Earth to gore, earth to gore

Some commentators, such as Mark Dowie, have suggested that, far from guaranteeing environmentalists access to the White House, Gore, along with everything Gore represented to Greens, was expediently used by the Clinton Democrats to gain reverse access to the mainstream environmentalist lobby, co-opting the movement in the cause of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), GATT, and the heavily procorporate President’s Council on Sustainable Development, and exploiting their own inside knowledge of the divisions among environmental groups to gain an edge in crucial bargaining situations. While the White House has done little for the movement, the Washington environmentalists have done some stellar work for Clinton, winning him safe passage on NAFTA, above all.' Gore, in the meantime, had completed a remarkable transformation from the Ozone Man, the man who wrote that book, into Mr. America Online, tapping out heady, corporate-populist yarns about exploits in cyberspace, as he cruised an information superhighway (or the Infobahn, as it is known by cognoscenti wireheads, not for Euro flavor, 1 think, but presumably to evoke the thrill of speeding along the mother of all surface highways) that is about to be sold, lock, stock, and gigabyte to the telecom giants years before it is even built.