Al Gore's "Generational Challenge to Repower America"
In a major address yesterday, Al Gore asked his fellow citizens to accept the challenge "for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years." The press coverage only hints at the power and importance of the speech. Summarizing or paraphrasing the speech isn't enough. See and listen to it yourself, or just read it, by clicking here.
This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you – each of you – to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org.We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.
At least Mr Gore's proposal is making printer's ink flow much more freely on the subject of doing something major. I am unsure of the feasibility (Mr McCain has so far found it doable); I hope something gets done, something is made to happen.
One worrisome sign is the difficulty Congress is having in raising the vehicle fuel taxes to pay for desperately needed maintenance and repair… on roadways, for cars and trucks which consume fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases. Yeah, I wish to see the travel, freight transport and energy weltanschauung (or cosmovisión if you prefer) evolve into something steady-state and renewable, but in the meanwhile we gotta get the Cap'n Crunch from the factory to the Groceries-Я-Us bigbox, and folks gotta get from Site A to Site B, both of which emerged from the CO2-intensive energy paradigm.
While our forbears were being led into the present paradigm, in the early days, engine parts went from shop to shop by animal-powered drayage. CO2-emiting transport will carry us out, but not until Society has set the course. This is the part that worries me.