Al Gore was in Portland Wednesday night, speaking at the Rose Garden's Theater of the Clouds. The Oregonian reports that Gore "praised Portland as an environmentally conscious city -- one that's well-positioned to be the 'headquarters' of the battle against global climate change."

Evan at BTAblog, summarizes the presentation and its contextual relevance to Portland:

It was good to have Gore talk about how Portland is perceived as a leader, nationally, on confronting this issue and creating new jobs and businesses out of the opportunity.

And yet -€” and this is a common comment among those who saw the movie or his presentation -€” the call to action remains ethereal. For roughly an hour and a half, the case is made convincingly that global warming is a problem, and for roughly five minutes, the case is made that we can do something about it.

Specifics -€” where the devil resides, the details -€” are scant when it comes to the solutions. Perhaps this is because when the pie-slices of dramatically reducing our emissions are explained, from energy efficiency to transportation efficiency, people pick at the specifics. You sell people a great show, and they complain about how buttery the popcorn was. Gore seems to believe everything will change once we reach a mind-shift caused by a Tipping Point of beliefs. Once enough people think it's serious, we'll jump to action. Until then, we're likely to not act boldly enough.

But if people are anxious for something to do, one of the top things is to reduce unnecessary driving. Perhaps there were many more bicyclists than I saw; the Rose Garden's official bike parking is rather dark and doesn't feel all that safe. But my sense is that people, while they can change their beliefs, have a hard time changing their habits, and it's easier to change from a polluting car to a less polluting car than to discover the transformative joys of bicycling.