
Al Gore: 'The rich have subverted all reason' - mnm1
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/30/al-gore-interview-our-crumbling-planet-the-rich-have-subverted-all-reason-al-gore
======
crypt1d
“Our democracy has been hacked.” is something that resonates with me very
well. A select group of people have mastered media manipulation and are now
acting as puppeteers while we are all in a state of confusion, no longer able
to discern truth from disinformation. It is not classic censorship that
worries me anymore. It is this constant bombardment with questionable data
that we need to figure out how to battle, as it is our biggest enemy now. We
need some way to get out of the disinformation bubble and be able to see the
real picture.

BTW this article reminded me of a great show[1] that Last Week Tonight did,
about how local news outlets in US are used to manipulate the masses.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc)

~~~
mathgenius
> questionable data that we need to figure out how to battle

The reality of the situation seems obvious to me, even if the edges are not
clearly defined. I don't think it's very difficult to work out what is going
on (with climate change etc.)

To me this is not about people getting access to good data, or being otherwise
properly educated. It's about people identifying with "their group", and
attacking the "others". And such battle lines are fought around various
_issues_ and _language_ , and _labels_. But it's not actually about those
issues or language or labels. It's about _self_ and _other_. My people, and
those other people. So this is what needs to be healed, this separative
egoness.

~~~
belorn
This resonate strongly with me but there doesn't seem to be any political
platform that has been promoting this theory in the last 20 years. The left
focus has been on promoting the distinction and multitude of groups and the
strengthening of self-identity that members has towards such groupings. The
right is in return focusing the distinction between self and other, making the
combination of left and right a special volatile mix in current political
environment.

Sadly the group that has changed in this formula is the left. They used to
(ie, 30-40 years ago) spend a lot of focusing on eliminating and underplay
difference between groups. Today I often see the modern left making fun of
those times as naive experiment.

~~~
bluejekyll
Can you give some examples of when and how the Left is doing this?

From what I can tell, in general the left of the US is constantly making an
attempt to be all inclusive. I'd agree that there hasn't been enough work to
help people see that they have common cause with people who look different and
live in different places. That's really whats needed, but it's never been
clear to me how to help someone who is severely bigoted to understand that
their views are born of ignorance.

From what I can tell, the Right uses positions to drive wedges between people,
such that someone can literally hate something which is clearly benefiting
them personally because they have turned the issue into an Us vs Them
argument. The only thing I see the Left consistently use as a wedge issue is
class and money... Whereas the Right uses every possible thing they can come
up with to convince people that follow them that they should all be afraid of
what the Left is going to "take" from them.

~~~
jaredklewis
I think the left is not inclusive enough. Though perhaps a better way to
describe it is that the left is increasingly unwelcoming, remarkably to the
people whose votes we need. As an extremely liberal person who also happens to
be from the south, I am horrified by my Facebook feed where everyday posts by
liberal friends proudly mock conservatives as being stupid or bigoted. Being
from the south, I know many conservative people with great hearts. These are
the people we are trying to convince to join our side, and we are shitting all
over them.

In these articles, one can sense a true disdain for many conservative points
of view on topics like abortion, the role of religion in our society, and gun
control. It is rare to find articles that I would feel comfortable sharing
with conservative friends or family, as their tone is so contemptuous of
conservatives. If it were not for the acerbic tone, many of these articles
might become powerful tools of persuasion. But I guess it is just too much fun
to taunt the "basket of deplorables."

To quote an article that nicely summarizes a Lincoln speech:

> When Abraham Lincoln was 33 years old, he gave a speech inside a
> Presbyterian church to a temperance society. His message: The assembled
> ought to be nicer to drinkers and sellers of alcohol, rather than shunning
> them, or denouncing them as moral pestilences. Indeed, they ought to use
> “kindly persuasion,” even if a man’s drunkenness had caused misery to his
> wife, or left his children hungry and naked with want.

> For people are never less likely to change, to convert to new ways of
> thinking or acting, than when it means joining the ranks of their
> denouncers.

