What Al did next

One from Wired. As they bill it, He invented the Internet (sort of). He became President (almost). Now Al Gore has found his true calling: using the power of technology to save the world.

But, while Wired 14.05: The Ressurection of Al Gore is an interesting read in itself, elsewhere in the same issue you can see the shape that US environmentalism is now taking. The Next Green Revolution is subtitled How technology is leading environmentalism out of the anti-business, anti-consumer wilderness.. This is probably fair enough, once tech gets to a certain level it makes sense to engage with it rather that slavishly adopt the policy of protest at all levels.

What worries me is the whiff of the dead hand of neo-conservatism about all this. There's also a table in the same issue which looks at the Pros and Cons of what it refers to as the 'old guard' environmentalists. Under cons for Friends of the Earth is listed: "Suspicious of nuclear power, carbon-trading markets, and free trade."

Free market environmentalism is an oxymoron and then some. Looks like the US might be going its own way again.