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Al Gore at the podium
Photo by David Wasserman

by John Byrne Barry
Plenary Session

While his message and theme about our moral responsibility to address global warming was serious, Al Gore got his share of laughs at his keynote address this morning. 

Referring to himself as a recovering politician – "I think I’m on the ninth step now" – and the "former next president of the United States," Gore started his speech with an anecdote about a recent encounter in a cafe, where a woman passed by several times looking at him with puzzlement.

After he said hi, she said, “You know, if you dyed your hair, you’d look just like Al Gore."

His response: "Ma'am, you have no idea how flattering that is."

"And you sound like him too," she said.

Later, when he talked about Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration’s horribly inadequate response, he mentioned that in the days after the hurricane, the president compared the war in Iraq to World War II and our victory over Japan. 

"Well, let me tell you one difference," Gore said, "When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt did not invade Indonesia."

(But he had plenty of serious things to say too -- click here for more on Al Gore's presentation.)

Read the full transcript of Al Gore's speech at the Sierra Summit.

-- 09/09/2005 Fri
12noon