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Al Gore: Every Kilowatt from Clean Energy within 10 Years

Winner of the 2000 Presidential Election, Al Gore, gives a speech on energy today.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that [Gore] chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

This entry was posted by SBG on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under WGOM Headlines. It is one of 3094 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.

48 comments to Al Gore: Every Kilowatt from Clean Energy within 10 Years

  • twayn
    July 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    What I am starting to see from both Republicans and Democrats (and it's way overdue) is rhetoric that finally concedes that our continued reliance on foreign oil is a major national security threat that has to be addressed. We have got to get our head out of the Arabian sand because keeping it there leaves our national posterior far too exposed and vulnerable.

  • AMR
    July 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    And a lot of those Trillions can go to Gore's carbon-offset company!

  • SBG
    July 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    I should point out that my brother is a crane operator, working the last two summers on building wind towers. Let's keep him busy!!! Smile

  • brianS
    July 17th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    According to the Source, in 2005, 40 pct of US energy consumption came from oil, 23 pct from coal and 23 pct from natural gas.

    The most plausible non-fossil source for replacement power is wind energy. In 2006, wind power produced less than 1 pct of US electricity, compared to 49.1 pct from coal-fired boilers. At the end of 2007, total worldwide installed wind capacity was about 94 Gw. There are over 333 Gw of coal-fired nameplate capacity in the U.S. alone. So getting to carbon neutrality even in electricity generation over the next decade is a highly implausible goal.

    It would be great to see a wholesale turnover in automobile efficiency in the next ten years. That is a pretty reasonable timeframe for almost complete turnover of the national fleet of passenger vehicles. Our fuel economy standards are only about half those of Europe and Japan and falling further behind. Not to say that CAFE is the best way to achieve efficiency gains in that sector, but it's one factor. But again, improved efficiency isn't the same thing as carbon neutrality.

    • ubelmann
      July 17th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

      Wind power still presents massive distribution and storage problems. It's great if you're in South Dakota, not so good if you don't live somewhere with terrain.

      • brianS
        July 17th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

        yah. case in point:

        the map combines wind and solar resources (potential production) for the continental US, using data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (more-or-less part of DOE).

        • ubelmann
          July 17th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

          Looks like west is best. Smile

          • Rhubarb_Runner
            July 17th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

            I don't trust the validity of any map that doesn't have dark purple over Omaha.

            too bad there isn't a cost-effective method of converting humidity to power; StL would have a productive summer, and Houston would be rolling in the dough

        • SBG
          July 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am

          I didn't need a map to know that the entire state of North Dakota was a prime spot to harness wind power.

          I don't think that the transmission problem is a lost cause.

  • Moss
    July 18th, 2008 at 6:28 am

    Winner of the 2000 Presidential Election, Al Gore, gives a speech on energy today.

    Good for him. Moss believes the energy crisis is due entirely to his invention of the internet. Not to mention the godawfully excessive energy usage at his personal demesne in Tennessee.

    • SBG
      July 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am

      Moss also believes that the oil in Iraq will pay for the war and that we'll be greeted as liberators.

      • Moss
        July 19th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

        Untrue. (Although Moss isn't sure why the U.S. isn't given access to Iraqi oil as a concession for the expenditures.)

        Moss does believe that the current administration made the EXACT SAME decision that the former administration WANTED to make (and would have justified on the same information), but couldn't do so because the head sleazebag was too busy getting caught with his pants down.

        Moss also believes that one of the principal motivators in ousting Hussein was to demonstrate for Iran and for North Korea that f'ing with the U.S. is not a particularly rewarding proposition.

        Moss further believes that the information coming out of Iraq & Afghanistan is terribly unbalanced. When you hear informal interviews with servicemen who tell stories of how schools, hospitals, and other necessities are being built, along with Iraqi police and armed forces, and how the culture has become quite different (in the sense of being less oppressive) but never hear those things on the mainstream channels, there's a problem.

        • SBG
          July 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

          1. Why should we be rewarded for invading a sovereign nation? Maybe we should invade Italy and take their art as a reward for our troubles.