> To expect otherwise, “to have expected them not to meet denunciation with
> denunciation ... and anathema with anathema, was to expect a reversal of
> human nature,” Lincoln explained.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/why-
can...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/why-cant-the-
left-win/522102/)

~~~
gremlinsinc
It's hard when some conservatives ARE stupid... I was sad at the Death of
Chester Bennington...and one of my old friends...and my wife's best friends'
husband -- said to me, "You know the Clinton's Killed him, right?"... and I'm
like...okay give me concrete evidence, and he's can only give clear conspiracy
theory sites, and I'm like... look here's what snopes says..and he's
like...telling me Snopes is FAKE News and crap... as opposed to his sources
which are all true...

I literally bloodied my head face-desking after the exchange...

------
Boothroid
Global warming is just the tip of the iceberg (sorry). Seriously though, there
are so many ways in which humanity is making the world immeasurably worse and
in which our current models of organisation cannot be sustained, and global
warming is only one of them. Take for example modern agriculture: we are
forced to pour huge amounts of artificial (i.e. not animal manure) fertiliser
onto the soil in order to produce enough to feed ourselves. The fertiliser is
required due to the extreme pressure we put on the soil i.e. monoculture,
expecting a full crop every year, with no fallow periods for recovery. This
fertiliser has in some cases to be mined, obviously at some expense in energy
terms, from non-renewable resources. The production and usage of the
fertiliser consumes large amounts of currently, predominantly, fossil fuels.
The fertiliser runs off the soil into the ocean, disrupting the natural
balance, with negative side effects on sea life, itself on which many coastal
dwelling people depend for food or livelihood. When was the last time you saw
this issue discussed in the media?

Sometimes I think that the focus on global warming is negative in that it is
far easier for those that stand to lose from wider conciousness about
environmental issues, i.e. the usual big business concerns, to counter a
single topic than it would be for them to deny the general trend of ongoing
worsening and destruction of our natural environment in general. The fact is
that western lifestyles cannot be achieved by the whole population of the
world without consequent massive pressure on resources. Rather than worrying
ourselves solely about global warming I think we would do far better to start
reducing consumption, reversing population growth to the point that the
world's population starts to decline, and putting efficiency at the heart of
humanity's scientific and business endeavours. The chances of this happening?
I'd say pretty much zero, because modern capitalism preaches at the altar of
inexorable GDP growth, and the rich and powerful aren't going to give up
without a fight.

~~~
fsloth
Yes, we have problems.

But I would prefer an argumentation that does not place the 'artificiality' of
modern farming at the fulcrum as there is no 'natural' farming. All farming is
artificial - an artifact of human culture. Farming is a thousands of years old
biohack, of whose output we've improved over millenias. Using nitrogen
fertilizer generated through Haber process to increase crop yelds is not in
any way less 'natural' than manure.

Trace chemicals from e.g. pesticides that leak to all sorts of foodchains,
including those where human partake - now, that's an issue.

It's also not very effective to speak of the general consumption of western
lifestyle. We can't fix 'western lifestyle'. But, we can fix specific
problems, one at a time. The problem needs some metric and the solution needs
some predetermined metric to follow.

So, what's the first thing you would _specifically_ fix?

~~~
horsawlarway
Desertification of crop lands? Increasing pesticide use coupled with
decreasing benefit? Depletion of groundwater tables because of land usage that
encourages run-off? Substituting fertilizer made from non-renewable resources
for a self sustaining form of agriculture?

Destruction of local habits for mono-culture crop development? Destroying
complex ecosystems that are perfectly capable of supporting rich crops for
humans and replacing them with mono-culture crops like soy/corn/sugarbeets
that absolutely fuck the topsoil, deplete nutrients, and fail to support
basically any animal life?

I'm not OP, but our current agricultural practices that came out of the world
wars with cheap and easy access to "Chemicals" is absolutely a problem. Not
because the chemicals are artificial (although that doesn't help with regards
to price) but because we're using them in ways that don't create a renewing
system. We're literally destroying our sources of water and topsoil to grow
corn no one needs.

~~~
Boothroid
Thank you, better than I put it.

------
bryananderson
"Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those
who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the
truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance." -Neil Postman

This isn't going to get better as AI bots improve their ability to sound human
and steer the conversation.

I'm kind of at a loss for a solution to this, aside from trusting only well-
established media outlets, but that has its own drawbacks.

------
Overtonwindow
Isn't Al Gore rich though? I'm bothered when the elite speak of others as if
they're not part of that 1%.

~~~
PacketPaul
How did he get so rich from a government salary?

~~~
maxerickson
He sold a large stake in a TV network that he was involved with after leaving
office:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV)

And it isn't like Congress is poorly compensated. Currently Senators are paid
$174,000 a year.

~~~
humanrebar
That sounds on the low end for mid-to-late career lawyers, doctors, and
businessmen in the DC area.

Of course, the power and fame is seductive, so paying below market rate makes
a lot of sense.

