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Al Gore Inches Toward Solartopia
Bit by bit, Al Gore seems to be inching toward a Solartopian view of a future that must be completely sustainable in green energy. This week he advocated getting to an electric power system that is "carbon free" within ten years.
This is an important step toward the mainstream for the decades-long social movement for a totally green-powered Earth. It comes alongside the equally telling move by oil baron T. Boone Pickens to invest $2 billion in wind power.
Gore has reportedly raised some $300 million (that's not a typo) to spend on moving pubic opinion to support the transition to a totally "carbon-free" electric supply system.
That idea has been around at least thirty years, and is a sub-set of the Solartopian demand that our entire energy economy become free of all fossil and nuclear fuels.
Of late, Gore has become the corporate media's designated hitter on renewables. He has helped greatly in moving public acceptance of the critical need to achieve a green-powered Earth in a relatively short period of time. It's extremely helpful that Gore emphasizes that the conversion to renewables and efficiency will create economic wealth and millions of new jobs while alleviating the national security nightmare of being dependent on foreign oil.
But there is still a long way to go. Electricity is still just a sub-set of all energy consumption. Converting our electron supply system entirely to green power is half or less the battle.
And Gore has left out some critical pieces of the puzzle. Most important is his avoidance of the massive industry-sponsored relapse toward nuke power, an absurd diversion that could make the transition to a carbon-free world financially impossible and ecologically moot.
Gore's primary focus, of course, is on climate change. He has been remarkably effective in convincing the world that it's a major problem.
His thorough and persuasive "Inconvenient Truth" was long on scary facts, but slim on solutions. Most of them, stacked at the end of the film, focused on things individuals can do to trim their energy use.
These were helpful but marginal, because they largely omitted corporate responsibility for causing these problems.
Now Gore seems willing to acknowledge that large corporations -- including electric utility companies -- are at least somewhere near the core of the problem. How far he's willing to take that analysis, and what he's willing to do about it, remain to be seen. He is, after all, a lifelong inside player with an apparent aversion to acting outside the box (most critically in the catastrophic lack of a meaningful response to the theft of the 2000 election).
It's thus extremely problematic that Gore continues to publicly avoid the issue of nuclear power. There are those who believe he remains essentially pro-nuclear, as he was earlier in his career. In that, he followed his father, US Senator Al Gore, Sr. (D-TN), a very pivotal early backer of atomic energy.
But just prior to the 2000 election, then-Vice President Gore wrote me a letter (posted at www.nirs.org) firmly renouncing atomic energy as a possible solution to global warming. Apparently due largely to his efforts, nukes were not included in the Kyoto Accords as a route to be taken for reducing carbon emissions. This was huge victory for the safe energy movement.
But Gore's stance on building new reactors today has not been part of the public dialog. If the issue is mentioned on his web site, I couldn't find it. Just prior to this week's speech, he apparently told the Associated Press that he expects reactor generation to stay at "current levels." But does that mean it will continue to account for about 20% of our overall electric consumption, or does it mean the same gross amount will be produced? Would that require building new reactors, or expanding the capacity of existing ones, or none of the above?
Privately, I am told that Gore now opposes atomic energy, including new reactors. But if so, his public silence -- and lack of action-- is deafening, incongruous, and ultimately unsustainable.
For example, his web site lauds Florida Governor Charlie Crist for taking various steps to fight carbon emissions. But Crist now enthusiastically supports forcing Florida ratepayers to foot the bill for four new reactors -- while they are being built! The cost estimates for these plants have more than doubled in the last year. Their would-be builders refuse to give the Public Service Commission a firm price, with margins of fluctuation at a staggering 50% and more. Should they be completed in, say, ten or fifteen years, they are likely to cost Florida ratepayers a minimum of $50 billion, far and away the largest public works project in the SunShine state's history (which could net at least as much power from a $50 billion investment in green energy and efficiency).
By contrast, the "huge" buy-out of some 185,000 acres of sugar company land aimed at saving the Everglades is to cost less than $2 billion, a mere 1/25ths of the proposed nuke tab, which has gotten virtually no state-wide scrutiny or public debate. Fittingly, mere construction of two of the proposed reactors, at Turkey Point, would utterly decimate the southern reaches of the Everglades National Park long before the first ray of radiation could be produced there.
A major root of the Solartopian vision of an Earth totally free of fossil and nuclear fuels dates back to the 1975 "Toward Tomorrow Fair" at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Featuring, among others, the work of wind pioneer William Heronemus and efficiency guru Amory Lovins, the gathering joined the vision of a totally green-powered Earth with the rise of the grassroots No Nukes movement.
The tens of thousands of us who took the fight to reactors at places like Seabrook, New Hampshire and Diablo Canyon, California, still carry a clear image of an Earth that must be entirely powered by natural sources that are sustainable and pollution-free. It's critical to remember that our success has been substantial, and that the 1000 nukes promised by Richard Nixon in 1974 were held to 104 operating now. Had even more social capital been sunk into this failed technology, our task would be even more difficult than it is now. We have no way of knowing how many Three Mile Islands and Chernobyls were avoided along the way.
