From the Washington Post, more details on the Alliance for Climate Protection‘s $300 million “we” campaign:
The Alliance for Climate Protection‘s new TV ad is part of a $300 million campaign, among the costliest in U.S. history. Skeptics already are weighing in, accusing Gore of demanding sacrifices that he himself is not making.
Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.
The Alliance for Climate Protection‘s “we” campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from “American Idol” to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It highlights the extent to which Americans’ growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.
“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.“
Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he said. While Gore declined to quantify his contribution to the effort, he has devoted all his proceeds from the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the best-selling companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and several international prizes, such as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which add up to more than a $2.7 million. Paramount Classics, the documentary’s distributor, has pledged 5 percent of the film’s profits to the group, and some of the money raised through the 2007 Live Earth concerts will help the campaign, along with Gore’s proceeds from an upcoming book on climate change.
While “An Inconvenient Truth” urged viewers to fully inflate their car tires and to install compact fluorescent light bulbs to combat global warming, Gore said he is now focused on ensuring that the United States enacts a national carbon emission cap and ratifies a new global pact on climate change in the next three years.
“The simple algorithm is this: It’s important to change the light bulbs, but it’s much more important to change the laws,” he said. “The options available to civilization worldwide to avert this terribly destructive pattern are beginning to slip away from us. The path for recovery runs right through Washington, D.C.“
The new effort comes at a time when the three remaining major party presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) — have all endorsed federal limits on greenhouse gases, virtually ensuring that the next occupant of the White House will offer a sharp break from President Bush’s climate policy.
All three have discussed global warming with Gore in phone calls over the course of the past few months. While McCain backs a more modest plan than that favored by the Democrats — he supports a 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050, compared with Obama and Clinton‘s vow of an 80 percent cut during that period — the presumptive Republican nominee emphasized during a recent stop in Chula Vista, Calif., that he had pushed for a federal cap-and-trade system before either of his opponents came to the Senate.
“Neither have proposed legislation or played any public role during their time in the Senate,” McCain said, sidestepping the fact that Clinton and Obama both back climate legislation, up for a Senate vote in June, that he has yet to endorse.
Gore, who backs a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by mid-century, said that while he’s “encouraged” that the remaining candidates back mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, they still need to be pushed: “What happens after the election will depend on whether or not we win enough hearts and minds in the country as a whole.“
And former Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), a board member of the two-year-old alliance, said the candidates’ commitment to a cap-and-trade system does not negate the fact that the majority of Americans fail to see climate change as a compelling political issue.
“Most Republicans, along with most Democrats, are focused almost exclusively on Iraq, the war against terrorism and the economy,” Boehlert said. “That leaves little room for anything else.”
In an effort to penetrate Americans’ consciousness and change lawmakers’ political calculus, the group aims to enlist 10 million volunteers through a combination of network and cable commercials, display ads in magazines ranging from People to Real Simple, and online social networks. By contrast, the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s each boasted about 5 million activists.
Cathy Zoi, the Alliance for Climate Protection‘s chief executive, said the group will focus on individuals known in the advertising world as “influencers” who talk to a disproportionate number of people in their communities. While some ads will target inside-the-Beltway policymakers, the bulk of their efforts will focus on the general public.
“This is modern organizing,” Zoi said, adding that the campaign aims to convince voters that “this is a solvable problem.“
In an effort to broaden the campaign’s appeal, the alliance has already forged working partnerships with groups including the Girl Scouts and the United Steelworkers of America. One of its early ads will feature the unlikely alliance of clergymen Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton sitting on a couch on Virginia Beach, talking about their commitment to address climate change.
Its first ad, which is narrated by the actor William H. Macy, highlights American’s collective responses to historical challenges. “We didn’t wait for someone else to storm the beaches of Normandy,” Macy intones. “We didn’t wait for someone else to guarantee civil rights.” The commercial will run several times Wednesday on shows such as “Good Morning America,” “Today,” “American Idol,” “Larry King Live” and “Anderson Cooper 360.”
