2010 Gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury had a fundraiser with Al Gore at the Left Bank Building on NW Broadway earlier this afternoon.

Press were excluded from the event—which attracted 439 people, according to campaign manager Jeremy Wright—but Bradbury himself was available to the media afterward. As revenge for not being allowed into the fundraiser, or access to the Vice President, I was considering asking Bradbury questions about climate change, pretending to have confused him with science fiction author Ray Bradbury, until he caught on. "Do you think the earth will be much hotter," for example. "Like, 451 farenheit warmer?" Or "Will Earth be more like Mars? Like, we'll be writing Martian Chronicles if global warming doesn't stop?"

But I lost my nerve. Instead, I asked Bradbury was whether he felt rumors of bad blood between Gore and his opponent, John Kitzhaber, may have had more to do with Gore's endorsement in next year's primary than anything else. "I'm aware that there was some bad blood between Gore and Kitzhaber," said Bradbury. "But Al Gore doesn't normally make endorsements in Democratic primaries. I don't think it's a case of "gotcha back, Kitz," as much as people might like to think it is."

Bradbury said he was "kind of blown away" by Gore's "resounding endorsement" of his candidacy. "He and I have worked together before on climate stuff, and he gave a very strong endorsement. I'm humbled, and very proud of it, it's like, look, we really have this responsibility to be part of the solution."

So I asked for a couple of priorities on global warming, should Bradbury win election as Governor. He said "we need to stop being 40 percent reliant on coal," saying we need to close PGE's Boardman coal plant, which Sarah Mirk has done extensive reporting on, for example, in this piece on "Oregon's Filthy Secret."

Trouble is, closing Boardman isn't up to the Governor. It's up to the three-person public utilities commission. How would Bradbury influence that? "Well, you make the appointments, don't you," he said. "It's something that the Governor's voice needs to be very strong about."

Another priority for Bradbury's green agenda? "In California, the energy commission just adopted a rule on energy consumption for these 42 inch flat-panel HDTVs," he said. "They use two to three times the electricity of an old-fashioned tube television, and in California they just made a new rule that says we need to reduce their energy consumption by 50% by 2013." "There's a company called Viseo that produces flat screen TVs that already meet that standard," Bradbury continued. "It's not true that it can't be done, it's just that Sony and Panasonic have chosen not to meet the standard. So I think we should follow California's lead there, just as we have on tighter pollution standards."

Those sound like concrete enough proposals to me. It will be interesting to see if the Kitzhaber campaign chooses to make climate change a key campaign point, now, or whether they're just willing to concede it to Bradbury and focus on jobs.