I would not know this detail but I am not surprised by the comment. There will be opportunitites and risks with Gore according to which perspective you are analysing. It also occurred to me that the ideas in "Earth in the Balance" are what interested him 8 years ago. But assuming he is an intelligent opportunist, that could make a difference to the agenda.
The bourgeois political system encourages us to project our hopes into saviours and Michael is strongly warning against that. But more objectively, Gore, and other politicians represent fuzzy interest groups. We can analyse that too.
The question is how might the agenda shift.
We can assume he would do nothing that would fundamentally threaten capitalism. Indeed any reforms he brought in would in a sense strengthen capitalism by diffusing criticism and increasing popular acceptance.
Further it seems to me that the giant "transnational" monopoly companies would have no problem in dealing with Gore's agenda as I quoted it.
They also need to plan over 5 to 15 years for stability and to avoid the pitfalls described by Chaos Theory. They have little to lose by competing in a world in which there is a higher demand for environmental standards. They can factor these in easily in a way that smaller companies based in Jakarta or Caracas cannot. They would have no difficulty in going to future cost accounting for GNP's (why their annual turnover is often larger than the GNP of many countries and *they* have to depreciate on the basis of future cost.
So let us assume that Gore will be the enlightened, intelligent, and opportunist face of US led international monopoly capitalism... what opportunities do we see for radical democratic change and how are we going to promote them without tailing behind him? Do nothing except make accurate but suspicious comments? Or try to run faster than him? We have the internet at our disposal.
Chris Burford
London