The Solartopian transition still demands an end not merely to fossil fuel consumption, but the rapid phase-out of the rest of these reactors. They are unsafe, unreliable, unsustainable and indefensible against terror or error. Their fuel cycle is a significant source of global warming gases, and they emit very substantial quantities of heat into the atmosphere and the rivers, lakes and oceans they use for cooling. They cannot guarantee against catastrophic emissions, and thus cannot get private insurance. They are absurdly expensive to build, and getting moreso. They cannot compete with renewables, which are getting rapidly cheaper.
Indeed, construction of new nukes can only proceed with massive infusions of taxpayer and ratepayer money. Draining this social capital away from the transition to truly green Solartopian technologies could be devastating.
Which means that sooner or later, if he really wants to have a lasting impact, Al Gore must join us in publicly, forcefully opposing nuclear power. It is significant that he now advocates a rapid transition to green electricity, with all its economic, employment, ecological and national security benefits.
But if that's really going to happen, new nuke construction must be stopped, and the old reactors must be phased out as rapidly as possible.
Al Gore is a welcome and powerful force in this long-term campaign to save the planet. To really help tip the balance, he must take the jump into the No Nukes fight with both feet. As befits a Nobel Prize Winner, he might even have them dragged off a construction site or two.
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, is at http://www.solartopia.org. He helped coin the phrase No Nukes, and helped co-found Musicians United for Safe Energy. This article first appeared at http://www.freepress.org.
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85 Comments so far
Show AllHad Gore run this far to the left in 2000 he would have blown Bush completely out of the water, won his own state, won Florida, won New Mexico, won Iowa, etc.
Ralph wouldn't have had to run.
Once again, Ralph has to run because the Democrat, again, doesn't get it: you don't run to the center-right, when the public is on the left.
Is Gore still in bed with past advisors who suggested Joe Lieberman as Gore's VP? Is he still FRIENDS with Lieberman? Bleeck!
Everyman needs a myth or a Star in the East to follow - this seems like a splended goal for our Age of Aquarius.
I'd love to have solar panels on our home. As would millions of Americans. Its our next home project. But at current prices it will take us 3-4 years to save for. But if we can get the ball rolling, this could be what gets the economy up and running again! I hope this is a dream we can get industry and government behind.
One cannot separate the environmental from the economic. The massive restructuring necessary to adapt to the very different reality brought on by global warming is also the answer to a failing economy. If we do not build a green national power-grid and convert to electric transportation systems and if we do not cut carbon output by 80% in the next decade then nothing else much matters. Gore gets it. Even Slim Pickens gets it. I doubt that any candidate backed by and recognized by the corporatocracy gets it or has the backbone to do what is needed.
While solar power is a part of the solution it is not THE solution.
Solar works best in climes where there is LOTS of sunlight with long days and moderate temperatures.
It doesn't work so well at higher latitudes with less sunlight.
Then you have the technical problems. The materials to make the solar panels, the wires, sun tracking motors and storage batteries are all mostly heavily indebted to OIL for their existence. Add making EVERY SINGLE HABITABLE STRUCTURE in the continental US solar dependent would strip the world of the necessary materials and drive the cost beyond the reach of those who need it, thus defeating the entire plan.
And what happens to the rest of the world if they decide to follow the Gore Solatopia Plan? Wars over platinum and selenium, the minerals needed to make photovoltaic systems?
What we need (and I know I am going to get flamed over this...) is to ABANDON modern high tech consumer society as we know it, shrink the size of the bloated nation states to more manageable regions, start deconstructing the massive human hives we call cities, and going back to a MUCH lower technological profile, and living and eating locally, with each habitation producing what it needs in house.
I am advocating nothing less than the return to cottage industry and small holder farming. I know that.
I also know that we do not have a choice. We cannot sustain this insane pace of 'development'.
There is a medical word for sustained, uncontrolled growth: cancer.
And humans are this planets cancer.
Al Gore is an Asshole?: just read the VERY FIRST post. And more.
Fuck Nader with HIS INVESTMENTS IN CLUSTER BOMBS.
Al Gore Sir, Thank You for all you have done for us.
Screw anyone who attacks Al Gore.
Obama '08.
I was surprised to read that, with realistic conversion efficiencies and proper spacing, etc, all of California's energy needs could be met by a solar collector farm the size of Lake Mead.
I'd previously read that 100 miles of California's 1200 mile long coastline gets enough power in ocean waves to power the entire state.
The cost of one day of the Iraq war, according to analysis by the American Friends Service Committee, equal renewable energy for 1,274,336 homes. As technology prices come down the ratio rises.
War is a material, psychological, socio-economic and terrestrial short circuit. It is characterized by the 'use' of resources to destroy resources, human and otherwise.
