In August former Vice President Al Gore put out a call for environmental activists to conduct mass demonstrations concerning continuing Congressional stalemate on any climate change legislation.  When I started to write this commentary I Googled Al Gore just to see what was out there in terms of the demonstration.  What I found caused me to alter the thrust of this commentary.

First, with regard to Gore’s call for demonstrations, he was absolutely correct to make that proposal.  The problem is that it is not enough to make a call.  You have to organize it.  Take, for instance, the One Nation Working Together rally for jobs and economic justice on October 2nd.  This very successful rally that had either tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands—depending on who you speak with—did not pop out of thin air.  The NAACP and 1199/Service Employees International Union initiated the effort and helped, along with the national AFL-CIO, to build a very broad coalition to pull it off.  In other words, there needs to be organization to make anything happen.

While I think that former VP Gore was absolutely correct to put out such a call, what he really needed to do was to convene a meeting of key environmental groups and other social justice activists to actually plan such a rally.  They would need to build support; frame the issue; and develop the right contacts around the country in order to make it so.  Since I first read about Gore’s call I have neither seen nor heard anything further.  No word of plans; no word of a first meeting; therefore, unfortunately, no march/rally.

So, former VP Gore, if you are reading this commentary, we need another step.  Regardless of the fact that there is no imminent legislation, we need a vital environmental movement and that movement needs to be in the streets.

The need for such a movement feels even more urgent after I looked over my Google results in seeking information on Gore’s call for a march/rally.  I was struck by how much ANTI-Gore and anti-climate change material was on the Web.  The venomous material, both attacking Gore’s character but more importantly attacking the notion of climate change, helps to explain why an increasing percentage of people in the USA seem to be falling prey to such irrationalist views.  The main argument being raised by the right-wing climate change deniers is that it is a myth and that there is no preponderance of scientific evidence to support the notion that we are experiencing human accelerated climate change.

What I find amazing about all of this is that it is dead wrong.  There is an overwhelming consensus that human accelerated climate change is already having a demonstrable impact on the environment.  Yet it is safer for most people, particularly those who wish to live in a fantasy world, to believe something to the contrary.  Desertification; rising ocean levels; rising ocean temperatures and the dying off of fish and other oceanic species; the expected die-off of countless land-based species, is directly tied to climate change.  Extreme weather events, which can include snow storms (note:  climate change does not mean that the world becomes equally warm), are becoming both more common and, frankly, more scary.

The counter-attack on climate change recognition is an ideological attack that comes out of the extreme Right and serves the interests of the energy industries around the world.  It becomes a mechanism to assure the public that there is nothing to be done and nothing to worry about.  Those who ideologically deny climate change also appeal to quasi-religious notions that suggest that this is all about the approach of the End Times and, therefore, there is nothing that SHOULD be done and, instead, it is time to start packing our bags for the long good-bye.

So, there is far more urgency in the sort of mass action proposed by Al Gore than even he seems to realize.  It is not simply about influencing this or that vote by the Congress of the United States.  It is about convincing millions of people that through collective, mass action there is something that they can do to contribute toward saving life on this planet.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.