He spouts straight-from-the-Gore's-mouth alarmism about global warming, going so far as to propose that high school students be forced to view Al's flick. He also takes predictable shots at the Bush administration and talk show hosts, throwing in a particularly nasty swipe at Christian conservatives in the process. Excerpts below.
- "Migrations [from farm to city] in India and elsewhere in Africa and Asia cannot be sustained at today's Western standard of living. Even at one car per family, without air conditioning and supermalls, the world's environment cannot survive the onslaught."
- "I'd suggest we start by making Al Gore's slide-show movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," required viewing in every high school in the country."
- "All American adults should see the movie, and many will. But we are so politically polarized that we can expect 40 percent of the nation to follow the lead of President George W. Bush and the talk-show hacks and either make fun of Gore or refuse to see his work."
- "Global warming is only the most important of a number of scientific areas in which the White House has been hostile to scientific research, and has attempted to intimidate government scientists."
- "There will be sacrifices to deal with global warming, and we will need to change some habits of long-standing. But, as Gore points out, there is also the potential for entire new industries with good jobs to emerge from this change." [This was the Clinton-Gore line from 1994 - great new jobs in complying with government regulation.]
- "We must decide which scenario will determine the end of life on this planet. One, increasingly in favor among the most fundamentalist of Christians and Muslims, is apocalyptic, an end-times for the devout that condemns millions of others to indescribable tortures and agony."
- "Policies of our present administration tilt toward the apocalyptic; we will lose eight years on global warming before the Texas oil and military complex leaves office."
McKay: typical of the academics who prepare our young minds to become 'objective journalists.'
Finkelstein lives in the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY, where he hosts the award-winning public-access TV show 'Right Angle.' Contact him at mark@gunhill.net
