Gore: Obama Has 'Failed to Stand Up' on Global Warming

The former vice president takes on the Obama in a Rolling Stone essay

This Friday in a 7,000 word Rolling Stone essay, Al Gore will make that case that the president has "failed to stand up for 'bold action' on global warming and has made little progress on the problem since the days of Republican President George W. Bush," the Associated Press reported. The preview of the essay is an unusually direct attack on an administration that the climate-change crusader has supported since the beginning. Gore, relays the AP, is also concerned that Obama hasn't presented the "magnitude" of the crisis to the American people. The ex-vice president writes:

"He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community...to bring the reality of the science before the public."

To be fair, it's hard to find anyone who has forcefully hammered home the impact of global warming as much as Al Gore--whose hallmark scary environmental charts and statistics won him an Oscar for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Savvily, Gore also softens the blow of his criticism a bit by presciently noting:

"Even writing an article like this one carries risks," Gore says. "Opponents of the president will excerpt the criticism and strip it of context."

The full "context" will appear on Rolling Stone this Friday.

Update: Actually, it will appear right here: the magazine put the entire essay on its website this morning. While Gore does praise the Obama administration for "significant climate friendly initiatives" he doesn't hold back with his criticism:

But in spite of these and other achievements, President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority. Senate advocates — including one Republican — felt abandoned when the president made concessions to oil and coal companies without asking for anything in return. He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States, apparently in an effort to defuse criticism from those who argue speciously that "drill, baby, drill" is the answer to our growing dependence on foreign oil.