I still hate Wal-Mart, but…

I’ve got to give them credit for inviting Al Gore to speak to their executives at a “quarterly conference on sustainability, part of the company’s recent efforts to become an environmental leader.”

The conference is an outgrowth of Wal-Mart’s mission, outlined by Chief Executive Lee Scott last November, to minimize its negative impact on the environment. At the time, Wal-Mart committed to, among other things, reduce energy use in its stores, improve the fuel efficiency of its truck fleet and substantially cut down on solid waste produced by its stores.

Good for them. If they’re going to go destroy our economy, decimate small businesses all over the country, and screw over their workers, the least they can do is be environmentally conscious as they do it.

Al Gore keeps saying he hopes to create a tipping point in which any presidential candidate of any party will have to address the climate crisis. That the invariably conservative-supporting Wal-Mart is taking an interest in what he has to say is surely a good sign that he’s making sincere headway on that goal. Bush spends a lot of time musing (and babbling) about how people in the future will judge him, but I suspect when eyes are cast backwards toward this time, we may find that it was the man who should have been president that will be regarded as the hero.