          2. Oh bullshit. Al Gore (who was in the previous administration) categorically denounced the war before it ever happened, saying that it was a huge mistake.

          3. That's puerile thinking and represents a complete change in our foreign policy. Unprovoked war as diplomacy?? Only an IDIOT would come up with that idea. And an IDIOT did.

          4. Oh, Christ. Five plus years into a war in which we were to be greeted as liberators and was supposed to last weeks or months but not years and you are complaining about press coverage? Stick to impeachment about blow jobs. That's all this neo-conservative philosophy is good for. Even then, they fucked up and didn't get a conviction -- and the president left office as one of the most popular presidents, ever.

          • greenmachine
            July 19th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

            I agree with 1, 3 and 4 - but do we really know what a Gore administration would have done? Keep in mind the following factors:

            -- Clinton/Gore spurred the US policy change officially making regime change in Iraq an imperative.

            -- Clinton/Gore presided over eight years of sanctions against Iraq that left Hussein in power and the population weakened, with tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. Clinton/Gore had no trouble using Iraq as an opportunity to be "tough" on foreign policy for years, regardless of the results.

            -- Was Gore unequivocally against the invasion of Iraq before the war? In this 2002 speech he seems to be saying that he doesn't like the way W is pursuing the war option, but only because he is not "steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion" and may "abandon that nation as President Bush has abandoned Afghanistan" instead of staying in Iraq to nation build. He says "I believe, therefore, that the resolution that the President has asked Congress to pass is much too broad in the authorities it grants, and needs to be narrowed." He repeats the lie about WMD: "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country. " He was critical of Bush's handling - but did Gore ever say he was against invading Iraq on principle before the invasion? I haven't seen that. In my view he was a critic of Bush and a critic of the strategy, but not a critic of war or the American right to control the Middle East.

            -- President Gore would have been under tremendous pressure after September 11, 2001 to prove his military toughness. Republicans would have pushed him on this relentlessly. I believe a President Gore would have had a significant domestic political interest in heeding calls for invading Iraq because politician Gore always moved to the perceived center, especially on foreign policy.

            Given the above, I can't say "Gore would have absolutely invaded Iraq," but likewise I think there is not evidence to conclude definitely that he would not have allowed or pushed for the invasion.

            Gore's role since he re-emerged post-2000 has been as a pseudo-outsider critic, a role that frees him from much of the pressure to take a hard line on foreign policy that he would have felt as President. Likewise in the realm of environmental policy I think it has freed him to really advocate a position instead of triangulating all the time.

            Now, I'm not saying that "Gore would have been just as bad as Bush" - for obvious reasons that's pretty unlikely. But I think it is a mistake to look at the last eight years and read politics as the sole result of Bush and Co. scheming away in an undisclosed location. Sept 11 created an opportunity for a new sort of militarism and the bipartisan establishment ran with it - the dynamics that made the invasion possible are much bigger than Bush, and would have affected President Gore as well, if not identically. Maybe Gore would have just bombed the sh!t out of Iraq again. That probably wouldn't have been as bad for us or for Iraqis as the current situation, but it would still have been bad.

            Anyway - as a movement progressive I think this is a really enlightening "what if" scenario and worth thinking about.

            • Neil
              July 19th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

              -- President Gore would have been under tremendous pressure after September 11, 2001 to prove his military toughness. Republicans would have pushed him on this relentlessly. I believe a President Gore would have had a significant domestic political interest in heeding calls for invading Iraq because politician Gore always moved to the perceived center, especially on foreign policy.

              Only if you pretend that Iraq had anything to do with anything. And the only reason anyone thought this was because the Bush administration deliberately alluded to this and was unchallenged by a self-castrated press. The military toughness wold have been displayed in Afghanistan, which actually was complicit in the attack. Do not forget that any Iraq connection was invented out of whole cloth by Bush administration and its band of merry chickenhawks.

            • SBG
              July 19th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

              greenmachine and Neil -- you misunderstand point #2...

              Moss is saying that Bill Clinton would have attacked Iraq w/o 9/11, except that he was sidetracked by the Monica Lewinsky matter. That's pure bullshit. It's one thing to say that Gore might have been under some pressure after 9/11, but to think that Clinton was going to invade Iraq before that requires a huge tinfoil hat.

