Al Gore at The Oscars

We watched Al Gore and the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth", along with Melissa Etheridge, receive their well deserved Oscars for the film and the song featured in the soundtrack. This is such GOOD NEWS !!

Al Gore reiterated his comment, from the film, that we have the resources to address the problems of global warming, all we lack is the political will, and "that is a renewable resource". At that point I yelled at the television, "It is, but only if YOU run for president !!!"

As I discovered in January (blog entry here) transiting Pluto significantly conjoins Al Gore's natal Jupiter at 28 Sagittarius now, and on a few other occasions later this year and next. There is still no indication that he is likely to run for Democratic nomination in the 2008 election. Some watchers and supporters consider that if this is to be, we shall not know about it for some months to come, perhaps as late as fall this year.

None of the current candidates who are thought of as front runners, Clinton, Obama and Edwards, has said much about climate change, other than mentioning it in passing. I'm wondering how Al Gore views this. I'd feel a lot better about the prospect of him not running if one of the other candidates had already shown a clear and passionate determination to follow in his footsteps on climate change. Iraq is top of everyone's agenda, with health care next. Both these issues are very important, of course, but neither should outweigh the overriding matter of safeguarding our planet. Al Gore is the only person with a chance of a "foot in the door" to the White House who has the priorities right.

I suspect that unless someone from the current list of contenders starts to push climate change as their prime concern, Al Gore might be tempted to come forward. If, however, a candidate does start giving priority to this issue, Al might decide to say out of politics proper and offer support to that candidate.

Since early last year, the former Vice President has said that he has no intention of running for the presidency again. At that time he was unaware just how much influence his film and book "An Inconvenient Truth" would carry, and how well it would be accepted by the public. Nobody could have foreseen what has happened. All Al Gore's efforts might well have disappeared into obscurity. Instead, we are now seeing his film win an Oscar, his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, and him receiving acclaim at home and abroad. He has a new book due to be published in May entitled "The Assault on Reason" (" a visionary analysis of how we can put the tenets of fact-based reasoning back into public discourse and politics at large.") Pluto will still be conjunct his natal Jupiter then - this might be a good time for an announcement. I shall continue to hope.

"The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies. In a war such as this, then, what is victory and how will we recognize it?" (Al Gore)