Who, We? Gore Calls Upon Bloggers

Al Gore's appearance at Netroots Nation -- the progressive bloggers conference -- set the blogging world a Twitter, including: Garrett Graff for Washingtonian and The Huffington Post.

Gore's appearance came as a surprise. From The Huffington Post, via NY Times:

AUSTIN, Tex. -- Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, was asked a question here at a bloggers conference about energy. Ms. Pelosi glanced at her BlackBerry, noting that she had an e-mail message from a friend on that very subject.

With that, the voice of former Vice President Al Gore came over the public address system, as if reading the e-mail message: "Dear Nancy." This created a sea of quizzical looks in the audience, then gasps, cheers and a standing ovation as Mr. Gore strode on stage.

You can also watch the video here:

More than his appearance, his appeal came as a surprise as well. Instead of joining the next administration, Gore said he intended to devote his life to bringing about "a sea change in public opinion" regarding climate change.

Specifically, he called upon bloggers to help him achieve his 2018 energy goal, saying, "they were on the leading edge of reclaiming American democracy.

He argued that blogs, and their active communication of knowledge, feeds the American founders intention of a well-informed citizenry that can inform the decisions we as a country make about our future.

The announcement wasn't entirely disinterested endorsement of a new technology. Gore said he's trying to build a force "10 million" strong through wecansolveit.org, the website for his Alliance for Climate Protection.

But with all of this support, and interest, in environmental bloggers the world round, we have to ask two questions:

1. What are our goals?

2. And how do we achieve them?

Any thoughts?

I'm going to address both throughout the week.

Update: I follow this up with a post about our goals. Read it here.

(Note: Photo courtesy of Avelino Maestas, by Creative Commons license)