League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski, whose group is supporting the effort, said he’s optimistic the “we” campaign will succeed in a way that traditional environmental groups have not. “It heightens both the urgency and the sense we can get the job done with the broad middle that will make the difference,” Karpinski said, “while having the resources to communicate in a sophisticated way, in a more expansive fashion than the community has done before.“
If you cannot wait, you can see a teaser video on the Huffington Post.
I still need to see the whole campaign, but in light of all the discussions on this blog, the “we” effort seems like a step in the right direction. I have already contacted the Alliance for Climate Protection to volunteer my services as a blogger and activist. Will you?
La Marguerite 
Here is a response from Gary Peters, from Chico State University:
Among the many dilemmas that I see with making “progress” on the global warming/climate change issue is this: time frames (for lack of a better term).
For most people today John Maynard Keynes’s comment that”In the long run we are all dead,” fits their personal time frame much better than someone pointing out to them, for example, that sea level may rise a foot or two (or even a little more) over the next 100 years.
Most humans live and think much closer to the present, so rising food and energy prices, falling home values, shivering stock and bond markets, and greater job volatility are immediate threats to their perceived standard of living. It is not going to be easy to convince them that they should sacrifice anything to help those a century from now adjust to a little higher sea level.
One way might be to change the incentives and disincentives that they have for making economic decisions in their own lives, but that is complicated by what appears to be hypocrisy on the part of many who speak out in favor of controlling CO2 emissions. For example, any one who reads much about this issue also knows that Al Gore and numerous others fly to conferences hither and yon to get out the message, adding CO2 to the air wherever they go, then “paying” their debt by buying “carbon credits.” To an average person confronted with high gas prices, this seems not only to be a luxury but also to be a bit of deception. It looks like one more case where the “rich” are going to be able to continue their lavish lifestyles while easing their conciences by buying carbon credits. It will take quite a sales pitch to sell this one to most folks!
In a nation like the U.S., adding 3 million or so people each year to its more than 300 million residents, it seems incredible that anyone could believe that we could reduce our output of greenhouse gases by 90% by 2050 without some catastrophic changes in how we live. Who and/or what might we sacrifice along the way?
Though I am in no way promoting the following suggestions, they would certainly achieve Al Gore’s desired goal of a 90% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. The first two of these alone would do the job, whereas the rest might allow us to have a few more people, though only if they were willing to live much different lifestyles than we have today.
1. Begin a population reduction policy immediately that would result in a 2050 U.S. population of 30 million (8 million less than currently live in California alone). Of course this will wreak havoc with the housing market, but maybe we can find some new uses for all those empty homes.
2. Cap per capita greenhouse gas emissions today–otherwise even #1 would fall short.
3. Don’t allow the market system alone to allocate energy resources because it will always allow the “rich” to outbid the “poor” when resources are scarce. For example, let’s ration gasoline as we did during WW II–those who don’t use their rations could sell their ration coupons.
4. While we’re at it, let’s cap house sizes, so that out-sized McMansions would become a thing of the past. A cap of 1,000 square feet sounds good.
5. Raise CAFE standards to 100 mpg over the next five years, after instituting immediately a carbon tax that would increase progressively until no one in his/her right mind would drive a car very far or very fast.
6. Begin now to dismantle our wasteful suburban settlement system in favor of higher density communities designed to minimize all travel distances, especially those from home to work, schools, and shopping.
7. Within these higher-density communities, provide free or very-low-cost public transportation, bicycle lanes, broad sidewalks, and little or no parking (and then only spaces wide enough to accomodate no more than one-half of a Hummer). Downtown Portland already does some of these things, and among American cities it is certainly one of the more pleasant to be in.
8. Provide busy and unaware Americans with incentives to conserve energy in homes, offices, industrial buildings, and everywhere else. Were it not for the ignorance and self-interest of our current leaders, we would already be doing this.