Mr. Gore knows that honey rather than vinegar is more attractive. All he needs to do is present the facts, and keep presenting the facts. The most powerful evolution is when people themselves (like Mr. Pickins)
experience the "ah ha" effect. His coattails may very well spread very wide and spawn the exponential spread not only of information but innovation.
Lisa321 - Obama is just as much an organ of the Corporate Machine as McCain.
'No matter who you vote for, the GOVERNMENT gets in!'
Democrats and Republican are just the two public faces of the Money machine. Both start wars, both bend over to help the corporations rape the planet. both are willing and enthusiastic participants in the charade you are spoon fed every four years that You Have A Choice!
You don't.
It's an illusion, smoke and mirrors.
McCain has stated he will stay in Iraq for a hundred years. Obama has said he will pull some troops out of Iraq, but send them to the other war in Afghanistan.
NEITHER has said they will END the wars!
And the wars are about oil, and access to oil, and control of oil.
OIl is the only thing that has enabled the past 150 years of modern 'progress'.
And oil is at the very heart of the production of most of the so-called 'alternatives', responsible for the extraction and processing of the very components that make the 'alternatives'.
Technology is not the answer. It is just a reframing of the problem.
We will not escape the VERY deep pit we have dug ourselves until there is a public paradigm shift in the consciousness of humanity that WE ARE AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH! Our toys are literally killing us!
Common Dreams has become nothing but a place to trash the Democrats.
Bring it on. It's Obama or McCain. Nader was INVISIBLE for these last 4/8 years: He just trots his ass out for photo-ops and DOES NOTHING TO BUILD A BASE, TO BECOME ELECTABLE IN INTERIM YEARS. NOTHING. NOTHING.
But Ralph Nader IS invested in Raytheon=cluster bombs.
Talk to me about lesser of two eviilism and CLUSTER BOMBS.
They maim and kill children. But that is no problem for Ralph's supporters on Common Dreams as they trash Nobel Prize winner AL Gore.
Maybe you are what you call trolls, Republicans enjoying effing around with progressive threads.
Obama '08. Grow up CD, "there's no puppy under the Christmas Tree this year."
There shouldnt be any puppies under the Christmas tree.
Screw the Dems.
They keep sucking up to Bush and the Republicans, dont care who gets in.
If its Mccain the Dems will stand up right behind him.
Despite Nader's failure to build a base, a progressive base has been building itself in the form of the Green Party. Several state Green Parties now hold primaries, including CA, IL, and AR, and hundreds of local and state-level candidates are now in office. Take a look at the Green Platform (www.gp.org/platform.shtml) and Cynthia McKinney's website (www.runcynthiarun.org). You'll see the platform is comprehensive, which is what we need because you won't have Solartopia without campaign finance reform, you cannot have peace without justice, and we need to end militarism, not just the occupation of Iraq.
John M. Wages, Jr.
www.VoteJohnWages.com
Lisa321 - I trash both Dems and Repubs. They are self-serving corporate bootlicking lackeys, who would sell their mothers if they had a shot at high office.
Answer me this: Would you honestly vote for the person who said "We are a nation of bloodthirsty, greedy, self-absorbed, ignorant, superstitious lazy consumers. We engage in criminal activities that range from drug trafficking to genocide."
" We abuse human rights, and turn a blind eye to others who do so as long as we make a buck off it. We will sell weapons to anyone, and reserve the right to bomb poor countries with resources we want back to the stone age, just because."
" We will invade any country that does not have the capability to harm our homeland, overthrow popular local governments that happen to oppose our goals, and commit acts of sabotage, terrorism and assassination, and directly employ people who do so, but appear in public to defame our enemies in the eyes of the American people."
"We will commit any act, no matter how evil, just to maintain our unsustainable lifestyle. We will pollute, despoil and ravage any landscape if it has resources we desire. We will exterminate entire species. We will over fish, over hunt, genetically modify and 'domesticate' any animal we think is tasty."
"We will spy on you, open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone, intercept you e-mail, monitor you cell phone, and infiltrate and subvert any group that promotes peace and tolerance. We will pass laws that enable corporations to collect every single scrap of personal information about you, and sell it to each other."
"And every four years, we will trot out a slate of pre-selected 'candidates' for you to 'choose' from, thinking that you actually have a chance to influence the government of your country, and the whole time they will rant on about God, Gays, and Guns, 'Family Values', 'Trust', 'Change', 'Leadership', 'Experience' and a host of other meaningless drivel that will be spoon-fed to you in Corporate Media sound bites."
"And on the off chance that a viable third-party candidate will appear, they will be sidelined and ignored, forced out of public debate, and made to appear as part of the 'tin foil hat brigade', and not a real choice. Very occasionally, we will allow a distraught parent of a victim of one of our wars to 'win' a seat, but they will be marginalized and compromised, edged into the rest of the political herd before being culled in the next 'election'."
