Al Gore puts his money where his mouth is

Last week, I wrote about climate skeptic J. Scott Armstrong's attempt to goad Al Gore into a wager regarding global climate predictions over the next 10 years. It seemed to me a cheap attempt to prove that the former vice president isn't as sincere in his environmental platforms as he professes. This week, Gore is showing that he's not shy about putting his own money on the line in the name of the environment -- he just wants to do so on his own terms.

On Wednesday, self-proclaimed "PR Agent for the Planet" Gore will announce that he has donated his profits from his Oscar-award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth as well as his Nobel prize winnings (which he and wife Tipper matched) to fund an ambitious new climate media campaign.

Called the We Campaign, its main goal (pdf) is to create a sense of urgency about action for climate change, elevate the level of public discourse in the United States, and make the environment a top issue during the upcoming general election. In order to accomplish this, the We Campaign has placed its spots during programs like American Idol and The Daily Show.

You can view the campaign's first installment here:

Future ads will seek to stress the bipartisan support for environmental reform by pairing strange bedfellows such as Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, or Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton. In the Sharpton/Robertson ad, which highlights the moral and spiritual need to combat climate change, the two lightning rods sit next to each other on a couch on the beach, acknowledging that they hardly agree on anything -- except for the climate. So, Passport readers, what other unlikely pairings can we come up with? Sinéad O'Connor and the pope?