Al Gore is waking up America to the extreme dangers of global warming with his film and new book--Inconvenient Truth.   

After carrying a slide projector to over a thousand venues for more than thirty years, our former Vice President has turned to the big screen for help in conveying an urgent but inconvient truth to a Nation addicted to fossil fuels.

Most people know that global warming is happening because they see it in their communities with less winter, hotter summers, more intense storms, persistent droughts, forest and grassfires, melting icetop mountains, wildlife losses, etc.. However, few Americans understand that according to top US scientists, we have less than ten years to act before we lose control, that is until the planet hits a tipping point where so much ice has melted that permafrost gives off it's stored carbon, that dead and dying forests across the planet become carbon sources rather than carbon sinks and that large ice masses on Greenland and Antartica give way. 

In the climate game, nature bats last and it can swing a mean bat.  Overheated oceans and gulfs lead to overheated storms and human tragedy.  Overheated soils lead to persistent droughts and deserts and agricultural calamity.  Melting ice and warmer ocean temperatures lead to flooded coastal lowlands and displaced populations.  We must act today to prevent unacceptable losses tomorrow. 

By leading a worldwide effort to establish the Kyoto Treaty that starts to internalize the real cost of carbon, Vice President Al Gore and many other leaders from around the world created a framework for action that would put American industry in the forefront of inventing new energy technologies and efficiencies.  (Kyoto after all, is a market-based treaty based on a US law that curbed acid rain.  You would never understand that fact if you get your info-tainment from Fox News.)

Now private citizen, Al Gore is building a sky scraper not from the sky down but from the ground up.  He is speaking to each of us across America, reminding us that we all have a moral obligation to act.  Don't let Exxon/Mobile's flunkies mislead you about the dangers ahead. Global warming should not be a political issue.  It's not about right or left, it's about right or wrong.  It's wrong to overheat the planet and destory nature.  It's right to work together to find a solution that our children can live with.  Join the call for action to stop global warming:  http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Go see the movie, Inconvenient Truth and make up your own mind. 

Many wonder if it is possible to get the whole world to work together to solve our shared climate crisis and to create a new energy pathway wide enough for the world to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions while meeting our needs. 

For those who doubt, let me suggest looking at the results of the Montreal Protocol concluded in 1992.  This landmark international agreement was hammered out by the various industrialized nations between 1987 and 1992 aimed at curbing the production of ozone-depleting gases.

A recent study (See findings: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/26may_ozone.htm?list109322) has found the treaty and subsequent phase outs of CFC’s to be pivotal in making improvements in ozone recovery especially in the upper stratosphere, about 11 miles up.

Co-author Mike Newchurch of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Alabama believes that ozone improvements in the upper stratosphere can be explained almost entirely by CFC reductions fostered through the Montreal Protocol.

The authors predict that if current trends continue, the global ozone layer will return to 1980 levels sometime between 2030 and 2070 when the Antarctic ozone hole will close. 

The world has worked together to reverse the dangerous ozone hole, now let us put down our differences and work to stop global warming.                                     

                                                        Larry Schweiger

Overwhelmingly, America’s forty-million sportsmen and women believe we all have a moral responsibility to confront global warming to protect our children’s future...

This important finding is a part of our recent polling. Complete results will be posted on Field and Stream’s web site www.fieldandstream.com. Today, the full results will be available on our new advocacy web site www.targetglobalwarming.org.

Overwhelmingly, sportsmen believe the U.S. should be a world leader in addressing global warming. The vast majority of hunters and anglers agree with President Bush when he said the Nation is addicted to oil yet, even more said the administration and Congress are not doing enough to break America’s addiction to oil.

A strong majority of hunters and anglers said the country is on the wrong track in meeting our national energy needs. Most believe the best way to address American’s energy future is conserve more, and develop fuel efficient vehicles and renewable forms of energy like wind, solar and ethanol. They overwhelmingly agree that the U.S. should reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming and threaten fish and wildlife habitat.

Outdoor people believe that Congress should pass legislation that sets a clear national goal for reducing global warming pollution with mandatory timelines. Four in five agree that we can improve the environment and strengthen the economy by investing in clean, renewable energy technologies that create jobs while reducing global warming pollution.

I am pleased with these findings. Since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, hunters and anglers have been in the forefront of conservation and I fully expect them to lead the Nation to a better energy future to stop global warming.

Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by Rick Bass Sierra Club Books 164 pp., $19.95

With gas prices climbing, oil executives hope that lawmakers will be persuaded to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling even though this action would not have any impact on the price of oil for the forseeable future. 

One of the best books on this subject has been published by our friends at Sierra Club Books.  Written by an author well-known for his novels and stories, Rick Bass has also written a number of books on the natural world.

In Caribou Rising, Bass visits the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a hunter, as a writer giving voice to threatened wildlife, and as a deeply troubled defender of ancient Gwich'in culture against government abuse. "Each year," Bass writes, "I become more ashamed and mortified by my government, and by the widening disparity between the people's will and the secret practices, secret allegiances, of big business and government."

This impassioned book details the real people and the real place behind a two-decade-long legislative struggle in Washington over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The struggle is being waged by big oil companies against a few thousand Gwich'in people who have continuously inhabited the Arctic Refuge land for nearly 20,000 years, subsisting primarily on migrating caribou that thrive in the pristine landscape. At stake is an untrammeled coastal plain that provides critical mosquito relief during the summer for caribou and provides vital calving grounds for their reproduction. Viable caribou herds and the meat they yield are essential to the future of the caribou people.

