Al Gore: Wrong Then, Wrong Now?

Earlier today I posted on two seemingly disparate subjects: the success of our new missile defense system and the obnoxious preening of our Senators on the subject of global warming.

This evening, I was driving to choral rehearsal and happened to hear Mark Levin reading a quote from Al Gore from back in the 1980s when he was a US Senator (before he became both obnoxious and preening) that tied both subjects up kind of neatly. Gore, as everyone on the planet knows, is Mr. Global Warming himself, a walking sermon about the excesses of our modern lifestyle and modern-day John the Baptist, preaching our impending doom.

Now, I’ll say right here that it could be that he is right, at least in part. It could well be that global climate change is mostly our fault and that by taking immediate, economy-crippling action right now, the industrialized world can put the brakes on the whole thing. I seriously doubt that he’s right, but I’ll grant that it’s possible. I say that because the science on global warming is still so very uncertain – something any honest person would grant pretty readily. I’m quite sure that he’d disagree and, given his track record, would have some very unkind things to say about either my intelligence or opinion on science.

Gore was absolutely certain about something else as well – the potential for Ronald Reagan’s SDI program to have a real influence on the government of the Soviet Union. Gore was, as he usually is, very clear and very certain in his opinion. He was also very wrong.

There is a group of extremely hard line conservatives who see in SDI a means for destabilizing the arms race by deploying defenses to defend our missile silos. This could challenge the Soviet Union to accelerated arms race, and, the conservatives hope, pressure the Soviets economically to induce a radical change in their system. But their strategy is not viable. The Soviets have always found the rubles to match our military escalation. We’re the ones with Gramm-Rudman. To assume that they’re the ones who would buckle is madness.

As we now know, SDI was a major factor in bringing the rickety Soviet economy down in a heap. We know that the Soviets did not have the money to match SDI. We know that the Politburo was scared to death that we would get an SDI system online and that there was no way they could match it if we did. That’s why they worked so hard against our military buildup, even enlisting Ted Kennedy to work on their behalf.

Al Gore wasn’t just a little bit wrong. His entire analysis was backwards from reality.

That’s just another reason I’m not inclined to trust Gore’s analysis on global climate change. he’s demonstrated more than once that he can get the big things really wrong.

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Category: Political Pontifications