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| Al Gore: Tennessean of the Year By ANNE PAINE Staff Writer Published: Sunday, 12/30/07 '07 accolades spotlight world-altering vision "It's been an interesting year." The understatement last week came from a man accused by his raucous critics of everything but understatement. Al Gore, seated on the side porch of his Nashville home, couldn't be challenged on this one. This year, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, focusing on his efforts to educate people about global warming, won an Oscar. His television network, Current TV, picked up an Emmy. He and an international panel of scientists shared the Nobel Peace Prize for alerting the world to the dangers posed by pollution-driven climate change. And, one of his daughters got married. An "interesting" year, for sure, for a man who, now 59, has served as a congressman, U.S. senator and vice president and won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential race — but not the job. Gore, who has been named 2007 Tennessean of the Year by readers and The Tennessean's editorial board, said he was honored and touched. He also said he was fortunate. "It's a great opportunity, when you have a chance to do work you feel passionately about," he said. Occasional cars could be heard passing on nearby Lynnwood Boulevard beyond the magnolia, holly and hackberry trees that surround his home. But mainly there was a hush in the cool December air. Nearby lay an Apple laptop computer — he's on that company's board of directors — on which he can coordinate projects, negotiate and communicate around the world. Gore, who is also a senior adviser to Google, has many commitments. He and his wife, Tipper, have four grown children and three grandchildren. He chairs the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit set up to help stop global warming, and he's a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. He's chairman of Generation Investment Management, which has just aligned itself with leading venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to accelerate startups of companies that could develop new technologies to slow global warming. His fervor to inform and find solutions is mustering a growing army of volunteers trained through The Climate Project, headquartered in Nashville, to educate others. In just over a year, at least a million people have been reached by the 1,000 "presenters" in this country alone, according to Gore's staff. He has held training sessions in Spain, too, and Australia. One volunteer, Gary Dunham, a retired Republican businessman from Texas who went on the road to spread the word, is responsible for about 20,000 of the contacts, Gore said. "They're able to reach in one month more than I've been able to reach in 30 years," he said. "I'm just so grateful for all the work they're doing." His goals include more volunteer training sessions, with the next one in India this spring. ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Flipping open his laptop to an "Ecospot" on Current TV's Web site brought sparkle to his often serious demeanor. The just-over-2-year-old cable and satellite nonfiction network is rooted in viewer-created content and citizen journalism. It boasts 51 million paying subscribers and is "aimed at giving a voice to the average person who has not had a way to break into the conversation of democracy on television," said Gore, who is the network's chairman. He began searching on the computer for the grand winner out of about 3,000 entries in a competition for television ads to educate people on the climate issue. An animated feature popped up showing a city with smoke pouring from stacks and heavy traffic. Car horns beeped and then an elephant dropped from the sky, squashing a vehicle. "In 2005, the U.S. released 6.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air," the clip reads, referring to metric tons. More elephants fall. "That's 1.2 billion elephants," it says. A man looks at the mayhem and then shrugs. An elephant falls on him. "It's time to stop ignoring the 1.2 billion elephants in the room," the clip ends. Gore, smiling broadly, chuckles. "Madison Avenue wouldn't have come up with that," he said. HOME BASE As Gore talked, 33 solar panels installed this year on his roof were converting sunlight to electricity. A change in the law in Nashville's tony satellite city of Belle Meade had been required to allow them. Under the driveway snaked pipes for a geothermal system tapping into the stable temperature underground to help heat and cool the 10,000-square-foot, white-columned home and pool. From this Middle Tennessee location, Gore can work on projects and business activities — stretching from Palo Alto, Calif., to Australia to Iceland and Bali. He meets with heads of state and others in these distant lands, too, with carbon credits bought to compensate for polluting fuel burned when he travels. The money goes to renewable resource energy projects that don't release carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. But Tennessee — either in Nashville or at the family farm in Carthage, just up the Cumberland River — is where he is more than anywhere else, he said. The walls of a hallway in his home are lined with memories: A photo of a longish-haired Gore paddling a canoe on the Caney Fork River with wife Tipper, pregnant with daughter Karenna in 1973. Nearby is the first campaign poster — year 1938 — of his now-deceased father, U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr., who eventually lost his seat when he opposed the Vietnam War. Looking out from another frame is Cordell Hull, a U.S. Secretary of State who served as a U.S. senator and in the House of Representatives. Hull is the only other Tennessean to win the Nobel Peace Prize — in 1945. The lake named after Hull lies near Carthage where Gore, who was born in Washington, D.C., spent summers while growing up. As he moved through the hall, Gore stopped to point out pictures of children and grandchildren. A large-scale photo of mountains and a lake taken by his wife, trained in photography, hung among others. She worked briefly at The Tennessean, where her husband was a reporter for five years in the 1970s, after military service in Vietnam. URGENCY NEEDED In his speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, he referred to a new study coming out two days later that would have the "shocking" news that the North Polar ice cap could be completely gone in seven years. The very next day, however, another study came out and said, "No, we think it could be as little as five years," he said. "When evidence like that keeps on slapping us in the face worldwide, pretty soon the whole effort by the deniers to pretend it's not real just collapses. "I think we're seeing that happen now. I don't want to get their backs up anymore than they already are because we need them really. More and more of them are changing their positions." His acquaintance Pat Robertson, a televangelist whose father served in the Senate with Gore's father, is one of those. "This is the biggest challenge we've ever faced," Gore said. "Some damage has been done and more will be, no matter what we do, but it's nothing compared withwhat would happen if we don't get our act together pretty quickly." "Together" is a key word. He talks about the Alliance for Climate Protection's bipartisan nature, saying it has a majority of Republicans on the board. They include Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush, and Lee Thomas, U.S. Environmental Protection Administration head under President Reagan. Gore said he would like to see Tennessee take a leading role, as some other states have, in trying to require fewer greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide from vehicles, though the Bush administration has squelched the effort elsewhere. He sees a tipping point near, when enough people in both parties and independents will demand more action at the national level. "It will be easier when there are rules of the road that don't let the corner-cutters in industry get an unfair advantage over the ones that are doing the right thing," he said. A BOOK TO COME Gore, author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance and the published version of An Inconvenient Truth, also turned out a book this year, The Assault on Reason. Another bestseller, he wrote about what he sees as American participatory democracy at risk with low voter turnouts, a Bush administration trading in misinformation and secrecy, and media that can shut out the public. The Internet is one of the avenues for greater public discourse and involvement, he said, and networks like Current TV. Another environmental book, meanwhile, is on the way. Gore is working on The Path to Survival. Billed as a blueprint for changes that should be made worldwide, it's expected to be out in summer 2008. Despite his many projects and forays around the country and world, Nashvillians can still expect to see or hear-tell of Gore out and about in town. "We love it here," he said. "This is really a wonderful home for us." |
| QUOTE (TNblue @ Dec 30 2007, 10:42 AM) |
| Finally.....he won his home state. Now go for the GOLD, Al. Or should that be the WHITE (house). :clap: :clap: :good: :good: :dance: :dance: "Tennessee" is turning "Blue" ( = TNblue) |