Politico: ‘The new complaint, even from Gore’s ostensible allies, is that he’s too polarizing a figure to lead the movement against climate change, a lament I’ve heard in numerous recent interviews’
“I don’t think he’s taken seriously as the spokesman, certainly by no one in the middle,” a former House Democrat with battle scars from the last decade’s climate change debates told me. “He’s preaching to the choir. He’s a common scold.” Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democratic senator, says any politician with a background like Gore’s is bound to be a problematic face of the climate fight. “I’d vote for a scientist,” she said in an interview. “He may be a statesman, but I think once a politician, always a politician in the eyes of many.”
Public opinion polls show Americans repeatedly rank climate change near the bottom of their list of priorities for the country. Greenhouse gas emissions have continued their upward march, interrupted only by the 2008 recession. Repeated legislative defeats in Washington and more than two decades of largely fruitless international negotiations have left many in the environmental movement searching for new strategies, and new leaderers’ href=”http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/al-gore-is-not-giving-up-106003.html#.U1pU2_kpAuo”>http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/al-gore-is-not-giving-up-106003.html#.U1pU2_kpAuo
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