I could go on, but dare not. I agree that “WE” must all be part of the answer, but many among us are not sure what the question really is. Many are also aware of the hypocrisy of most of those who cry “wolf” about the climate crisis.
A bigger problem is this: While we whittle away at our own greenhouse gas emissions, China and India will be moving steadily to be more like we are now–eating more meat, driving more cars, living in bigger houses, and seeking all of the benefits that we have already. Power is already shifting from West to East, and that shift seems likely to continue no matter what we do here.
At the bottom of all this is a historical demographic reality that remains little understood. It took all of human history for our population to reach one billion, which it did somewhere around 1830. Since then, in less than 200 years, our population grew from one billion to more than 6.63 billion. That growth has been “purchased” by quickly using up the stored solar energy in fossil fuels, a one-time event that seems unlikely to be duplicated again by anything we can imagine. As we stand today on the eve of “peak oil,” we may well be looking at a world population that has overshot Earth’s carrying capacity and will be pruned back no matter what we do.
Neither I nor anyone else knows what the future will bring, but it would behoove us to better understand what has happened already.
I agree that this is a great step in the right direction. Yes, I will volunteer too.
Also, I just got a National Geographic magazine “Special Report” called “Changing Climate”. One of the articles is called “Proof Positive”, which covers the science and sounds good (although I haven’t read it yet). The issue is very solutions-focused and also lists “Resources For Readers”. Overall, it looks great.
Back to the campaign, it seems to me that this campaign still leaves A LOT of room, and a lot of necessity, for other communications efforts of all sorts.
And, even though $300 million is not a small amount of money, just for comparison, I noticed something earlier online today: Absolut vodka sold for over $8 billion. Also, according to Wikipedia and their sources, Madonna’s net worth is somewhere between $600-850 million. And, ExxonMobil’s net income last year was over $40 billion!
I think the $300 million is over a three-year period, if I read the article correctly. Some individual people on Wall Street make more than that in one year.
So, although it’s a good and welcome start, there is (of course) much, much more to be done.
When time allows, I’d like to add some thoughts as comments on points in Gary’s post. I agree with him regarding the fact that we have (and face) a population problem (and problems that come with that), but I have some thoughts on the task of prompting and facilitating changes that can help address the global warming matter. I think I’m still a bit of an optimist (although maybe I’m just naïve?).
Cheers.
hi Marguerite,
I think Gore’s announcement is better than nothing, but I think it could happen faster. Here are some other suggestions you might like:
“Three Immediate Ways to End Global Warming”
http://thepanelist.com/General/General/_20080401887
best,
Richard Reiss
Thanks to you three, for adding to this discussion.
I was just struck tonight, by the circling nature of all the climate change discussions, including on this blog! If I went back and reread all that has been said on La Marguerite, including Jeff’s many comments, and contributions from other readers such as you, Gary, and Richard, and many others, I am pretty sure most of the angles of the climate change solutions have been covered.
There is not one way to address this global problem. Instead, it will take the confluence of many approaches, top-down and bottom-up, policy, business, technology, cause marketing and advertising, organic and controlled, etc . . .
I think it is important to evaluate each initiative on its own merit, and also in the context of the whole.
[…] things to do than launch a $60,000 TV and video campaign, in response to Al Gore’s “we” campaign for climate protection. They feel sorry for us all people who are going to have to […]
I would run commercials featuring the families of fallen soldiers. Show shots of mullahs and sheiks, terrorists and petty dictators and rich Arabs lavishly spending money.
I’d say we must move away from an oil based economy so we don’t have to send our money to these criminals (or worse) and so we don’t have to send our brave men and women into areas like the Middle East to protect our oil interests. If a side benefit is less CO2 emissions, so be it.
By the way, the fun starts on the global warming front when liberals finally acknowledge that there is no way we can seriously reduce carbon emissions without extensively increasing our use of nuclear power.
Then the fur will really start to fly–so to speak.
[…] 6, 2008 by lamarguerite What interests me most about Al Gore’s new “we” campaign, is the movement it aims to create with citizens. Finally, there is a place from […]