My Friend Al Gore Speaks Again!

I raised a couple eyebrows when, back in July, I wrote that Al Gore had endorsed my campaign for Congress.

Well, not my campaign exactly, but he had in fact laid out and endorsed a plan for moving quickly toward a renewable energy economy – with 100% of our electricity from renewable energy within 10 years – that was remarkably similar to the central focus of my campaign. (A position that has still not been taken, regrettably, by the incumbent I ran against, Chris Van Hollen.)

Four months later, Al Gore has done it again. This Sunday in the New York Times, Mr. Gore laid out a further development of his vision.  And once again, it looks remarkably like what I was saying at houseparties and Rotary Club meetings across the district these past several months: an answer to global warming that is also an answer to our energy and economic crises.

Massive conversion to renewable energy, a nationwide program of conservation including insulation/retrofitting of homes for maximum energy efficiency, and pushing Detroit to convert to building electric cars and plug-in hybrids are three of the his Gore’s program planks, as they were three of the four on which I campaigned. He also made a cap on carbon emissions another central plank, and the question is whether we will get an ineffective cap and trade system, or a strong cap and dividend system – the latter being the system I advocated for, as do most other global warming advocacy groups. (Mr. Van Hollen is co-sponsor of a cap and trade bill.)

It is also great to see the former Vice-President and Nobel Prize winner dismiss “clean coal” as a “cynical and self interested illusion.” I can’t wait to hear the Democrats now controlling our government start echoing that reality.

There are a few not insignificant problems with Mr. Gore’s program.  One is that he makes no mention at all of mass transit, which must be a crucial ingredient of any major movement away from a fossil fuel-based society.

An even more important problem is his sole focus on large, (inevitably) corporate-controlled renewable energy projects.  Solar is good, but generating that solar power locally is far more effective and efficient than generating it at large plants in the southwest and then buzzing it across the country.  As with everything else in the age of global warming, going local must also become a fundamental guiding principle in energy generation.  (Generating more energy locally will also mitigate some of the need to rebuild our energy transmission grid, the fifth of Mr. Gore’s program planks.)

Even with these problems, however, Mr. Gore’s renewed challenge is far closer to what we urgently need to do than any of the plans currently in discussion by our newly elected (or re-elected) leaders.  It needs to be urgently considered.

One final and all-important note. Virtually everyone has caught on to the political wisdom of calling this a “Green New Deal” or an “Apollo project,” or some other reference to indicate the significance of what we must do. (I myself have always said that the conversion to a renewable energy economy needs to be our generation’s New Deal, Marshall Plan and Apollo Project all rolled into one.)

But using the rhetoric and actually marshalling the resources to get the job done are two entirely different things. The money that our new administration and Congress are willing to put into this effort needs to match the rhetoric.

Bear in mind that we are currently spending roughly $150 billion a year in Iraq. Our military expenditures for 2007 were estimated at $625 billion, and this fall’s Wall St. bailout package, while still growing, started out at $700 billion. Any real attempt to convert to a renewable energy economy must come with dollar figures along those lines. If it’s only a fraction of those, you’ll know the people offering it aren’t really serious.

To read Al Gore’s op-ed from Sunday’s New York Times, click here.