Fortune's Nelson Schwartz writes:


This should be Al Gore's year in Davos. After all, the former veep has been here in the past and in 2007, his signature issue, global warming, is at the center of the Davos agenda. Indeed, CEOs like Duke Energy's (DUK) Jim Rogers have been all over Davos addressing the topic. Rogers is chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, the U.S. power industry's trade association, and he wants electric companies to "have a seat at the table, rather than be on the menu" when policymakers sit down to decide how deal with CO2 emissions and rising temperatures.

But Al is nowhere in sight. Why? According to a top Democrat and former Gore campaign aide I spoke to here, the organizers of the World Economic Forum didn't want Gore to come and steal the show from Davos founder and impresario Dr. Klaus Schwab. So I asked Dr. Schwab why Gore wasn't here, and he told me to "Ask Al." Mr. Vice-President, care to comment? UPDATE: Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider tells The Peak that: "Former VP Gore wasn't able to attend because he has a very firm book deadline for his new book 'The Assault on Reason' which is coming out in May. We informed the organizers in Davos of this several weeks ago."

Whatever the reason for his absence, it is too bad he couldn't make it. Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been cited again and again during the numerous workshops and forums on the issue. And Gore's passion on the issue would be a useful antidote to the well, hot air, coming from leaders here who say all the right things about climate change but offer very little in the way of actual policy prescriptions.