Al Gore is a global hero for the work he has done since leaving government to promote awareness regarding climate change. Yet I am sure he would agree that this and other long-standing awareness building efforts have failed woefully to turn such awareness into sufficient climate policy actions. We have been bombarded with messages from Al Gore's "We Campaign" that "you can't solve the climate crisis alone." Yet an equally important and largely unspoken message is that it also cannot be solved with unambitious and clearly insufficient solutions. It is becoming readily apparent that Mr. Gore's climate change leadership is in many ways problematic, and he needs to be compelled to work to enunciate and implement timely, rigorous and sufficient climate policies.

At times the "We campaign", a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection founded by the Nobel laureate former Vice President, is virtually indistinguishable from the feel good, denial propaganda of the coal industry. This complex and urgent global ecological crisis is addressed with vague platitudes and calls to do something together -- just what is not exactly clear. Since his "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary, Mr. Gore has first focused upon celebrity and has now chosen to emphasize bipartisanship. In each communication strategy – the documentary, entertainment and now public awareness advertising – putting forth sufficient solutions that may actually be of a magnitude and scale to solve the issue has been sacrificed to building political unanimity based upon the lowest common denominator of acceptable action.

Climate awareness without climate action is still climate change. While these efforts are reaching a large audience, the scale of the solutions presented -- such as using energy efficient light bulbs and driving a Prius; or even the We Campaign's goals of modest increases in renewable energy goals, global long-term emission targets, and minor coal plant regulations -- is wholly inadequate. Mr. Gore's efforts continue to do a disservice to prospects for achieving global ecological sustainability by downplaying the immense social and personal transformations necessary, including personal sacrifice, to build a low-carbon economic system that does not further undermine our shared biosphere.

It has been falsely suggested and widely accepted climate change can by easily and cheaply addressed if we just all agree it is a problem. Stabilizing global climate and ecological systems will require addressing head on major difficult issues including over-population and over-consumption (by some), and this requires dramatic reductions in energy use, consumer consumption and birth rates. Long-standing economic activities such as coal plants that emit into the atmosphere and first time industrial logging of primary forests are going to have to be entirely foregone. Mr. Gore must be encouraged to speak the full truth regarding these and other rigorous policies necessary to actually address climate change, not continuing to seek political consensus based on shallow solutions at the expense of directly addressing root causes. Until he does, he undermines those of us who have thought through what is actually required scientifically in terms of climate policy to be successful in maintaining an operable atmosphere.

And frankly, it is sad to see someone of Mr. Gore's skills, resources and contacts not choose to lead by example and seek to dramatically reduce his own carbon emissions. He has chosen to not demonstrate the personal sacrifice necessary to lead in bringing about climate social change. Yet, there are few with the widespread appeal and legitimacy of Mr. Gore, including inroads into the elite and money, and he must be called upon to begin telling the full truth regarding how climate sustainability will be achieved. Tell Mr. Gore if he really believes climate change is truly a global emergency threatening civilization, he should be leading by example and organizing mass protests in support of a rigorous and sufficient biocentric climate plan.

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