Vanity Fair Declares Global Warming ‘Threat Graver than Terrorism’
Magazine’s special “Green Issue” a vehicle for liberal environmental advocacy.

By Ken Shepherd
Free Market Project
April 13, 2006

     The media’s concerted push on climate change continues with Vanity Fair’s first ever “Green Issue.”

     The special edition’s release in mid-April is hardly accidental, with Earth Day coming up on April 22 and former Vice President Al Gore’s new book, “An Inconvenient Truth,”  being released in mid-May.

     Gore and three other celebrity activists dubbed “eco-power players” by the magazine graced the verdant cover, which warned that global warming is a threat “graver than terrorism.” Inside, the May 2006 magazine featured an essay by the former Vice President comparing President George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain.

     Adding to the media drumbeat, Gore began his essay, “The Moment of Truth,” with a famous cliché about the Chinese characters for “crisis.”

     “Cliches are, by definition, overused. But here is a rare exception,” Gore insisted, recalling that “The Chinese expression for ‘crisis’ consists of two characters,” one for danger and the other for opportunity. “The rapid accumulation of global-warming pollution,” Gore insisted, was a threat, particularly since “we in the United States seem to be having such difficulty perceiving that danger.”

     The former Democratic presidential nominee proceeded to work in comparing President Bush to British Hitler-appeaser Neville Chamberlain. “Nearly 70 years ago … British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain found it inconvenient to see the truth about” the Nazi threat, Gore wrote, before comparing Churchill’s political rhetoric to liberal prophecies of destruction from climate change.

     Complete with photo essays featuring glamour shots of celebrities, environmental activists, and two liberal-leaning Republican governors, the special issue, boasts editor Graydon Carter, presents an “increased commitment to reporting on the threat to our precious environment.”

     The Free Market Project tracks the mainstream media’s wildly unbalanced coverage of climate change.