Call it hilarious, offensive, or dangerous, but any way you slice it there will be controversy over a new school named after Al Gore that’s opening for the first time next week.
The Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences has just wrapped up construction in Los Angeles, and should be ready to open its doors when the school years starts on September 13. But there’s something unmistakably ironic about the name of this school.
It’s named after environmental activist Rachel Carson, and bloated Nobel Peace Prize thief Al Gore. Apparently neither of them had any idea that a school was being named after them.
What’s interesting is that this $75.5 million facility was built on top of toxic soil. The ground it’s built on used to house a whole bunch of storage tanks filled with toxic material. It’s also right next to an oil well and near a groundwater source that is contaminated by an oil field. So it’s basically the kind of stuff that Al Gore would really hate.
Before building the school, trucks full of clean soil was packed on top of the toxic material, but environmental groups are still crying foul. The Los Angeles Times reports that one group wrote to the school’s district with a letter that read, “Renaming this terribly contaminated school after famous environmental advocates is an affront to the great work that these individuals have done to protect the public’s health from harm.”
The school, though, will be a legitimate place to study environmental issues. So it’ll be kind of tough for Al Gore to actually come out against it. Then again, he’s probably too busy burning fuel in his private jet to even notice the school in the first place.
