link
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he former vice-president credited with rejuvenating America's environmental movement today issued a challenge to its people: End the use of fossil fuels for electricity within 10 years.
Al Gore's call to end the burning of carbon for power, delivered before an adoring audience in Washington, was clearly aimed at vaulting renewable energy to the top of the presidential candidates' agenda. "Our dangerous reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all these problems – economic, environmental, national security," Gore said. "The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels."
The Nobel prizewinner likened his clean power challenge to John F Kennedy's 1961 vow to put a man on the moon within 10 years. The young president was mocked at the time, Gore observed, but the US achieved its spacewalk eight years later.
Gore also delivered a withering jab at Republicans and Democrats alike for debating whether to expand coastal oil drilling rather than how to diminish the country's unsustainable reliance on oil. The US Congress is opening debate this week on expanding domestic oil leases. "Even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognise the inevitability of its demise," Gore said, repeating former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani's famous quip: "The Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones."
Despite winning the popular vote against George Bush in the 2000 presidential election, Gore has displayed no interest in returning to politics. His speech today was sponsored by the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit group that serves as a home base for his environmental advocacy.
He shied away from specifics during the speech, not mentioning the trillion-dollar price tag of ending carbon-based electricity. Instead, Gore urged the US to institute a carbon tax that could be offset by reducing the payroll tax on employers. "We should tax what we burn, not what we earn," he said.
Underpinning Gore's remarks, however, was a finely tuned sense of the economic anxiety that dominates American life 13 weeks before the next presidential election. He observed that the environmental, fiscal, and national-security dangers facing the country would be eliminated by a conversion to clean energy. "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet," Gore said to wild applause. "Every bit of that has got to change."
John McCain and Barack Obama - whom Gore has endorsed for president - were not mentioned by name. But Gore did give kudos to Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman running for president on the Libertarian party ticket, who attended the speech.
Though Obama was not in the audience, he released a statement hailing Gore's reminder that "we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels". "Those are the investments I will make as president," Obama added. "It's a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer."
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'V')oinovich Finds Gore's Energy Speech 'Ridiculous'
You can consider Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) as definitely not enthused by former Vice President Al Gore's speech Thursday on U.S. energy policy.
Voinovich had an initial one-word response — "ridiculous" — to Gore's speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, in which the Democrat called for the United States to end its dependence on carbon-based fuels and begin using renewable energy to produce electricity within the next 10 years.
Voinovich elaborated that ruling out carbon-based fuels such as coal would be unreasonable because of the country's vast energy and economic needs. Instead, he said the country should take a multi-pronged approach that includes but doesn't rely solely on nuclear, wind and solar power.
"We could put windmills from the Atlantic to the Pacific and, yes, it will increase the amount of carbon-free energy production, but the fact of the matter is, it's not going to get the job done," Voinovich said. "What we need to do is to look at all of the various sources of energy… We'd be much more realistic to realize that it's going to take all of these things in order for us to meet our energy demands."