OpenMarket.org » Archive » Gore Rebuffs Press, Admits Failure, Still Adored

Anyway, perhaps the most interesting thing about the event Mr Gore was attending was his admission of failure:

Mr. Gore said that he feared that his advocacy work, spearheaded by his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has not done its job. “I feel, in a sense, I’ve failed badly,” he said. “Because even though there’s a greater sense of awareness, there is not anything anywhere close to an appropriate sense of urgency. This is an existential threat.”

A Web 2.0 Summit For The Ages - Fritz Nelson's Instigator - InformationWeek

...and the incomparable Al Gore drenched in sweat until he got to sit down and go toe-to-toe with Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle as the week's final speaker, like a gigantic fireworks display to end a night at Disneyland.

Gore implored the audience, the government and everyone else about the urgency of our environmental crisis. Gore declared that Obama should declare that we will get 100 percent of our electricity from renewable sources within the next 10 years. And he gave us all a challenge for that notion of Web 2.0: "A puppy has to have a purpose," he said, talking about when his family begged him to get one; Web 2.0 has to have a purpose.

Web 2.0 Summit Day 3: Political roundtable, Al Gore

I've seen and met Al Gore on a number of occasions, including some alleged stalking incidents in 2006. Gore was in rare form tonight, rousing the crowd to two standing ovations. He underscored the point that the polar ice cap over the North Pole has been there for 3 million years — but — it's expected to disappear completely for the first time during the summer months in about five years because of climate change. This is real, and it's serious, people.

• Said Gore: "This is an apocalyptic signal from the planet itself. ... We are now poised to completely disrupt the planetary equilibrium in a way that threatens civilization itself."