OPINION:
Former Vice President Al Gore said on his website recently that the reason for the particularly harsh and snowy winter we’ve been experiencing this season was because of “man-made global warming” (“Snow job,” Comment & Analysis, Jan. 28).
According to Mr. Gore, “scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe.”
So just to recap, whether there’s a week-long heat wave or the exact opposite - a frigid winter - the cause is always the same: global warming.
In 1992, Mr. Gore wrote his comprehensive “the sky is falling” environmental book, “Earth in the Balance,” (Rodale Books, 1992), which catapulted him to the top of Bill Clinton’s list of potential running mates. The two would run on what was dubbed the “environmental ticket” that same year. With all his encyclopedic knowledge on the pending apocalyptic environmental calamity awaiting mankind, why did he wait so long to do something about it? For eight years, Mr. Gore was at the seat of power in the United States and this controversial environmental crisis didn’t seem to be all that much of an emergency to him then.
Even if Mr. Gore were eventually proved right, there’s no political solution to global warming. Does anyone really think that China, India or any other budding industrial powerhouse is ever going to alter its economic policies because of a flimflam argument that even the godfather of the cause didn’t do anything about when he could have?
EUGENE R. DUNN
Medford, N.Y.
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