"Vote for me instead of that other guy."
So, Lisa321, would you HONESTLY vote for someone that brutally honest about how US politics REALLY works?
Right on Galen.
Vote for any one but repubs or dems.Two sides, same coin.
The multi-national corps rule the world which means profit at the expense of people and the environment. The mainstream politicians are simply figure heads, Simply!
Educate the children about how MS media works.(corporations selling audiences to corporations) Turn off cable news. Read the news wires. Stop worshiping capitalism and demonizing sharing. Stop participating in the 'global economy'. Eat right and exercise. Only shop locally. Run for city council. Don't have more than one baby per couple. Write letters, grow a garden, sell your car, buy a bicycle, quit praying, start working, and learn how to use a firearm. This world won't change until most people can't afford gasoline, cigarettes, cable, and booze. Then it gets ugly.
The debate over HOW to sharply reduce global warming seems to be coming down to two world views:
(1) "This week he [Al Gore] advocated getting to an electric power system that is 'carbon free' within ten years." (Harvey Wasserman)
(2) "I am advocating nothing less than the return to cottage industry and small holder farming ... humans are this planet's cancer." (Galen, above)
I know the new world I want to live in: it's (1) above. A massive move to solar/wind/tidal/geothermal electricity will create millions of good blue collar jobs, bringing our economy back to health -- and in terms of convincing the public, it's easy to imagine using "green" electricity to run your car or truck; heat, cool and light up your house; run trains on catenary systems as they do in Europe, etc. In other words, green power doesn't turn people's worlds upside down! And it doesn't insist that millions of suburbanites start riding buses (you'll never sell that one).
There are a few systems that can't use electricity: planes, for one. But that's no excuse not to convert the REST of our power to green electricity! And Harvey's right to reject nuclear; no need to list again the umpteen reasons why it's a dumb, and dangerous, choice. I firmly believe that both Al Gore or Barack Obama are smart enough and informed enough to know that nukes are not the way to go, when we have so many benign alternatives already developed, and developing.
John Wages,
I clicked on your link and explored your bio and links and home page. You sound like you could help so some butt kicking in Congress. Sorry I don't donate. Didn't before when when I had an income of less than 25K but certainly not now. Just lost a job I had been working at for two years. Guy decided to close the office after inheriting some money.
Lucky me.
Anyhow, good luck.
As for Solartopia the population needs to understand that technolog is not going to save us. Galen has it right. It is time to look to "us" for the solution because one thing alone isn't going to do it.
Common Dreams is once again posing Al Gore war Criminal as being the New Pope of Ecology. Sick.
I've got an idea.
How about the posts that each of us like the best (say Galen's) we copy and send to our local papers.
I've got the Palm Beach Post down here. I would love to send Galen's post at 1:15pm to the local paper minus the first sentence. Galen, do you mind?
Seriously, sometimes the posts are just too good to be preaching to the choir. Imagine how many more papers would hear the argument if we used each others posts. I don't always have the time to write constantly.
What do you say folks?
Galen: Obviously, solar power (photovoltaics or PV) produces more kilowatt hours in the southern tier of states than up north. But northern climes still produce significantly. In fact, a PV system operating on a cold, clear day in Michigan can produce at optimum because heat build-up reduces panel efficiency. PV systems in the deserts of California and Arizona can drop 10% and more in production and can even shut down if inverters overheat in temperature extremes. Thin-film PV can mitigate this by absorbing less heat.
Germany is farther north in latitude than most of the U.S. but it sure hasn't stopped that country from delving into solar since the mid-90's. In fact, Germany today is #1 in PV use worldwide followed by Japan and California. Now Spain and Italy are getting active in solar power.
Also, in your first post you say:
"Then you have the technical problems. The materials to make the solar panels, the wires, sun tracking motors and storage batteries are all mostly heavily indebted to OIL for their existence. Add making EVERY SINGLE HABITABLE STRUCTURE in the continental US solar dependent would strip the world of the necessary materials and drive the cost beyond the reach of those who need it, thus defeating the entire plan."
Pardon me, but this is a half-baked contention. First off, synthetic oil and lubricants have been available since WW II. Glass for panels is hardly a problem as silica (sand) is one of the most common compounds on earth. Some thin-film PV uses teflon-like (plastic) material that require oil but much of this can be had from recycling and developing plastics from new organic compounds. Batteries are only needed in remote areas; 90% of all systems are grid-connected and operate by net metering (do your homework!). Finally, we won't need every habitable structure in the U.S. to have a PV system. It's been calculated that just 1% of our land mass in solar would be enough to power the country. Besides houses, systems could be placed on large flat commercial buildings, on parking structures and on tracts of non-arable land like south-facing mountainsides and remote deserts.
