Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

After assiduously avoiding sight-and-sound political chatter this season, and being about 99% successful, I inexplicably found myself, along with Mrs. Perils, at a downtown Seattle luncheon featuring Al Gore in support of Governor Chris Gregoire, who is in a close re-election race.

We were lured there by a young friend and former employee who has been working on Democratic campaigns this fall.  She was a “table captain” for this event, and I believe it’s the first time I’ve been in a situation where she out-ranked me.

Our table was a Silver table (the lowest contribution level), and while we were located in the same area code as the Goreacle, it may not have been the same electoral precinct.  Nonetheless, I was able to grab these photographs, with the aid of the zoom on the S3 IS (Click to enlarge):

While I’ve always agreed wholeheartedly with the goal of reducing carbon emissions and inhibiting global warming, I’ve tended to think it was a pipedream, owing to burgeoning populations and development in the rest of the world, as well as willful myopia domestically.  I’ve sort of resigned myself to its inevitability, as I believed that it could only be avoided by a severe dampening of economic activity that would have miniscule political support anywhere in the world, even Seattle.

Then, yesterday for the first time, a nickel sort of dropped about how an initiative might actually move forward.  And, while a nickel won’t buy you the whole candy bar, here’s how you might get the other 95 cents: Al compared the push to develop alternative fuel sources to the industrial revolution of 19th-century England, a period of rapid dislocation and transformation, driven by a perceived necessity. I started to see that an economy, an alternative economy, might be built on the pursuit of alternate fuels and more efficient use of carbon fuel, spurred by the specter of Peak Oil.

I think it’s still a long shot, but for the first time I thought I felt a zephyr of a fresh wind blowing.  Here’s a video of Al winding up his speech:

As I was leaving the event, I had the most humiliating and frightening experience. I was at at ATM machine when I was approached by an old lady wearing a McCain button. She beat me senseless with her cane, pinned me to the sidewalk with her walker and drew a big, red “M” on my forehead with her lipstick. If this doesn’t scare you about who will be running the country in a McCain administration, I don’t know what will.

Yeah, the police didn’t believe me, either.