Gore and "Free" Trade

From Joel Kovel's critique of Al Gore:
Gore did nothing to stand against the ruinous trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and the emergence of the WTO. Very modest efforts to improve fuel economy for American cars were shot down by the oil industry without a peep from the White House.

Gore and Garbage

Gore doesn't adequately address the issue of solid waste.
Joel Kovel in a critique of An Inconvenient Truth.

A word about solid waste. There is no doubt that the crisis would be worse if we did nothing about garbage, just as it would be worse if lead were still in gasoline. But the crisis already factors in these palliations, which set certain rates of ecosystem decay, slowing it to the extent we now see without altering the dynamics an iota. In the case of waste management, the large corporations who run the show provide another source of accumulation, exploitation of labour, criminality, and concentration--and another kind of industrial setting, the recycling plant.

Gore Works Within the System

Incinerator in Ohio which local environmentalists are trying to close.

From Joel Kovel's critique of An inconvenient Truth:
Working within the system. The "system" here means various arms of the state, including regulatory agencies and the judiciary, as well as the extensive and varied set of established non-governmental organizations, and elements of capital itself. Obviously, it is a life's work to keep track of so large and complicated an apparatus, and we can do no more than set forth certain underlying principles in discussing it here.

It is unnecessary to detail once more how corporations and politicians are in bed with each other, and just how inadequately the state takes care of ecosystems. But these facts say nothing about whether or not it is desirable to work within them to make a change. After all, everything in capitalist society is conditioned by capital, from the EPA to the raising of children and the writing of this book. Similarly, degrees of resistance to capital can be found in the strangest places. While it is a safe bet to conclude that the legal system is stacked to benefit the rich and powerful, it is not true that the Law is reducible to economic interest, nor that it is impossible to secure real gains through the courts. By the same reasoning, corporate executives and other personifications of capital are only relatively consumed by it. In each of them, therefore, there may be glimmers of conscience, or if not that, at least common sense.

Gore's Technological Determinism

From Joel Kovel's critique of Al Gore's thesis:

....An Inconvenient Truth fails to mention the word, capitalism, that it oozes with technological determinism, does not take into sufficient account the global South, never questions the industrial model, promises that his approach will generate a lot of wealth, and offers no real way out beyond voting the proper people, ie, people like himself, into office. Thus neither capital, nor the capitalist state, is at all questioned, nor is any authentic democratisation offered. Salvation for the troubled bourgeois masses will come through choosing the best representatives among liberal politicians and technocrats, then letting them guide the people to the ecological Promised Land.

Gore and Volunteerism

This is a demonstration against the Clinton-Gore proposal for an incinerator in Ohio.

From Joel Kovel's critique of Al Gore in "A Really Inconvenient Truth"

While there is nothing wrong with any ecologically voluntarist act so long as it is done with a good heart and a mind toward restoring the earth, there is nothing inherent to it, either, that leads anywhere. Moral exhortations may feel as though they generate larger purposes, but this is an illusion. There is no solidarity inherent to the moral impulse; and unless that which makes for solidarity is added, voluntarism will stop at its own border.

Gore's Illusion

From the critique of Gore by Joel Kovel:
It is certainly the case that all measures of increasing the renewability and efficiency, and decreasing the pollution of energy sources--that is, all "soft-energy paths"--are to be endorsed, and for the same reason one endorses recycling. What cannot be supported is the illusion that these measures of themselves can do more than retard the slide toward ecocatastrophe under conditions of capitalist growth--a fall that may become precipitous once fossil fuels become uneconomical to extract, or the greenhouse effect becomes too catastrophic. Only a basic change in patterns of production and use can allow ecologically appropriate technologies to have their beneficial effect.

Gore Reduced by 30%

The Justice Department under Clinton/Gore reduced by some 30% effective prosecution of environmental crime compared to that of the first Bush administration. And Dr Sidney Wolfe, perhaps the most knowledgeable individual on the subject, reported that the FDA and OSHA, chief watchdogs protecting the health of the American citizenry, sank under Clinton to the lowest level of morale and competency that he had witnessed in his 29 years of studying these agencies.

Gore took charge of environmental policy

From Joel Kovel's critique of Al Gore:
As Vice-President, Gore took charge of environmental policy and for all the fluffy rhetoric, was spineless when it came to standing up to big business. His tenure in office, a time of resurgent economic expansion, witnessed the highest rates of growth of CO2 emissions in history. He did nothing to stand against the ruinous trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and the emergence of the WTO. Very modest efforts to improve fuel economy for American cars were shot down by the oil industry without a peep from the White House.

Gore has never ceased

For throughout this whole process of awakening and evangelism Gore has never ceased carrying water for global capital. As valuable as his advocacy of serious change to combat global warming undoubtedly is, by setting the logic of that change within the dominant system Gore commits an error of literally fatal proportions.

Gore has gone as far as anyone in the system

Joel Kovel wrote:
Gore has gone as far as anyone in the system to challenge its ecological implications. He is the first—and still the only—instance of a kind of ecocentrism breaking into the consciousness of an official in capital’s stronghold. For whatever reasons—he himself emphasizes the shock of his sister’s death from lung cancer induced by the consumption of tobacco, a crop from which his family had grown wealthy—Gore became sensitized to the large-scale environmental effects of the economic system. He began to see these in ecological terms, and to focus on the overarching menace of global warming.