Greg Pollowitz noted below Al Gore’s coal-bashing speech at the Clinton Global Initiative shindig in New York.
With economic realities putting a dent in the political hopes of carbon limits, Gort is urging action on a different front — one all too familiar for liberal activists: the courts.
There are 28 coal plants currently under construction across the country, and the Goracle is urging civil disobedience against them:
“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.
And the pump is primed to keep such anti-coal activists out of jail and repeatedly obstructing the development of the nation’s energy infrastructure, thanks to Gore ally James Hansen’s efforts in support of the Kingsnorth Six. Now, the “lawful excuse” defense used by the British coal-plant eco-vandals is as precendentially useless here as it was legally specious in the U.K., but the Kingsnorth acquittal still provides PR cover for the protestors and their lawyers in the U.S.
Defense-bar lawyers are not the only ones Al is conscripting into the battle against coal. Trial Lawyers, Inc. and their state-attorneys-general allies are also being enlisted into his fossil-fuel-fighting army:
“And I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact,” he said. “I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that.”
How do people get away with such hypocrisy? This is coming from a man who gets a huge tax write-off for his contributions to the Alliance for Climate Protection, which is doing the public-relations work in support of energy- and environmental-policy changes that would make Gore’s alternative-energy and carbon-offset investments far more valuable. Memo to the IRS: If anyone should be facing legal action, it’s Gore.