The Big Picture could make solar a global reality. If the nations of the world could work together like we have on global telecommunications we could produce a worldwide power grid running 7/24. As the world turns the sun would constantly produce power where it's illuminating Earth and where it's not. Terrorist threats would be stopped with localized breaker systems....As for solar dependability, well, let's just say it's as reliable as tommorow's sunrise. I make a living in the solar industry so I'm aware of these things.
Sun827: I agree with nationalizing the utilities or turning them over to local control. The LA Dept of Water & Power rates are very fair compared to those of Southern California Edison rates right next door. Ratepayers should not be victims of for-profit utilities and their current stock prices, stock splits and quarterly dividends. --David
Adele- 'Solar' is NOT carbon free. As I mentioned above, much of the basic technology (wires, metals, plastics) that go into making solar power components are heavily dependent upon hydrocarbons and petrochemicals just to be extracted and processed.
You are just moving carbon from one point to another. And you are still using up finite resources that the ENTIRE world will be demanding.
Modern Western based lifestyles and technologies are the PROBLEM. Not the solution. And solar will not come anywhere close to providing enough power to run trains, and factories, and homes, and businesses, and schools, and, and, and... do you start to see my point? in addition, solar power and other alternatives CANNOT replace oil as a source material that comprises the majority of our consumer lifestyle products, and the lifestyle itself as we know it.
Humanity, viewed over the whole of history has lived longer WITHOUT high technology and electricity than with.
Yes it was hard. Brutal. Dirty.
But humanity survived.
We can do it again.
We will have no choice.
nevermind the messenger. Sure Gore has issues but at least he's pushing forward with the effort to clean our power system. NaTIONALIZE THE UTILITY COMPAINES AND REMOVE THE ROBBER BARONS FROM THE EQUATION AND WE'D BE WELL ON OUR WAY TO A TRULY SUSTAINABLE POWER SYSTEM.
Solar works best in climes where there is LOTS of sunlight with long days and moderate temperatures?
Actually solar heating works very well in places like Minneapolis, Minnesota with it's cold CLEAR skys. As for costs, I read that MIT has devisied a method of collecting and concentrating sunshine using organic dyes to power photovoltiacs on the parameter of a window, house, barn at a fraction of the normal cost. A few of these things on your house can make your meter run backwards. :)
Civil Behavior - Go nuts. Use my slightly later rant about the US political system too if you want.
Lobo 72 - To make modern glass, you have to collect the silica (sand), transport it (via gas powered truck or train) to the plant, clean it, mix it with some other additives (also extracted and moved by oil/gas), melted in a natural gas heated furnace, which is probably lit by electricity provided by burning coal, processed in commercial quantities by electric powered machines (see above), and moved to the end user by... oil and gas powered transport. And then it is further processed into solar panels for instance, using more energy probably provided by oil/gas/coal, and then has to be installed in locations by using oil/gas powered vehicles to get there.
And all this work is done by people coming to work in oil/gas powered vehicles. Living in oil/gas/coal/electric heated homes.
See? Solar is NOT carbon neutral. You are just moving the carbon from one place to another.
Lisa: "But Ralph Nader IS invested in Raytheon=cluster bombs"
Lisa, I am sure the CDers here don't like to be shown their own brand of hypocrisy. Nothing will piss off a left wing purist more than to be shown they are not pure.
The left wing wants us to vote Nader (or McKinney?) like the good little nonquestioning, goosestepping left wingers CommonDreams.org wants us to be. The nader people come out every four years like cicacadas. They appear, they make some breeding noises on blogs in an attempt to multiply, and then disappear after the election like the spoiled brats they really are. "whaaa.....Obama's not pure... whaaaaaaa.... I won't help with working with anybody then.....whaaaaaaaa....."
yes CD is a breeding ground for anti-Dem propaganda by the American leftists, Canadian leftists, and a few Republicans posting in stealth to tweak the left wing cicadas into a buzzing fury that's just hilarious to watch.
It's especially funny to watch when the nutjob 9/11 conspiracy theories get posted.
In Florida, the Sierra Club has lauded Charlie Crist for doing some positive things for the environment. Now this. It shows you can't trust Republicans.
Barack, I can understand your not wanting to dismiss nukes and face powerful nuke industry attacks prior to the election, but don't go crazy and choose Hegel as your running mate.
Obama vs McCain? I'm more worried about the number of crazy assholes behind them than by either one. In that department the Repugs beat the Dems by a mile.
"Bit by bit, Al Gore seems to be inching toward a Solartopian view of a future that must be completely sustainable in green energy. This week he advocated getting to an electric power system that is "carbon free" within ten years."
1) Al Gore is NO scientist.
2) Al Gore is a war criminal.
3) Al Gore never opposed the NAFTA and the H-1B and L-1 programs for importing workers to [replace] U.S. citizens in their own country.
4) Al Gore is nothing but another political opportunist.
5) People cheering him on are like people who've been dummily cheering on Obama, that other hypocrite, war criminal, economic criminal, political opportunist, and so on.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9616
That's a very good article on Obama, providing a much more [real] picture of who, what, ... he really is, and by Bill Van Auken, July 18 2008.
