We know we’ve been a little rough on Al Gore this week, from actually presenting a dissenting view from his new movie to pointing out some obvious things he missed. And so we started feeling a little bad about all that when someone pointed us in the direction of this video.

It’s the clip of his opening on Saturday Night Live a few weeks back, his imagined Presidential Address in 2006, assuming he was elected in 2000. In other words, it’s a six-year lookback, a review of his accomplishments. And it’s very funny, from dealing with “runaway glaciers” that have been caused by the end of global warming to dealing with the perils of gas at 19 cents/gallon, since all cars now run on trash. He talks about the lockbox, about the result of his immigration solution — “Mexifornia” — and boasts of his anti-hurricane and tornado machine.

All in all, it’s a funny and good natured effort by our former Vice President. We were going to tell him he should stick with comedy, but some folks who have seen his film have opined that maybe he did…..

Click here to watch this 4-minute clip.

As the debate over ANWR continues today, someone sent us this: 5 questions you should pose to your member of Congress:

1.) Will you support environmentally responsible legislation backed by a majority of local Alaskans that allows them to use their own land to create jobs and provide funding for water and sewer systems, health care and schools?

2.) Will you support legislation that will safeguard America’s economy by producing 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, roughly equivalent to what we import from Saudi Arabia daily?

3.) Will you support a $728 billion investment in America’s economy that will help lower prices at the pump and strengthen America’s energy security?

4.) Will you support legislation that will lower energy costs for consumers while providing greater revenues to the federal government?

5.) Will you support legislation backed by major labor organizations, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to increase domestic energy supplies and create jobs for their workers?

Please take the time to drop your representative a note and urge them to vote to tap our own resources.

What better way to honor Al Gore’s movie than to have a vote to explore ANWR, a place the size of South Carolina with a drilling footprint one fifth the size of Dulles Airport? The vote will come some time today.

Thanks to the House Resources Committee’s site, we have some pretty good facts about the place. First and foremost, we know Alaskans support it. Who are we to substitute our judgment for theirs? If you’ve never been there, this video gives a pretty good feel for the vastness and desolateness that is ANWR.

So how much oil is there? Here’s a link to the answer, but put it this way: It’s about equal to what we import today from Saudi Arabia. Kinda puts it in context, no?

So mosey on over to see our friends at the ANWR blog and drop a note to your Member of Congress. Tell them it’s time for us to stop being the only nation that limits access to its own natural resources. Do you think any of our competitors would be sitting on this enormous supply and leave it untapped? Don’t think so.

Please weigh in. Here’s a link to our Key Vote card dropped today, letting every Member of Congress know we’ll consider their vote on this bill, H.R. 5429, to be considered for designation as a Key Manufacturing Vote.

How great would it be if Congress voted to unleash our energy supply the same week that Al’s movie premiered?

[UPDATE]: 3:30 p.m.: Just passed the House 225-201. Thanks to all of you who weighed in. There were many of you. Great work, all! Here’s a link to the roll call vote, so you can see whether your Representative voted for higher or lower fuel prices.

Last Friday’s Comment & Analysis section of the Financial Times had a very sobering report on Germany’s export prowess. Germany’s best-kept secret: how its exporters are beating the world provided some context to an alarming fact that we here at the NAM have been aware of for some time: Germany has been the world’s largest exporter of goods, or “Exportweltmeister” every year since 2003 when it captured the title from the United States. Its trade surplus is six times that of China.

As stated in the article, “Exports have become the main driver of German growth. Today, 9m jobs depend directly on them and they generate 40 per cent of gross domestic product” in Germany. What’s behind this export surge? The article proposes that one reason behind Germany’s export success is that “Because engineering accounts for a bigger share of gross domestic product in Germany than in comparable economies, the country has benefited more from investment-driven global growth. German companies, in other words, have provided the machines and vehicles that faster-growing economies have used to build their factories, fleets and infrastructure.”

This should be a wake up call to policy makers here in Washington and around the country. U.S. manufacturers are not only competing more than ever with cheap imports backed by artificially-low currencies, the U.S. is loosing out on the export-front as well. While improving our competitiveness won’t take place over night, its essential that we get started. And there is not better place to start than education, where U.S. students rank relatively low in science and math compared to other countries. Without a solid foundation in these disciplines, where will the engineers and innovators who design and develop the products of tomorrow come from?

Some say from oversease. Maybe. But our country should not put all our eggs in that basket — the internatinoal talent competition for scientists and engineers is fierce and will only grow in coming years. Therefore, its imperative that our country get its act in order and make sure that the workers of tomorrow will have the skills to successfully compete in the global economy. Maybe then, we can reclaim the title of Exportweltmeister.

A good piece by John Tierney of the New York Times on Tuesday, noting that Al Gore missed a golden opportunity in his new home movie by not making the pitch for nuclear. Says Tierney:

“Gore shows the obligatory pictures of windmills and other alternative sources of energy. But he ignores nuclear power plants, which don’t spew carbon dioxide and currently produce far more electricity than all ecologically fashionable sources combined.

A few environmentalists, like Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, have recognized that their movement is making a mistake in continuing to demonize nuclear power. Balanced against the risks of global warming, nukes suddenly look good — or at least deserve to be considered rationally. Gore had a rare chance to reshape the debate, because a documentary about global warming attracts just the sort of person who marches in anti-nuke demonstrations.

Gore could have dared, once he enticed the faithful into the theater, to challenge them with an inconvenient truth or two. But that would have been a different movie.”

