• by Josh May , April 15, 2008

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that global warming is all man's fault. At least according to Al Gore. Never mind the naysayers, skeptics or questioning few who believe a bit more investigation should be done. As Gore explains, "Those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona, and those who believe the earth is flat." But believe is exactly what Al Gore is urging you to do. Also he's trying to get some of those round-earth denialists to have faith in his climate change statistics.

The former veep appeared on 60 Minutes in March on the eve of launching what will be one of the largest and most ambitious public policy campaigns in U.S. history. Dubbed the "We" campaign, $300 million will be spent over the next three years for advertising in an effort to not only change the public's opinion about global warming, but also its actions. "This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it."

The campaign is being organized by the Alliance for Climate Protection and is being financed through donations and, in large part, by Gore himself. Revenues from the Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, the best-selling book of the same name and his lecture tours will all be added to the coffers, though Gore has not disclosed the exact amount of his personal commitment. Targeting broad audiences, with spots on The Daily Show and American Idol - getting to the heart of real America - the commercials will be notable for the pairings they feature: such as Al Sharpton with Pat Robertson and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich - who himself has a new book coming out called Contract with the Planet (he does love his contracts). If it can be said that politics makes for strange bedfellows, then global warming makes for even stranger ones.

Obviously, if Pelosi and Gingrich can get on the same page about climate change, then certainly the rest of America can, too. And to those flat-earth believers? Well, they can just head west, young man. Which raises the rather amusing paradox in Al Gore's argument. Back in the day, everyone believed the earth was flat. The vast majority of people on the planet had gathered the limited evidence they had at hand, and came to the logical conclusion - for the time - that the world simply ended at some point. Of course, there were a few skeptics of this theory - primarily scientists - who weren't quite ready to close the book on the flat-earth theory. Thankfully, a few of these skeptics set out in boats and in the process discovered that the world was indeed round, while also stumbling across a few interesting places like, for example, America. Good news for the empires of the day (new lands to conquer) and the Church (new souls to convert).

And speaking of the Church, it seems Al Gore did learn at least one lesson from his loss in '00: Namely, that motivating and engaging the religious right is an effective way to get things done in this country. He's recently begun tailoring his pitch to religious groups by embroidering his PowerPoint tapestry with passages from the Bible. Yes, even Jesus has something to say about climate change (no, this isn't a veiled reference to Obama). By framing the challenge ahead as a moral and spiritual call of duty, Gore has effectively added his own ban on gay marriage in Ohio to the global warming ballot. How Gore reconciles scientific research with a constituency that has a significant number of devout creationism adherents may be one of the greatest feats in modern times - almost as significant as circumnavigating the world.