At today’s Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore said for the first time in public that we are at a point in our world’s history, and in need of such immediate action, that if you are a young person it’s time for civil disobedience.
In particular to bring coal plants to a halt.
On a panel with Queen Rania of Jordan, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Neville Isdell (the CEO of Coca Cola), and Bono — moderated by President Clinton himself — Gore was fiery in his calls for action and investment in new clean energy technologies. He was even more fiery in his strong denouncements of nonexistent clean coal (”There is no such thing!”), and a congress that is today voting on an energy bill that lifts the moratorium on mining coal shale, calling it — with dramatic pause — “IN-SANITY.”
In fact, Gore used the word “insane” or “insanity” at least 3 times (we’ll check the records to see if there more) in his descriptions of various political and business decisions made (or not made) with regard to climate.