Remember all of the so-called Peace&Love groupies of the 1960s? Do you also remember that many of the filthy rich and corporate pig elites of today were among those P&Lust groupies?
kman2 July 19th, 2008 2:57 pm,
"The nader people come out every four years like cicacadas."
How dare you disparage cicadas!
Galen is right. The idea that we are consuming less because we get more efficient has been proven to be ineffective. We got more energy efficient appliances and all we did was buy bigger ones. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Lobo has some great points as to technology. My brother who is an MIT grad and works in metallurgy has been talking about how they are working on "printing" solar panels that would be disposable. Guess they use something like the plasma ink they use with TVs. Don't ask me to give the specifics. I just know there is lots of technology out there too.
But without stewardship and conservation it will not be enough.
Me, I'm for rationing. I say we get 15 gals a week gas, rolling electricity at so many hours a day and so many gallons of water a week (urban dwellers). All else is egregious consumption. The last thing people want to do is modify their coddled lifestyle. God forbid.
Hell, lots of the Palm Beachers down here use 10,000 gals a month in water for their landscaping et all. Can you imagine how put out they'd be with having to do with so much less. As long as their money cushions them from having to take action they will choose to do what they want. That is until their overconsumption proves to be fatal to the rest of us.
How long will we all wait to take this into our own hands? Is the government going to do this for us? One word. Katrina.
Galen: So you want to do nothing?
Look, the whole power paradigm needs to shift. You're talking archaic fossil-fuel technologies. By going solar--and wind--we can get away from coal, natural gas and oil-powered electricity for industry in general. Even T. Boone Pickens, an veteran oilman, gets the solar picture. We need to get away from gasoline-powered vehicles and go to electric, hydrogen, and eventually PV panels to charge batteries to power drive-trains.
Here's what Montana Green Power (www.montanagreenpower.com/ says about solar panels:
"It is clean energy. Even when the emissions related to solar cell manufacturing are counted, photovoltaic generation produces less than 15 percent of the carbon dioxide from a conventional coal-fired power plant. Using solar energy to replace the use of traditional fossil fuel energy sources can prevent the release of pollutants into the atmosphere."
Solar is NOT "just moving carbon from one place to another." Carbon emissions can be reduced drastically with technologies available today. People like you who continue to think in a 20th Century mindset are holding our country back. Your stubborn, backward thinking only obfuscates the energy issue and offers no alternatives (and nuclear power, aside from being dangerous, is not a renewable form of energy). You probably were a naysayer in the 60s when we were preparing go to the moon. Like then, we need a national will to conquer our ever-increasing demand for electricity--from a readily available and FREE source: The Sun.
mankind's only hope for an adequate energy base is fusion technology, and breeder reactors to bridge us there. concerning solar, wind, etc., do the numbers. a world limited to these is doomed to repeat the Dark Ages and worse.
"...his avoidance of the massive industry-sponsored relapse toward nuke power, an absurd diversion that could make the transition to a carbon-free world financially impossible and ecologically moot."
You got spun Harvey... he didn't actually say the word "nuclear", but he referred to it when he said:
"Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."
Part of that 100 percent he referred to *IS* nuclear... he just spun that into the "truly clean carbon-free sources" category (along with fantasyland clean coal). Of course nuclear is anything BUT "clean"... but because it does not add directly to the carbon problem in the same respect as burning fossil fuels (plenty of indirect carbon additions however), it only takes a little spinning to make you believe that he isn't including nuclear into the mix. In fact, he admitted so in an interview after the speech according to a NYT article:
"He said he envisioned nuclear power retaining its current share of domestic electricity generation, about 20 percent."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/washington/18gore.html
Now... there's the second spin... He believes nuclear should retain its 20 percent share. Don't make the mistake of reading that statistic to mean that he believes that nuclear generation should remain fixed at the current level of generation, just that it should remain fixed at the *proportion* of generation... and since electrical demand will grow exponentially, that of course means that the nuclear generation sector will be adding many more plants to maintain the 20 percent proportion.
It's easy to lie with statistics. Gore has always been an advocate of nuclear generation. Don't believe otherwise.
kman2: You are sure right. Not one of these absolutists bothers to respond to the dead children Nader's money helps kill.
No I'm treated to sophomoric rants vilifying Democrats, worshiping Nader, that, with a self-satisfied flourish, ask inane rhetorical questions at the end.
Maybe if some of Raytheon's Cluster Bombs blew up in their OWN precious faces, instead of a Lebanese children's, Ralph's disgustingness would be driven home.
Divest your Death-Money Mr. Progressive. You're making an idiot of your acolytes.
Galen said: "'Solar' is NOT carbon free...of the basic technology (wires, metals, plastics) that go into making solar power components are heavily dependent upon hydrocarbons and petrochemicals just to be extracted and processed."