~~~
ac29
But, most congress people are already wealthy: the average senator has a net
worth of $14 million, and the average representative in the house has a net
worth of nearly $7 million [0]. There are of course outliers, with some having
hundreds of millions and some having negative net worth.

[0]
[https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_...](https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_and_Representatives)

------
tajen
I'm generally against generalizations ("the rich have subverted ...") as it
leads to witchhunt and lynching of the wrong people. However, he convinced me
that a wrong balance of powers is keeping us too much in the "status quo" of
runaway pollution, using misinformation, and is slowing us down in the fight
against massive destruction.

But what can we do?

For example, in French politics, there isn't a single person who proposes the
right things against climate change. Melanchon comes to my mind, he has a half
program against global warming but does hate speech against the 50% richer of
the nation (and in France, that mean earning >2000€ pm). And that doesn't even
guarantee getting the global warming solved... Macron won't solve much either,
unless he digs in the debt, which isn't better for my children. Either way,
we're stuck.

~~~
notthemessiah
I don't suspect that you read the article past the headline otherwise you
would have come across this section.

"I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says
Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision
making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial.
And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a
quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear
they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat."

Gore (and Melonchon for that matter too) aren't referring to the "upper 50%",
it's not even the 1% mantra of Occupy Wall St, it's an astoundingly small
fraction that have this access to lobbying power and campaign funds.

------
kevinSuttle
I appreciate what he's trying to do here, but Al Gore isn't exactly
impoverished.

------
awkwarddaturtle
How could the rich subvert anything when they control the
media/government/wealth/power? Hell they control "reason".

Also, I'm startikng to get a bit disillusioned by the amount of guardian,
nytimes, bbc, etc articles here.

I hope HN doesn't turn into reddit.

------
atemerev
Usually Mr. Gore visits places where he gives these speeches (as well as his
no less entertaining presentations on climate change and how save the
environment by limiting consumption) by means of his private jet.

So, not impressed. Next!

~~~
anotherturn
If any change is going to be made it's going to come through revolution (a la
France) or through someone in the top 1% changing things from the top down (a
la slavery). The fact that he gets around on a private jet is neither here nor
there - we can live with hypocrisy. What we cannot live with is inaction.

~~~
atemerev
I don't know who are "we" that you are speaking about, but I absolutely can't
live with hypocrisy. And large-scale social changes are inevitable anyway --
universal basic income is economically impossible, and transition to post-job
economy is nearby.

------
dwe3000
The very last line of the article explains it all; this is to promote his soon
to be release movie. As always, it's about the money.

~~~
Kurtz79
Most of people's actions have personal gain (be it money, power, recognition,
sense of worth, etc...) as their main motive.

But it does not make them necessarily wrong or worthless to others.

~~~
dwe3000
True, but I would appreciate a little integrity/honesty. He flies all over the
world, multiple times in a short time span, and then makes his money
"complaining" that we are using fossil fuels, when he could have just as
easily been there via a teleconference. I don't mind people that walk the
talk, but Al Gore avoids that.

~~~
sethrin
This is called "tu quoque"[0] or appeal to hypocrisy.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)

~~~
humanrebar
In this case, the pitch is for sacrifice and discipline. It undermines his
argument if he's somehow exempt from the plan.

As in, if even a rich, educated, and passionate Al Gore cannot actually reduce
his carbon footprint, is it even doable for India and China?

~~~
Retra
Al Gore can't personally build a skyscraper, but India and China seem to have
no trouble doing that. In fact, you could probably list billions of things
that individuals cannot effectively do that large organizations can do.

And even if he reduces his carbon footprint to nothing, all the does is shut
him up and temporarily reduce carbon emissions insignificantly. It does
nothing to curb industrial processes where the bulk of carbon emissions occur.

And you'll note that hypocrisy is not actually a logic fallacy. A war general
has just as much reason to be listened to when he campaigns for peace as a
pacifist; because peace stands on its own merit.

EDIT: This isn't even hypocrisy, though. Al Gore isn't asking each individual
to fix their own carbon footprint. He's asking institutions to do so. And
institutions can do things individuals cannot (due to networking and economic
effects), as evidenced by that being the whole reason institutions are formed.

