I was privileged to see Al Gore address the American Geophysical Union yesterday. My very rough head count in the room is 3500-4000 out of the 13,600 registered for the meeting. Gore spoke eloquently about the need for science and reason to educate and illuminate policy. He urged us to make a real commitment to communicating science to the public to help reverse the dangerous trend of the last several years of passive information collecting (exemplified most obviously by watching TV) without active dialog. He was funny, intelligent, spoke without notes, and touched on a wide range of topics ranging from how the brain processes and deals with perceived threats (climate change is not a perceived threat because it is not immediate) to the history of information dissemination and its effects on policy and government over the last 1000 years. It was bittersweet to see such a well-educated, curious, open-minded, and intelligent man who was successful in politics, but not quite successful enough. Perhaps in his role as a private citizen he will be able to instigate some of the changes that are so desperately needed by motivating people to push the government towards responsible environmental policy.