              Backstory here: before the war, I told Moss it was a mistake and that it would cost at least 1,000 lives and at least $100 billion. Plus, I argued that it was not justified. He laughed at me and said it would take a couple of weeks, tops. Neither of us knew what a total clusterfuck it would become, but I'd say I was a whole helluva lot closer to the truth.

            • Neil
              July 19th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

              Agreed that the thought that WJC would have attacked Iraq without direct provocation is asinine. Funny that one would even think that given the grousing on the other side of how the previous administration was dealing with OBL (glossing over the Bush administration decided better to ignore him).
              I just wanted to beat down the Iraq-9/11 BS.

            • greenmachine
              July 19th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

              Awww, I see what you mean, SBG. If that's what Moss is saying, then I agree with your response. I do not think Clinton would have invaded Iraq in his second term without Lewinsky. In fact, didn't he bomb that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan allegedly *because* of the Lewinsky proceedings (to drum up some distraction)?

              I guess there are some semantics around the word "attacked' - Clinton definitely did attack Iraq in the sense of bombing, no-fly enforcement, etc.. But nothing like 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation, obviously.

              However, Neil, I think you're conflating the lies told to sell the war vs. the idiot ideologies that made some powerful elites think it was a good idea to try to sell a war in the first place. I know there was no link between Hussein and Bin Laden, and probably the Bush neo-cons know that as well (even if they keep repeating the lie). Probably Al Gore knows it too. But just like Bush didn't invade Iraq because he thought Hussein was behind 9/11, a hypothetical President Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq for that reason either. Gore would have considered invading because a) he already supported regime change as a goal, and US military intervention in that country/region previously, b) because other people (including I'm sure Joe Liebermann) would be pushing him to do it, while publicly spreading lies like "Iraq = Al Qaeda", and c) there are a set of geopolitical goals US military/political elites have for the middle east, and US control over Iraq serves those goals.

              As I showed with the quote above, Gore was repeating the lie about weapons of mass destruction in 2002, even though it seemed dubious at best that Hussein had much of anything (and outright ridiculous that he would use them against the US or US allies) to the anti-war protest movement at the time. If Gore was willing to repeat that lie, why wouldn't he be willing to repeat a lie about "Hussein did 9/11" if it was politically convenient?

            • Neil
              July 20th, 2008 at 8:21 am

              Perhaps, though many of us were repeating that lie... because we made the mistake of assuming the Bush administration was telling us the truth. Hypothetical President Al Gore would have had access to the actual intelligence.

          • Moss
            July 19th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

            Hillary Clinton did not denounce the war, and she had a hell of a lot more power than Al Gore.

            If you have forgotten what actually happened, here's the President's own words:

            "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

            Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

            Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."

            http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html

            • Moss
              July 19th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

              Moss' point earlier was that Clinton wanted to take out Hussein. In fact, as demonstrated by the clip above, Clinton ordered attacks in Iraq.

              Had he not been distracted by non-sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, as well as an impeachment trial, he would have taken Hussein out.

              And anyone who thinks that the current admin invented the chemical/WMD intelligence, it was around well before the 2000 election.

              Here's some more excerpts from the WJC speech:

              "I decided then to call off the attack with our airplanes already in the air because Saddam had given in to our demands....I made it equally clear that if Saddam failed to cooperate fully, we would be prepared to act without delay, diplomacy or warning....This situation presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere....That is why, on the unanimous recommendation of my national security team -- including the vice president, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the secretary of state and the national security adviser -- I have ordered a strong, sustained series of air strikes against Iraq.... The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world....The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people....And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them. "

            • greenmachine
              July 19th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

              Those are fair points, Moss. I agree that the Clinton administration's policy was to take military action against Iraq at will, and he had roughly the same interests in mind as the Bush administration. You're right, both Clinton and Gore before 2003 claimed that Saddam presented a dangerous threat in terms of WMD. The Bush administration clearly took that discourse up a notch, and committed vastly more resources/lives on the basis of false evidence of WMD, but Bush didn't invent the WMD claim itself (and certainly Saddam did have chemical weapons at one point - they were used quite a bit in the Iraq/Iran war while the US supported him).

