Disingenuity

Of course, some prefer the term "marketing". Either way, Al Gore would like us to survive it.

How 'bout you?

Gore: Bush is 'Renegade Rightwing Extremist'

by Oliver Burkeman and Jonathan Freedland Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists". In an interview with the Guardian today, the former vice-president calls himself a "recovering politician", but launches into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming. Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election, Mr Gore says: "If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right."

Here's where the right wing double-talk comes in, throwing the weight of short-term, though absolutely true and necessary, reasons for pride in our incredible accomplishments as an intelligent species into their argument for the ol' "live hard, die young, leave a pretty corpse" approach to life.

[Link] In the US, Mr Gore's environmental campaign has sparked a backlash from some on the right who accuse him of scaremongering. A series of television advertisements, launched by a thinktank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argue that carbon dioxide emissions are a sign of American productivity and progress.

Well, SURE they are! No one, outside a few million Greens, is arguing that they aren't.

But no matter how great the accomplishment, you've always gotta clean up yer mess when you're done. It just makes it easier to pick up the next project.

Not to mention keepin' the neighbors from callin' the cops for all the pollution with which yer floodin' their neighborhood.