Bass helps us to understand that the lives of those subsisting in Arctic Village, the Gwich'in base, will forever be changed by proposed legislation authorizing oil development in the fragile coastal Arctic Plain. He shares the compelling story of Trimble Gilbert, a Gwich'in Episcopal pastor who has served his people for more than forty years, preaching from a well-worn Bible covered with caribou hide. Gilbert warns his flock that "we are the last people. I hope you understand that. All the people with money are against us but we don't want to lose our culture." Giving hope to his community, Gilbert quotes, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

Recent polls show that the Gwich' in have been joined in this David and Goliath struggle by a majority of Americans, who are opposed to drilling in the Arctic. The Gwich'in have also been actively supported by hundreds of thousands conservation-minded voters who have successfully turned back several previous attempts by the oil developers to get a federal license to drill the Wildlife Refuge during the past decade.

Some may be put off by the way by Bass personalizes the struggle, blaming the latest legislative proposals on "young George Bush's dreams of oil and old Dick Cheney's relentless, nearly religious pursuit of those ancient hydrocarbons buried beneath a landscape so pristine and astounding as to seem like the initial creation itself."

But the issues involved in this conflict transcend party affiliation and the familiar divisions between Left and Right, liberal and conservative. In many ways this struggle over the caribou land is a test of American values and character. We all know the price of gas at the pump, but do we understand the true costs of oil development?  Are we as a nation of energy consumers willing to restrain ourselves by driving more fuel-efficient cars to keep the core caribou calving area free of damage caused by the well drilling and oil transport?  Must the legitimate and age-old rights of a few be trampled to make our highways cheaper for gas guzzlers twenty years from now?

There will likely be another vote on Arctic this year-- possibly as early as next week in the House.  The House has been aggressively pursuing a number of energy initiatives to give appearances that they are working to lower prices at the pump Including an Arctic drilling bill. There have been some reports that this will be a stand alone bill brought up next week and other reports that it will be part of a larger energy package sometime in June during "Energy Independence Week."

Any calls or e-mails to your lawmakers in opposition to such a plan before such a vote would be very helpful.  Bass concludes his book with these words: "Year by year, in Congress, the debate rages, being cleaved and decided always by only one or two votes—like wild animals fighting over tendrils, ligaments, scraps."

Have you ever wondered who gets your gas money as prices spike and we shell out more and more at the gas pump?

Well, I have a partial answer today.  An ExxonMobil-funded group is today launching an ad campaign designed to persuade the public that the carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks are not warming the planet and putting wildlife, our families and our economy at risk.

The group sponsoring the ad has received more than one and a half million dollars since the international Kyoto Protocol was established in 1997, and later abandoned by the United States.

The hypocrisy is tangible. ExxonMobil is using its oil profits to confuse the public about the real risks of global warming.  Thi stands in the face of the clear findings of every distinguished scientific body that global warming is real, that carbon dioxide from oil and other fossil fuels is fueling the problem, and that the risks are great.

Last year, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined the academies from ten other nations to declare, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."

Even the Bush administration, which has advocated more scientific research in place of real action to reduce emissions, confirmed the inevitable earlier this month, stating: "The evidence continues to support a substantial human impact on global temperature increases."

It's in ExxonMobil's best interest to confuse Americans about global warming and to avoid fuel-efficiency soluitons that could help break our addiction to oil and kept gas prices from skyrocketing. Our fuel economy standards for automobiles haven’t been seriously updated since the era of 8-track tape players. On average, new cars sold today guzzle more gas -- and emit more carbon dioxide -- than models sold 25 years ago. 

Remember: what's good for ExxonMobil is not good for America.

Fortunately, the ad campaign is a desperate sign of fear on part of the oil industry. The media has begun to wake up to the fact that they have missed out on the defining moral issue of the 21st century. Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, HBO and others have begun taking a serious journalistic look at the issue.

This week, Field & Stream is profiling a National Wildlife Federation survey of America’s sportsmen, who have historically worked with other Americans committed to protect our great outdoors. As noted by Field & Stream, "an overwhelming majority of sportsmen agree with the consensus in the scientific community that global warming is real, that it already is eroding their quality of life, and that it poses a definite threat to the future of two things they love: fish and wildlife." Two-thirds of sportsmen believe that "global warming is an urgent problem requiring immediate action."

You can learn more at www.targetglobalwarming.org.

And you can urge your family and friends to go see first hand the stunning facts behind global warming as the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" opens in theaters later this month.

On a recent flight to California, I was seated next to a 10-year-old heavy-set boy who was traveling alone...alone that is with his hand-held Game Boy.  From the east coast to the west coast, he played his game non-stop.  At one point, the captain came on air and announced that we were flying right over the Grand Canyon and we could see a fantastic view of this national treasure.  I was struck by the fact that the boy never raised his eyes once to look.

I should not have been so surprised, the young man fits the sorry statistics for the average American child.  American children are spending more than forty hours a week looking at TV, computers and various gadgets.  As a consequence, they are getting fat and out of touch with nature.  In a sense, they are living in an artificial world that takes preeminence over the real world.

Perhaps it’s more a reflection of all Americans than we would like to admit.  When is the last time you sat on your porch and quietly listened to the night sounds of nature? 

Senate Republicans want to give you a hundred dollars before you go to the polls and vote on their performance this November. 

This is a frightening attempt to buy your vote.  And it’s connected to another really bad idea—allowing Exxon/Mobil to drill in the treasured Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Don’t be fooled by this scheme.  Congress will need to borrow about ten billion from future taxpayers (including you) to pay you before you vote in the November election. 

You and your children will pay it all back, and with current interest rates on Federal debt, you will pay about $200 in future taxes and much of that will go to the Chinese and other international investors who are carrying our ever-growing National debt.

As part of the deal, Exxon/Mobil or some other bidder will get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for its future development.  When it comes to political contributions, big oil speaks and politicians listen. 

The most cynical aspect of this is that politicians think all Americans can be bought.  I hope not.