              It's possible that Clinton "wanted" to invade Iraq and topple Hussein, however it's hard to really prove that one way or the other. My point is that invading Iraq wholesale (to the tune of the 2003-present campaign) would have been impossible in Clinton's second term, and not because of the Lewinsky thing. I don't think Americans were willing to support a ground invasion and subsequent nation building in a major middle eastern country then.

              In that context, did Clinton really "want" to invade, given the huge political consequences such a proposal would engender, even without Lewinsky?

              It took 9/11, and the subsequent shifts in cultural and political discourses, to make that possible.

            • SBG
              July 20th, 2008 at 5:06 am

              No, he hasn't made good points. He's engaged in typical right wing conjecture, blaming all of GWB's fuck ups on Bill Clinton or saying, without much of any evidence, that Bill Clinton would have done the same thing. Bullshit.

              The gulf between ordering a strategic air strike and invading the country, overthrowing the government, and occupying the country is so large, that it is not even worth mentioning. Go ahead and believe what you want to believe. But, Clinton was applying some pressure to Hussein to keep him in line. And that policy worked. But, your hero, George W. Bush, conflated 9/11 with Iraq and deliberately misled the country into a disastrous war. You can't get yourself to face reality -- that your boy is the worst president ever. So, you cling to your decade old blather about WJC. Frankly, you are too damned smart to be thinking like this.

            • Moss
              July 20th, 2008 at 7:33 am

              And you're too damned smart to think he's Moss' boy. Moss' boy in 2000 was, and is now, John McCain.

              Moss lived in TX during the first several years of GWB's gubnership. It baffles Moss as to how GWB became the prez candidate ahead of the pack.

              Now if your boy is Al Gore, then you are the one who is too smart to be thinking like that.

              Really, is GWB and AFG (no idea what his middle name is, so Moss'll give him an F) the best this country can do? Moss has a hell of a lot more comfort about the current candidates.

              Recall that you brought the whole Iraq thing into the stream here...Moss merely points out that the activities in Iraq predated the current administration. As does the source of the current mortgage crisis, the corporate scandals, the out-of-control dotcom boom that was not based in reality and contributes to the current economic woes, etc. etc.

            • Dicta
              July 20th, 2008 at 11:35 am

              You realize, of course, that McCain bears virtually no resemblance to the man he was 8 years ago, right? For some reason McCain has decided that being GWB is the best way to win. He is really, really, really wrong.

  • Rhubarb_Runner
    July 19th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    I'm more bothered by the "...his invention of the internet..." overused distortion

    • Moss
      July 19th, 2008 at 8:55 pm

      You shouldn't be too bothered by it. Moss never believed he invented the internet. He sure as hell didn't "create" it either.

      His estate is an energy-guzzler, however:

      http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

      Also, he didn't win the 2000 election, as SBG suggests. So don't believe that either. (Hell, he didn't even win his home state.)

      http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?ex=1216612800&en=be29eb01af49fb20&ei=5070

      • Rhubarb_Runner
        July 19th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

        I never believed he won the 2000 election. He won the popular vote, though, right?

      • Neil
        July 20th, 2008 at 9:06 am

        His estate is an energy-guzzler, however:
        More BS. Sure, the house uses a lot of energy, but he has solar panels, has signed up for 100% wind energy (something incidentally you can do through Xcel as well - very reasonable), and purchases carbon offsets for the rest. This is what climate skeptics have to do these days because they have no leg to stand on. It's the equivalent of saying "Well, Johnny did it!" My mom didn't fall for that crap and no one else should either.

        • Algonad
          July 20th, 2008 at 9:24 am

          Gore didn't do the renovations on his house until this past December. This was after he was criticized for the amount of energy his house was using.

          I think it is absolutely legitimate to point out when someone is being a hypocrite. If he's out preaching about what everyone else should do, shouldn't he walk the walk? He wasn't just using a little more energy than normal.

