Gore calls for totally clean electricity within 10 years
Today, Al Gore gave a speech at George Washington University in which he called for a massive push to transform our energy economy; he audaciously suggested that we can and must convert 100 percent of our electricity generation to clean sources within a mere ten years.
By relying on solar, wind, and geothermal for all of our electricity, he said that we could solve several escalating issues at the same time: skyrocketing fuel costs, reliance upon dwindling hydrocarbon resources, the continuing export of a gigantic amount of wealth to oil-producing countries, job losses due to off-shoring, and carbon emissions.
Although I'm skeptical that this conversion could happen in a mere ten years, he's obviously right about the outcomes, especially if the automotive industry also transformed its product line to electric vehicles. We can and should break our dependence on foreign oil, if for no other reason than long-term national security. The transformation he's talking about would also create an enormous number of jobs in manufacturing, and it would eliminate the vast majority of our man-made carbon emissions (coal plants and vehicle exhaust).
None of this will happen without a serious change of the Washington mindset, toward a model of bold innovation and competent, sober leadership. Those are traits this country's leaders have been lacking for years, and if we are ever to regain our status as a (if not "the") leader of global thinking and progress, the very first transformation we'll have to make must be at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The second but equally radical transformation will have to occur a few blocks to the east, by installing leaders in Congress willing to act in the nation's best interests instead of their own. I don't know who those potential leaders might be, but their names certainly aren't Reid or Pelosi.