A solar panel is sand and dirt, to which energy has been added. Properly engineered, a solar panel producing plant parked in the desert Southwest has everything it needs to produce solar panels for basically free.
To me, it represents a HUGE lack of imagination on your part to be unable to imagine any other way of reducing crystalline Silicon from sand (SiO2) and iron and aluminum from dirt (FeO2, Al2O3) by any means but fossil-fuel fired refineries.
The problem with this country is its 'can-do' about war and oil, and 'cant do' about everything else. I repeat: a solar panel is just sand and dirt and energy. And, of the three, the energy is the easy part. Just because no one has put up the up-front investment to make this come true doesn't mean it can't. Thermodynamically, a solar panel is sand, dirt, and energy. And thermodynamic realities have a way of becoming economic ones as well.
Galen, "Solar works best in climes where there is LOTS of sunlight with long days and moderate temperatures. It doesn't work so well at higher latitudes with less sunlight." Really? I guess the Germans didn't get the memo: Cloudy Germany a Powerhouse in Solar Energy
Carbon and pollutant free? Not quite. But better than what we have now. See: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/man_pro_implications.html
You go, ubrew12! And thanks for the link.
Galen: Again, do your homework.
Lobo - I will. But can you understand that the process of making the solar panels is energy intensive and not carbon free as many seem to think.
Modern technology comes with a deliberately concealed price tag. And as soon as the means to acquire the raw materials of alternative technologies goes by the way side, so do the alternative technologies.
To build a decent house you need a good foundation, right?
The foundation of our 'house', for the last 150 years has been oil. As soon as that becomes as difficult to find as it is getting to be, the 'foundation' starts to collapse.
Mike Corbeil - (re: Gore)
I'm anti war and support self sustaining energy solutions, and better education for US citizens. I support most of the progressive agendas.
However, I'm not opposed to H1B-Visas. I worked in high tech industry and in the 90's we had a difficult time getting qualified candidates who were U.S. citizens. When I was in college (which i paid for, not my parents), there was a shortage of U.S. students who wanted to study computer information systems. I worked with many good people from around the world who just wanted to work, and they had H1-B visas and are still waiting on their green cards. They have been peaceful and their input to our architecture and strategies improved our organizations.
I'm not supporting corporate policies that are taking away benefits every day of workers, because they are hurting H1-B visas. My point is that if I'm training for a sport, I want to train with the best in the world. If I'm in the class room, I want to be surrounded by the best students, because I will get better. And when I'm at work, I want to be surrounded by the best minds.
Maybe others have had a different situation than me, but I've worked with some of the best people who had H1-B visas, and we learned a lot from each other. I definitely don't want to limit the quality of candidates to only 1 country. Sorry, but I don't agree with hand outs, and the American population continues not to push themselves in the hard sciences like India and China.
One thing you will be happy about is that people from India no longer want to attend U.S. universities or come to work in the U.S. like they did in the 90's. The opportunities are now in Asia and their students out number us possibly by an order of magnitude.
I support more individual rights as opposed to corporate rights, but limiting highly educated people from other countries to educational or employment opportunities is the wrong answer, in my opinion. We all have a right to our opinions. I'd rather not with only Americans, sorry. I do not believe that Gore made a wrong decision by promoting H1-B visas. We should be happy that the U.S. had these high tech start here in our country, and that movement required intellectual horsepower from all over the world. Let's take responsibility for our own actions too.
I'm not saying support all of Gore's policies or actions.
I just oppose any "hand out" attitudes that talk about U.S. only opportunities for education and technical jobs.
I don't believe that will work, in my opinion.
This is not a blessing for all corporate policies.
While we are upset with the current state of affairs in our country, lets not forget that we have powers to innovate and push ourselves to evolve as well.
Not all the blame can be directed outwards.
I worked just as hard as the H1-B visas, and If I can do it, so can the other Americans.
The only way to convince big corporations and big money to go solar, is to tell them that they are going to have life-long profits from it , and a better guarantee of a long life. Provide investment and profit tax incentives and say that its going to be the next really big energy monopoly. Solar concentration power stations work. They can be built in a few years.
Why keep your money in dying industries of coal and oil, when even their short term prospects lead to wars, political and climate hell? The purpose of the carbon industries must be to fund the growth of Solartopia, and to quietly reduce the need for and rate of extraction of these limited resources, so that they and we can last.
The next problem is to reduce the breeding rate of humans, so that it is not a competition to see which national ethnic or religious group can out breed the others for the privilege of overwhelming Gaia. The Darwinian overproduction and killing off the excess in desperate wars is probably not leading to long term evolutionary success. Western materialism and acquisition, and social stability and rights of women, plus contraceptions, can slow down birthrates. Perhaps what I really object to in both Catholic, fundamentalist Christian and Muslim religion and culture, is their insistence, even when they deny Darwinian Science, that they must out breed all others, using their god given traditions of control of womens rights and reproduction as a design for explosive population growth, and growth of their own creeds. Religions are Rutting and Reproductive organizations, or they die out.
