Gore compares "Climate Change" to Racism

Michael Folkerts
UNL Ag-Econ Major


Early last week former Vice President Al Gore spoke at a youth conference concerning the issue of climate change or “global warming,” to an audience of teens and pre-teens. During his talk, he compared the issue of climate change to racism. He told the young audience that when he was their age, “we kids asked our parents and their generation: Explain to me again why its ok for the law to officially discriminate against people because of their skin color…and when our parent’s generation couldn't answer that question, that’s when the law began to change.” Gore than continued to explain that the older generation (our parents) thinking becomes “out-of-date” in a period of “rapid change.” He then implied that in these cases, one cannot trust the judgment of our one parents when he stated “there are some things about our world that you know that older people don’t know.”

Is this the proper way to change the world? Whether one is a global warming advocate or skeptic, can one truly believe this is an ethical practice? Is it healthy to teach the young members of society to undermine the beliefs of the older and wiser generation?

This type of teaching must stop. As Glen Beck pointed out, if history is an accurate predictor, we know where this teaching may lead us. Nazi Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates said this about the Hitler Youth: "If such an art of active mass influence through propaganda is joined with the long-term systematic education of a nation and if both are conducted in a unified and precise way, the relationship between the leadership and the nation will always remain close."