In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof related a portion of a conversation he had with former Vice President and noted climate change activist, Al Gore.

In the article Gore describes coal-based energy as "treating the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer" and then mildly chastises young people for not having already engaged in protests and civil disobedience as a means of stopping the construction of coal-fueled generation stations.

Throughout the article, Kristof attempts to paint the issue of climate change as a "mortal threat" by comparing the potential impacts of warming with the stated goals of al-Qaeda to engage in further 9-11-style terrorist attacks.

Pretty heady stuff. However, it does give some insight into where the leaders of the environmental movement may be taking the issue of climate change.

Here is a portion of the article.

I ran into Al Gore at a climate/energy conference this month, and he vibrates with passion about this issue - recognizing that we should confront mortal threats even when they don't emanate from al-Qaeda.

"We are now treating the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer," he said, and (perhaps because my teenage son was beside me) he encouraged young people to engage in peaceful protests to block major new carbon sources.

"I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." Critics scoff that the scientific debate is continuing, that the consequences are uncertain - and they're right. There is natural variability and lots of uncertainty, especially about the magnitude and timing of climate change.

In the same way, terror experts aren't sure about the magnitude and timing of al-Qaida's next strike. But it would be myopic to shrug that because there's uncertainty about the risks, we shouldn't act vigorously to confront them - yet that's our national policy toward climate change, and it's a disgrace.

UPDATE: That leaders in the climate change movement may be suggesting direct action and civil disobedience as the preferred method of dealing with the construction of new coal-fueled generation becomes more believable when one considers the following statement from another well-known climate change researcher-cum-activist, NASA scientist James Hansen,

Gore’s comment was also strikingly similar to a recent quote from Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA: “It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants.” What does it mean when one of the top scientific leaders ringing the alarm on global warming, along with a top political leader, both suggest, in so many words, nonviolent direct action (or civil disobedience) to confront the challenge of climate change?