          It reminds me of that concert they did for the environment. If all those rock stars wanted to save the environment, they would have just stayed home and not flown around the world on their private jets. That would have helped the environment a lot more than their concert did.

          • Neil
            July 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am

            But he was already buying the clean energy and carbon offsets and he had only bought the house a few years ago. Whatever, climate skeptics want to talk about Al Gore's energy use because they can't talk about the issue on the merits. Al Gore could drive a baby seal-powered tank every day and it wouldn't make him wrong.

            • Algonad
              July 20th, 2008 at 10:30 am

              I didn't say that what he says is wrong. I'm saying that what he does makes me question the motivation for what he says. Thus, hypocrite.

            • Neil
              July 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am

              That's exactly what they want people to do - question his motivation. Why? To discredit the message.

            • Dicta
              July 20th, 2008 at 11:37 am

              It is far easier to attack a weak person than attack a strong idea. The grand old party has relied on that theory for 20 years...and it's worked, incidentally.

  • E-6
    July 20th, 2008 at 10:07 am

    Well, here we are, Counselor. Just a couple of lawyers... workin' it out!

  • brianS
    July 20th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Why don't we argue about religion for a while? Smile

  • greenmachine
    July 20th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    In my view, what seems to overheat conversations like this (although this one has been pretty reasonable) is the two-party lens on politics. I think it's fair to say that Clinton exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in the late nineties, and also to say that Bush took the "opportunity" of 9/11 to pump up that threat further and commit to military action an order of magnitude greater (and more devastating). But to say that in the context of thinking only Dems vs. GOP, it sounds like apologizing or rationalizing for Bush, because every political criticism tends to be interpreted as an attack from one side to the other.

    Same thing with the Gore house and energy usage - sure, some people are using that to call Gore a hypocrite who are just doing it to attack the other side, they aren't necessarily committed to environmentalism or conservation themselves. But it's also a fair point regardless of the two-party system - Gore, like many wealthy famous people, enjoys more luxuries and excesses than the rest of us, he is fallible in that way despite his recent good work on climate change. I think it's legitimate to criticize that aspect and still agree with his work on climate change. But in the two-party environment, it often seems that any attack on "your side" must be suspected of being pure sophistry and defended against accordingly.

    I guess this is a good time to point out that I'm a third party activist, and this is one of the reasons why. I think there is plenty to be critical about in regard to the whole political establishment, and I think if we had a truly multiparty democracy we would have much more constructive conversations about politics (hopefully the media would be forced to move away from the Dems say/Repubs say style of reporting a little as well).

    • SBG
      July 20th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

      I am certainly a member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, as Senator Wellstone was. I would be a third party person as well, if I thought it was viable. Unfortunately, American politics aren't run that way. Even more disheartening is that while members of my party tend to be much less inclined to vote a party line, the other side is monolithic in their voting record. It's almost impossible to find a Republican member of Congress that hasn't marched in lock step with Bush for seven plus years. So, from my perspective, it's all the same. And no Senator voted with Bush more last year that John S. McCain III.

      I'm deeply disappointed with Obama's vote on FISA, deeply disappointed. If I thought there were any other choice, I'd be pulling support from him for that. But, the only other alternative is four more years of the policies that have driven us into the ground over the last almost eight. More creeping to a police state. More borrowing from China to fund an unwinnable war. More tax cuts for those who need them the least.

      I sympathize with the third party movement. If the country as a whole stops its inexorable march to the extreme right and starts to swing back towards rationality, I'd probably join you. As it is, I'm going to have to hope for more and better Democrats -- the better meaning more progressive.

      • Moss
        July 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

        And the difference is Moss is a member of no wing of no party. Moss is loyal to Moss' God (who is accessible to all, by the way), Moss' family, and Moss' country. Moss believes in sensibility and in conservatism IN THE SENSE of conserving resources. Moss isn't much into the political rhetoric or sophistry.

        Hey, wasn't it Moss who had to goad you into recycling your beverage containers at work, SBG?? If not you, certainly others...Moss just got some good-natured flak about that from one BW at F&B the other day, and the goading dates back 3+ years! Sounds like the message landed...