By the title above you might think this is a run-down of Al Gore’s speech Thursday night as Barack Obama’s opening act. But he said so little, and in so rushed and forced a fashion — with “climate change” awkwardly tacked onto a few early sections of the speech — that it wasn’t really worth comment. The best line — a convenient untruth, needless to say: “This administration and the special interests who control it lock, stock and barrel after barrel, have performed this same sleight-of-hand on issue after issue.” The runner-up: when he took pains to show everyone that he finally realizes that “E Pluribus Unum” means “out of many, one” not “out of one, many.”
But then came Sarah Palin, and who now cares what Al Gore said Thursday might? Does anyone even care what Barack Obama said Thursday night?
So no, not that forgettable speech. The title refers to the Goracle’s pearl of wisdom in yesterday’s New York Times, in an article about nitrogen pollution, “Beyond Carbon: Scientists Worry About Nitrogen’s Effects”:
Environmentalists face the puzzle of how to deal with multiple problems at once. And some worry that after the hard-fought campaign spotlighting carbon, turning to focus on nitrogen could upset that momentum.
The tension can plague even the most informed and articulate campaigners. “One of the many complexities that complicate the task I’ve undertaken is complexity,” said Al Gore, the former vice president who won a Noble Peace Prize for his environmental work. Mr. Gore added, “Look, I can start a talk by saying, ‘There are 14 global warming pollutants, and we have a different solution for addressing each of them.’ And it’s true. But you start to lose people.”
OK, third-best line from Al’s Thursday night speech: “Some of the best marketers have the worst products. . . .”