Each breath we and our animal friends take, we exhale CO2. Our plants release CO2 in the evening, and eat CO2 during the day. Our oil came from dead plants and biomass who lived due to CO2 in the air. Yet somehow, CO2 from burning oil is this great evil, and the 3% of global CO2 being released into the air by man is going to cause dramatic climate change and wipe out the planet and all life.
Trying to discuss it on progressive sites is like trying to discuss creationism or intelligent design on the right wing sites. It is futile since both views are based on religous beliefs and faith, and questioning these beliefs provokes outrage. On one side, man is born a sinner and is at war with Islamic terrorists, and their religous leaders are popes, priests, pastors, etc. On the other, man is also a sinner, guilty of consuming Gaias finite resources, and is at war with terrorists - all of mankind, and it's leaders are consensus climate "scientists" that work for corporate government that wants to globalize you. Bad man.
I look forward to the next ice age so both sides can freeze to death while Bush and the rest of the elite move to their ranches in South America and Africa where it will be warmer. Perhaps the human race in the 90,000 years before the next interglacial will evolve to a point where the average man can think, and not just the elite.
For those wanting to go back to the preindustrial era where life expectancy was under 40, and 40% of all children made it past the age of 15, whats stopping you. Get off the internet-made possible with petroleum based computers and carbon based electricity, live off the land, go hunting or grow your own food. If you starve to death, no great loss, at least you won't be consuming what you do not produce for yourself. The world population in 1800 was 1 billion (life expectancy under 40), since we would have to depopulate by 5.6 billion to go back to this utopian world, thank you for your voluntary contribution in advance. Only 5,599,999,999 left to go.
Galen: I appreciate your magnanimity. No, the making of panels is not carbon-free yet as I pointed out earlier, when the power paradigm has shifted, the energy used to make panels will be cleaner. I'll admit coal and natural gas will continue to be major power sources in my lifetime (57 years now) but as supply of these diminish, coupled with the pollution they produce, solar and wind--as their technologies improve--will provide the answer. The foundation of oil, as you call it, is already in collapse. Even the Saudis see there's an end in sight so they're trying to diversify their economy while flush with cash.
Oil and its distribution is in the hands of world's rich few. Solar and wind, on the other hand, gives private citizens and businesses more control over future energy costs. Producing power on your roof or elsewhere on your property takes the production and distribution of electricity away from the few. And be advised, solar is still an emerging industry. The best is yet to come.
Lobo - We shall see what the future holds. But I'm pretty sure it's not Star Trek (tm)...
Gore has reportedly raised some $300 million (that's not a typo) to spend on moving pubic opinion to support the transition to a totally "carbon-free" electric supply system.
I LOVE IT...! not a "typo..." then spells public "pubic."
That's rich.
Besides Solar,and other alternative energy, less people would be another way to take better care of the planet, and ourselves. And I'm talking 2-3 billion less. One kid, per family, then two when the population is under some control! We're stupid, greedy monkeys. And if we really want a better world, that means less of us. But "religion", will nullify any kinda real discussion, or change.
Whether we become a solar society or stay with fossil fuel. We have to practice for real C O N S E R V A T I O N!!
Look at 07 and how many billions of miles Americans drove less. Hey we are all still breathing!
We can do without many of these manufacture overseas things.
There is a movement back to clotheslines. original solar energy project.
You would be surprised just how much heat a window can take in on a cold winter day.
The same with capturing solar heat on a dark color roof or even a tin roof nevermind slate.
All original solar heated. Been doing it for many years .
Or houses build covered partly with earth
far from new but they work and you can have them now . Windbreaks of trees!
Now what we do not need is more electric slaves. Instant on appliances.
How about getting rid of our old light bulbs.
And just the act of painting rooms lighter captures light from windows or in the evening you can use less lamps to light your living space.
How about outside solar lighting? how about getting rid of all these batteries ?
It has been many years we have been ablbe to run calculaters and wrist watches on solar or just light alone. Why are we using more and mmore batteries?
Don't look to anyone including Al Gore to become your savoir. It is you and me that have to do the hard work. If we don't then our kind will soon be among the missing on EArth.
It Is Up To US and we have to do it today.
TOMORROW the sun and earth will still be here but not us.
MiMi - Funny you should mention cutting back on the population.
I agree. We are well past the carrying capacity of this planet. 6+ billion is far too many.
But the funny thing is, with the coming events of climate change (which you so often deny), the collapse of oil powered society (which you also deny), and the coming wider war in the Middle East (which your golden boy McCain will insure, which will just hasten the collapse of the oil powered West) you will get your wish.
Too bad Americans are on the war, famine and disease hit list along with the rest of the world.
But then again, Death never played favorites.
As Jim Morrison of the doors said 'Nobody gets out of here alive.'