Americans for Prosperity offers the video "The Most Depressing Graduation Speech Ever" featuring an edited graduation speech Al Gore gave at the University of Tennessee: peekURL.com/va2vz9t

AFP attempts to invite mockery of Gore as an environmental wacko, and a look at the comments on the video (youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=r6so4XxkEg0) shows they've been quite successful as a cavalcade of commenters calls him a "nut job" and far worse. But, since Cassandra was right, maybe instead of childish, Glenn Reynolds-style mockery it might be better to find out whether Al Gore is right. And, if AFP thinks he isn't right, then explain why.

For instance, he says that the Gulf oil spill is producing an amount equal to one Exxon Valdez every four days. Is that correct? He complains about mountain top mining; are such concerns valid (probably so)? He complains about a coal ash spill, presumably the one in 1998 in Tennessee (link):

[The coal ash spill] sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee... most of [the 1300 similar dumps across the U.S.], which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any U.S. regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, which sent almost 4 billion liters over 120 hectares, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

Now, why would Americans for Prosperity invite mockery of Al Gore over important things like that? I think we know the answer to that: they're a key part of the "Kochtopus", those groups linked to the Koch family, owners of the second largest private company in the U.S. and a major energy producer which owns at least one coal-fired plant [1].

More importantly, why would anyone want to be useful idiots for them? It's a false choice to say that the only alternative to being a useful idiot for AFP is to be a useful idiot for Gore (someone whose own hands aren't that clean). There's a "Third Way", as they say. That involves weighing all costs against all benefits, being cautious even when some degree of (someone's) "prosperity" is at stake, and making sure that potentially devastating actions are closely monitored.

5/27/10 UPDATE: Al Gore seems to have gotten his facts wrong (news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill):

Even using the most conservative estimate, that means the leak has grown to nearly 19 million gallons over the past five weeks, surpassing the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, which at about 11 million gallons had been the nation's worst spill. Under the highest Gulf spill estimate, nearly 39 million gallons may have leaked, enough to fill 30 school gymnasiums.

[1] sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries#Koch_Industries_and_Coal