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Al Gore's speech at the University of Toronto last night was accompanied by adulation usually associated with Britney or Paris. The show sold out in minutes when tickets went on sale two weeks ago, but people without tickets turned up just to hang outside the hall, basking in the aura of environmental righteousness. Religious vibes were evident all around.
"From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts, 69, as he held a banner aloft for the East Toronto Climate Action Group amid a lively prelecture crowd outside the old hall.
"The religion for this group is doing something for the environment."
Well, there's religion, and then there's religion.
There were vegans seeking new recruits, people calling for the closing of Ontario's coal-fired power plants, a Greenpeace mascot dressed as a polar bear — even the UFO believers showed up."I know you won't believe this," one of them, a man named Victor Viggiani, said with a practised tongue, "but the extraterrestrial technology involved in this . . . it's free energy, man. Absolute free energy, and it'll be the end of fossil fuels."
. . .
Across the driveway in front of the hall, a large banner exhorted the crowd to "Heed the Goracle." Belonging to a fledgling group called ecoSanity, it was still there hours later, as Mr. Gore enjoyed a reception at the adjacent Simcoe Hall and the dispersing crowd voiced its praise.
The guy exhorting onlookers to dig heed the prophesy omen hunch guess fantasy oracle insists he didn't really mean to be so pious.
"It was not our intention to have a religious approach," ecoSanity group founder Glenn MacIntosh said, "but it was our understanding that it was that kind of movement that people were craving; that kind of spiritual connection in their gut."
Yeah, I really feel it in my gut, man. Ken Kesey lives.
So, what did Mr Gore say? Besides his customary science fiction, he ventured into Canadian politics, with about as much success as in the past.
"Canada in the past has been known for its leadership, and I think now is a time when some people put a question mark after Canada on this," Gore said, after alighting from a limousine — gas-operated, by the way — for his sold-out speech to 1,500 at the University of Toronto's Convocation Hall.
"I'm not a citizen of Canada but it's awful important for Canada to live up to its reputation," he said. "I love Toronto, I love Canada. Canada, I'm convinced, is going to come back on the right path."
Preach it, brother.
Gore must have missed the disclosure by a top-level Chrétien advisor that the Liberals knew Canada's Kyoto target was almost certainly unattainable when they signed on to the deal in 1998. It was a big PR exercise from the get-go. What do you think of Canada's "reputation" now, Al?
h/t: Darcey at Dust My Broom
Source of graphic image: The Prophet Gore first appeared on the front page of National Post on 10 February. I downloaded it from Proud To Be Canadian.ca blog.
Previous related posts:
[...] Heed the Goracle [...]
Fine post, and the picture is awesome. Where did you find it? I feel like making a parodic t-shirt with it.
Thanks, Chris. The image of The Prophet Gore is great, isn’t it.
It first appeared on the front page of National Post on 10 February. I downloaded it from Proud To Be Canadian.ca blog here.
I’ve added the credit to the post.
[...] Heed the Goracle [...]
[...] He asked for, and was granted, special exemptions from several standard committee procedures—and has now violated even the minimal requirements left in place. Has that Heed the Goracle stuff gone to his head? [...]
[...] “Forgive me, Al Gore, for I have sinned” By StatGuy When it comes to saving the earth through ecological rectitude, Al "The Great Gasbag Prophet" Gore has inspired many to talk a great deal about going green. Australian columnist Michelle Cazzulino tells us about a New Yorker who's changed his way of living so as to reduce his carbon footprint—or so he says. The latest in a long line of those doing their bit for the world's quota of hot air is Colin Beavan, a 43-year-old non-fiction writer from New York, who describes himself as a "tree-hugging lunatic" and whose quest to save the planet, one square of toilet paper at a time, was detailed in a US newspaper last week. [...]
[...] Heed the Goracle [...]
[...] Does the Gaia Hotel know that Mr Gore pushes creationism along with his global warming schtick? A Gore fan attended one of his revival meetings public lectures recently and couldn’t believe what he saw and heard. [T]he guy's entire presentation exists in order to present people with the scientific data showing that human-caused climate change is a fact. He does his very best to include references in all of the slides, showing to any thinking person that this data is not made up, that it comes from the forefront of our scientific research (there was many slides containing data from Science journal, and a few from Nature). [...]
[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave aReply [...]
[...] A bomb that Al Gore can love. Isn’t modern technology [...]
[...] to the cowardly lying terrorist Yasser Arafat. Today’s award to the Great Gasbag Prophet is only further confirmation that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has no idea what it’s [...]