Editor, The Times:Recently I decided to wade (and I mean 'wade') through Al Gore's first major work, Earth in the Balance.
Though rich in detail this is not a riveting read. Gore the Bore is heavy on facts, not much for excitement.
Having said that, Senator Al Gore makes some interesting observations. He speculates on what would happen to New Orleans with rising ocean levels in the event of a super storm that broke down the levees.
Also Gore points out that New York city would be especially vulnerable to a tidal surge. The subways could be flooded. The good citizens of the Big Apple could be without power for days on end. There could be millions, indeed billions of dollars in damages.
Remember this was all written in 1993! Al Gore was obviously way ahead of his time.
Here one has to speculate what would have happened if Al Gore had taken his rightful place as 43rd president of the United States. How much better would the United States, indeed the world, have been with Gore as president?
Instead, a combination of chicanery and outright fraud gave the election to possibly the worst president (and that's up against some pretty stiff competition) in the history of the US of A!? George Dubya Bush Jr.
Eight years of chasing weapons of mass destruction phantoms and giving huge tax breaks to the needy wealthy has put the U.S. on a 'financial cliff' (that cliff was there when Barak Obama began his first four years). It just got worse instead of better.
His critics have tried to discredit Al Gore – he lives in a mansion – yuk yuk! Now that George Bush he's a man of the people – yuk yuk, yuk.
Wading through Earth in the Balance is somewhat akin to tackling a novel by Thomas Mann – ponderous and slow, but worth it in the end.
Unfortunately this present economic 'on the cliff' crisis can only be solved (according to those who discount everything that Al Gore has to say) by, to quote Gore again, further strip mining of the Garden of Eden.
Too bad they didn't listen to Al Gore in the first place!
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