Coincidentally, yesterday found the President touring a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and touting the benefits of nuclear energy. Bush is the first sitting President since Jimmy Carter (a nuclear engineer by training himself) to visit a nuclear plant. This was actually Bush’s second visit to a nuke plant, having visited one in Maryland a few months back. At the same time, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was in New Hampshire — apparently he likes it up there — saying that the US needs to embrace nuclear technology.

In any event, you’ll see from this chart that France gets almost 80% of its power from nuclear. Yet the last nuclear plant was ordered in the US in 1973. The enviros can’t just keep saying no to everything. Time to unleash all fuel sources, including nuclear.

Well, today’s the big day we’ve all been waiting for (not!): the release of Al Gore’s movie on global warming. Well, in truth, the film’s pretty much been seen by all the liberal and Hollywood (redundant, we know) glitterati. Says the film’s trailer, “If you live on this planet, if you love your children, you have to see this film.” Hey — wasn’t that the trailer for “Over the Hedge“? Or was it “RV“? In any event, the film has rolled out to rave reviews by noted climatologists Sharon Stone and Garry Shandling. (Can Barbra be far behind…?) The film is the action version of a slide show that Gore has done some 1,000 times around the country, making us wonder if maybe the heat from the projector bulb isn’t making matters worse. Throughout it all, at every interview, Gore repeats like a mantra that there is now scientific consensus about the so-called problem. And he has lots of friends in the press who lazily repeat the argument. What the hey — it’s a heckuva lot easier than making the case. And — they voted for him, so they trust him, right?

But for those of you not who are content to accept consensus like so much pablum from the Fourth Estate — or from Al Gore, we have done just a little simple checking and present a few dissenting views. While Al schmoozes with the big donors in the globally warm environs of Cannes, let us present some cold, hard facts:

(continue reading…)

In a piece in Reason by Ronald Bailey last week, he says,

“Having seen only the movie trailer at this point, I don’t know exactly what Gore’s latest plan is, but I suspect that he favors schemes for reducing greenhouse gases emitted by humanity, given his support for the Kyoto Protocol.”

Indeed he does. We saw this last week by Eric Peters, discussing Gore’s movie tour (speculating on another Presidential bid) and noting the love not lost between the former Vice President and the President he served:

“The resentment turned into smoldering outrage in 1997, when Gore jumped a last-minute flight to Japan to sign the United States on to the Kyoto global warming treaty only to have President Clinton refuse to send it the Senate for ratification.

Clinton, a master at detecting even the slightest wind shifts of political opinion, deferred to a 95-0 Senate resolution urging him to deep-six the treaty after various government and private studies showed its draconian mandates would plunge the nation into a deep recession.”

Very perceptive piece. Indeed Gore was pulled up short by Clinton on Kyoto and the Senate defeated its ratification without a single dissenting vote. This in spite of the fact that Gore had served eight years there, yet couldn’t twist a single arm for a vote.

And a good thing, too. As you’ll see in this slide from the American Council for Capital Formation, most every signatory to the Kyoto Accords will exceed their targets, some mightily. It was –as even Bill Clinton knew — a political document, one that didn’t include India and China, and one that, as the article above notes, he feared would have spelled disaster for our economy.

If only Al Gore would listen to his old boss…..

We’ve mentioned before that the Federal Trade Commission has an entire unit dedicated to investigating prices gouging in the oil industry, some off-shoot to a prior misguided attempt by some prior misguided Congress to blame somebody else for the rise in the price of gas while we sit atop enormous reserves that we’re unwilling to tap.

In any event, the FTC has dutifully reported once again, as it has dozens of times in the past several decades finding — guess what? — that gas prices are being driven by the global market, not by price gouging.

Interesting op-ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times by one-time Presidential candidate George McGovern. It is remarkably sensible and clear-headed, and we agree with much of what he has to say, although his call for single-payer health care is still misguided. No matter. His points on business, and on the demonization of Wal-Mart — are dead-on:

“I understand the attraction of asking business — the perceived “deep pockets” — to shoulder more of the responsibility for social welfare. But there are plenty of businesses that don’t have deep pockets. And many large corporations operate with razor-thin profit margins as competitors, both foreign and domestic, strive to attract consumers by offering lower prices.

The current frenzy over Wal-Mart is instructive. Its size is unprecedented. Yet for all its billions in profit, it still amounts to less than four cents on the dollar. Raise the cost of employing people, and the company will eliminate jobs. .. Maryland recently passed a law aimed at requiring Wal-Mart to spend more on health insurance. This is an extremely flawed path to healthcare reform.”

In any event, it’s a great read and we’d recommend it. Never thought we’d be agreeing with George McGovern, but apparently the worm does turn. He says in conclusion what we’ve been saying all along, i.e., :

“[U]nion leaders who still see American businesses as the enemy must update that vision.”

Don’t hold your breath….

Here we go again, fighting to get Congress to allow us to tap our own natural resources. The enviros are always stoking up the NIMBY’s, the folks who don’t want energy production in their backyard. So what about Alaskans? By a huge margin they support exploration in ANWR — a place the size of the state of South Carolina with a drilling footprint one-fifth the size of Dulles Airport.

Watch this space in a day or two as we put out a call to action, to give you a link you can use to weigh in with your member of Congress to urge them to vote to open up these resources to American exploration. There will likely be a vote this week.

In the meantime, here’s a fact sheet from the House Resources Committee to get you started. Lots of facts about ANWR there.