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"Al Gore's Environmentalism a Caricature of Contemporary Liberalism"

                        by George F. Will
                      
                       The Atlanta Journal
                           3 Sept 1992

     WASHINGTON - Someone retrieved Kipling's poem "Recessional" (the one
about "dominion over palm and pine" and "lesser breeds without the Law")
from the wastebasket where Kipling had tossed it.  Whether that someone did
literature a favor is debatable.  Clearly Al Gore's book "Earth in the 
Balance" is wastebasket-worthy.

     The senator says our civilization is a "dysfunctional family."  He
favors altering "the very foundation of our civilization."  Some leaders
have effected such changes.  Moses, Jesus, Mohammed.  But the U.S. 
Government?

     His environmentalism is a caricature of liberalism.  His call to "make 
the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civili-
zation" is embarrassing.  When Gore asserts that "the world scientific 
community" is in "consensus" about global warming, he is being cavalier
about the truth.  Gore knows that his former Harvard mentor, Roger Revelle,
who died last year, concluded: "The scientific base for greenhouse warming
is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time."  Gore knows that
a recent Gallup Poll of scientists concerned with global climate research
shows that 53% do not believe warming has occurred, and another 30% are
uncertain.

     Gore complains that the media threatens the planet by creating 
skepticism about the agenda for which he insists there is scientific
consensus.  Actually, too often skepticism (about Love Canal, acid rain,
the non-existent Northern Hemisphere hole in the ozone layer) is vindicated
long after being portrayed in the media as a moral failing rather than an
intellectually debatable position.

     Gore, who has spent most of his life in Washington's governing circle,
overflows with the certitude characteristic of that circle.  He knows the
future and knows exactly what it requires, which turns out to be an 
unprecedented expansion of government - spending, regulating, evaluating 
technologies, and transferring wealth abroad.

     He has mastered the Washington art of arguing that his agenda won't 
really cost anything.  You know: This or that program or regulation will
make us healthier or smarter or better behaved, and therefore will make
us more productive, so economic growth will increase and so will revenues,
and thus everything will "pay for itself."

     The hoariest cliche in modern American politics is "Marshall Plan" for
this or that.  It is being given another trot around the track by Gore's
call for a "Global Marshall Plan."  He is vociferous against the "hubris"
of the government class which, having failed at its banal but useful
business down the street (schools, bridges, medical care) has an itch to go
global.

     Gore's particular ideas have no constituency.  But what is dismaying is
the way he trades in ideas. uncritically embracing extremisms that seem to
justify vast expansions of his righteousness and of the power of the govern-
ment he seeks to lead.

     His unsmiling sense of lonely evangelism in a sinning world lacks the
sense of proportion that is produced by a sense of history - and of humor.
The planet is more resilient, the evidence about its stresses more mixed and
the facts of environmental progress more heartening than he admits.  His
book, a jumble of dubious 1990s science and worse 1960s philosophy is a 
powerful reason not to elect its author to high office in the executive
branch where impressionable people will be bombarded by bad ideas in search
of big budgets.
     
     
-- 
MANDOCK,R.
Internet: gt7122b@prism.gatech.edu