Al goes green on the Hill

As he must have known it would, Al Gore's return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and his presentation on the perils of global warming stirred up the usual political passions. Except this time, as he addressed members of both houses and declared the melting of the world's ice cover a "planetary emergency," Gore faced perhaps a bit less resistance from the usual quarters than he might have seven years ago.

After all, the man's work on behalf of the environment has earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and a measure of star power for his role in the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Which would have made strident challenges to his message about global warming, well, inconvenient.