31/10/2013 00:00
TW
0
By RAY FLEMING IT was quite a coup for the organisers of the National Family Business Congress to get Al Gore to address its meeting in Palma this week, and they must have been delighted that after booking him as a former Vice President of the United States they got a Nobel Peace Prize winner as a bonus. So why did they ban the press from attending the Congress and reporting his speech? Was Mr Gore party to this decision? It seems unlikely that he could have been because he is engaged on one of the biggest public information campaigns ever undertaken - to reach out to every individual and organisation with the message that global warming and climate change are coming and we all need to do something about it soon.

ONE person who has apparently not yet received and understood Mr Gore's message is Mariano Rajoy, the national leader of Spain's Partido Popular, who was also a speaker at the Congress in Palma. He said that climate change should not become “the great world problem” since there were “more important problems” such as energy and pollution, and that no one can predict what will happen in the world in 300 years' time. President George W Bush would probably have enjoyed exchanging views on climate change with Sr Rajoy until his recent conversion to the need to do something, if not very much, about it. That has left Sr Rajoy on his own among current political leaders.