We owe Al Gore an enormous debt of gratitude

It's not often that you can point to a man and actually be able to say, "You see him? He saved the planet." Actually, I don't know that you could EVER have pointed to anyone, outside of Superman or Captain Marvel or somebody, and be able to say those words.

But tonight the President of the United States stepped up to the rostrum, in front of the Congress, the nation, and the world, and uttered words that for him would have been unthinkable just a couple years ago.

"These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment — and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change."

And there's only one man in the world responsible for that. His movie got nominated for an Oscar today.

Al Gore had been giving his speech on climate change for decades. This year he made the important decision to bring it to the masses instead of just those who happened to catch it at their college or some NRDC member's house. It's not that a whole lot of people saw it, maybe a few million at the box office, and more on DVD. It was that the people who did see it were moved by it, moved to speak out, moved to make their feelings known, moved to change their lifestyle, moved by the preponderance of evidence to let their representatives in government know that this crisis must be on top of the agenda, not in a couple years but today.

Al Gore could have spoken out about the Iraq War and he did. He could have spoken out about this Administration's trashing of the Constitution and the separation of powers with illegal actions like warrantless wiretapping, and he did. He could have created an alternative means for young people to broadcast their concerns, and he did. But what he has done for this nation and this Earth on the topic of climate change cannot be overstated. He knew this was his best opportunity to affect the debate from the outside. And he made the most of it.

I really don't think I'm being hyperbolic. There are moments in history where words, or the lack of words, stir the world to action, or inaction. In recent history we have President Reagan never using the word "AIDS" until it was far too late. We have the Clinton Administration never using the word "genocide" until it was far too late. That could have been one of the legacies of George W. Bush. Without Al Gore, it almost certainly would have been.

In and of themselves, Bush's use of the term "climate change" means nothing. The past seven State of the Union Addresses are littered with unfulfilled hopes and rhetorical flights of fancy. But you have to remember that a year ago, the President said this:

BUSH: I think it’s — I have said consistently that global warming something is a serious problem. There is a debate over whether it’s manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary to enable us to achieve a couple of big objectives. One, be good stewards of the environment, and two become less dependent on foreign sources of oil for economic reasons and for national security reasons.

There is no debate, and using the language - pushed precisely by Al Gore - of global climate change leaves little or no room for debate. The James Inhofes of the world are now all alone. Even major corporations like Alcoa, GE, DuPont and Duke Energy are on the side of combating climate change now.

Mcjoan wrote a diary about Gore in Idaho and the greening of the West. It's more than that. It's the greening of the world, because of the incontrovertible, indisputable facts that climate change is happening, right now, and we need a new Manhattan Project to understand it and determine ways to combat it. Many of those innovations are already with us. As Gore famously says in his presentation, "the only thing missing is political will." Instead of just complaining about this, he actually CREATED the political will necessary to get something done.

Despite this article that tried to highlight differences in the Democratic caucus on climate change, I believe that they're speaking with one voice. OK, one voice and John Dingell. But for the most part, the debate has ended. And the sense of urgency is there.

I doubt Al Gore will use the platform at the Academy Awards, should his film win Best Documentary, to announce a Presidential run (He might not even get to speak - the award goes to the director, David Guggenheim). If the events of the last year are to be used as a guide, he will use the platform to make yet another impassioned plea to act now to stop climate change, which is by any stretch a far greater threat to global security than anything else right now. It's what he's been doing for a long time now. And it's working, at the highest level. But the pressure must be sustained, the political will generated and re-generated. This is the call to service that Al Gore has provided.

He is saving the planet.