Yet when he ran in 1992 for vice president, Gore made very little of the greenhouse effect. It was the Republicans who raised the issue, to tease him as an environmental extremist. Climate change was not a major theme of the Clinton years, and little progress was made while Gore served in the White House. His only significant act over eight years was to help negotiate a Kyoto treaty that the Clinton administration never submitted to the Senate for ratification. One might argue that the problem was Gore's limited power within the administration. But a better explanation is probably that Gore was too worried about his own future to press the case harder. Running for president in 2000, he downplayed environmental concerns in general, for fear of again being caricatured as "ozone man." Faced with what his political consultants viewed as a potential liability, he abandoned the cause nearest his heart.

¶ - nitish @ 9:22 AM