Playing Defense is a Losing Strategy

I have a new post up at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media that suggests Vice President Gore and like-minded allies are fighting their battle from a “defensive crouch,” which won’t get them where they want to go.

Nor am I the only one wondering if Gore’s recent 24-hour mediathon is the right approach. See Tom Zeller’s take and Leo Hickman’s critique, who asks:

Is Al Gore now a help or hindrance to the global warming cause?

Go have a read of my Yale Forum post and let me know over there what you think. Be polite!

UPDATE: In a related post at Dot Earth, Andy Revkin writes:

Will this [Gore's] effort silence or sideline professional naysayers/deniers/skeptics and the many people who, for all kinds of reasons unrelated to money, reject calls to make cutting greenhouses a prime priority?

I doubt it. Our polarized politics and buffet-style media menu “” in which anyone with a strongly held position can validate it with the touch of a remote control or mouse “” guarantee persistent, even sharpening, divisions on greenhouse gases.

Will the project entice those not already engaged to seek reality on climate science? I doubt that, too. The effort to cast the climate challenge as green-energy Davids versus fossil-fueled Goliaths has come with substantial oversimplification.