It's like Slavery and the Holocaust combined

Al Gore's "offensive" passion for the environment. Robert J Barro looks at Gore's book, Earth in the Balance.

Gore regards the threat to the environment as so serious and imminent that he likens it to the Nazi Holocaust: ''In the 1930s, when Kristallnacht revealed the nature of Hitler's intentions toward the Jews...the U.S. and the rest of the world [were] slow to act.... Now, warnings of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent.... Once again, world leaders waffle.... Yet today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.''

Gore goes on to compare the environmental danger to the injustice of American slavery: ''Most...of the generation that wrote the Constitution were partially blind when it came to the inalienable rights of the African-Americans as slaves.... Today, most...are partially blind when it comes to our connection with the natural world.'' Some people regard this passion as admirable, but I regard it as reckless and offensive.

In any event, the hyperbole is hard to reconcile with Gore's recent support of the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Apparently, during a Presidential campaign, moderating the rise in oil prices is more important than saving the world from holocaust and slavery.

Thanks, Stuart, for the link.