Al Gore: U.S. Democracy ‘Hacked’ by Anti-Warming Special Interests

Democracy in the U.S. is being undermined by Congress appeasing special interest groups in return for campaign funding rather than tackling climate change, former vice president and global warming campaigner Al Gore has told a conference in Scotland. According to the BBC, Gore staffers blocked broadcast access to Wednesday’s speech. But British media quoted from the address to the Scottish government-sponsored Low Carbon Investment Conference in Edinburgh. The BBC said Gore’s speech included “a strong attack on the effect of lobbying and money-raising on the U.S. Congress, and on carbon producers who he said employ four Washington lobbyists for every member of Congress.” “In the language of computer culture, our democracy has been hacked,” the Guardian quoted him as telling the audience, which included Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. Citing flooding in Pakistan, China and elsewhere, Gore argued that extreme weather patterns were directly attributable to climate change, and that scientists overwhelmingly backed that viewpoint...more