Say 'Green New Deal' three times to a mirror, and who shows up? Al Gore!

Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam is a firm supporter of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) even though it was approved by a prior administration as a necessary extension to the many natural gas pipelines crisscrossing the state.  Since its inception, the ACP has been dogged by the usual anti-fossil fuel climate change activists.  Perhaps Northam's centrist stance on this issue helped get him elected.  Regardless, the ACP is the most practical means to bring low-CO2 natural gas to eastern Va. and N.C. The available renewable energy options are far from adequate and much too expensive.

Apparently, Al Gore saw Northam's current political weakness and the local ACP protests as an opportunity to (1) politically leverage Northam's blackface troubles, (2) virtue-signal his support for a minor complaint about the proposed location of an ACP pumping station near a rural town founded by freed black American slaves, and (3) seize an opportunity to promote his green climate agenda.

The story of his 19 February visit to Union Hill (population 500, about 90 minutes west of Richmond) was on the front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch the next morning.  One statement from the article stood out:

"This pipeline is not needed in any way, shape or form," Gore said, arguing that the state should instead pursue modern renewable resources.  "This pipeline is a dinosaur.  Its time has passed."

This is not the first time Al Gore planned a political hit in Virginia.  As vice president, he launched a seemingly worthy but eventually failed initiative to improve federal government efficiency and reduce costs.  At that time, I worked for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) in Richmond, Va.  The public affairs officer (PAO) received a call from the vice president's office to arrange a visit to speak to the employees about his efficiency initiative.

A day or two ahead of the visit, Gore's staff called the PAO to confirm and innocently asked for an example of an overpriced item to use as a talking point.  The PAO said he would check and call back.  However, he knew that the facility had a display room with hundreds of overpriced items being researched.  He also knew that Mr. Gore had recently paid a visit to a GSA (Government Services Administration) supply facility in Calif. and humiliated their chief executive about an overpriced ashtray the company supplied.  The official reply back to the Gore staffer was that no such item could be found at Richmond.  The next day, the planned visit was canceled without explanation after much time and money had been spent by command in preparation.

Because Mr. Gore's statements at tiny Union Hill presented nothing new, his celebrity participation in this otherwise insignificant protest raises other suspicions.   One could wonder if this was his opportunity to get back in the public eye ahead of the 2020 race.  Or perhaps he only wanted to remind everyone that it was he and not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who got a Nobel Prize for building public awareness of the dangers of climate change allegedly caused by man's use of fossil fuels.

It was well over a decade ago when Al Gore helped jump-start the massive nationwide indoctrination process that made much of America into true believers in the "green" part of the Democrats' Green New Deal.  His efforts, assisted by academia, K-12 education, Hollywood, and the news media, made many people accept the big lie because they wanted to believe.  Otherwise, the ridiculously unrealistic Green New Deal would have been laughed out of existence long before it was made public.

Image: JD Lasica via Flickr.

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