household phrase. They plan a three-pronged Internet, television, and print advertising campaign to provoke wide-reaching changes in consumer and business behavior and to force shifts in government policy. He'll bring an army of surrogate speakers to Nashville, where he and Tipper will equip them with the slide show and train them to deliver the lecture.

During the opening sequence of the documentary, Gore confesses ruefully: "I've been trying to tell this story for a long time, and I feel as if I have failed to get the message across." For Al Gore, it's the race of his life.