"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet." -- Al Gore
We all knew what he'd say, but we still stood in line for an hour to hear him say it. Today Al Gore issued his "Generational Challenge to Repower America" to a packed house at the DAR Constitution Hall in DC.
After zinging the administration a few times as a warm up ("I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously"), Gore laid down the We Campaign challenge. Basically, he wants the entire nation to be on "100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity" in ten years' time.
Is this goal remotely realistic? Gore seems to think so:
Anyone else think he sounds a lot like E.O. Wilson's Creation in that video?
So, why ten years? Gore said, "ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target," and cites the moon landing as evidence that transformative initiatives can indeed be accomplished in a decade. But transitioning the nation to purely renewable energy is going to be harder than going to the moon. According to my electricity provider, Pepco, only 3.7% of my electricity came from "renewable energy sources" in 2007. Going from 3.7% to 100% is more than a sea change; it's political plate tectonics with very large landmines thrown in.
Afterward, my staffer asked (rhetorically) whether Gore had mentioned nuclear power in his speech. The answer is, of course, no. But according to Pepco, a third of my electricity is nuclear in origin - a proportion that shocked this West Coast girl (I'm used to hydroelectric power - which is not without its own controversies). Clearly nuclear power is not a small segment of the energy pie.
I'm sure Gore didn't want to get into it in this initial phase - the goal right now is to get everyone from both sides of the aisle committed. That's why the We Campaign board consists of four Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent. But eventually we're going to have to figure out what role nuclear power has in the transitional scenario, and it's going to be sticky. Buried in the wecansolveit.org Q&A is this clue:
The electricity system can be a mix of carbon-free baseload and distpatchable sources like solar thermal with storage, geothermal, wind, solar photovoltaics, biomass, existing nuclear and hydropower, and coal and natural gas power if they are able to capture the carbon. (emphasis added)
Some people are probably going to have a problem with that.
Honestly, I doubt whether Gore, even the super-powered, Nobel-brandishing New and Improved Al Gore, can get this done. But as someone who spent her intellectually formative years under the Clinton Administration, I have a serious soft spot for him. As someone who watched him win/lose/win/lose the 2000 election in a New Orleans bar, I'm still angry on his behalf. And as someone who plastered Greenpeace stickers all over her high school locker, I want to give him a great big hug for even trying.
But of course there will always be those who don't want to hug the Goracle. . . like these 8 or so protesters outside the talk today:
The "Drill? Yes we can!" sign in particular was alarming. . . and the guy dressed as the Grim Reaper? I got no clue what that was about.
UPDATE: you can now watch the whole speech (27 minutes) here:
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I buy my electricity from wind power, but I'd be happy with nuclear as a big boost.
I heard somewhere that there is a serious problem integrating solar and wind into a grid in over 20% of the total due to the fact that they can suddenly and unpredictably stop. Do you have any information on that?I suspect nukes will play a large part in the transition phase (and for some time after).
I would be much more amenable to nuclear power if my local nuclear power plant weren't such a flagrant accident waiting to happen. I'm sure we get much of our electricity from Vermont Yankee, but ever since we moved into its neighborhood, I've read more news stories than I can count about how poorly the place has been maintained. The powers that be keep trying to get permission to ramp up power production there, but at the moment, the place is running at 25% because one of the cooling towers fell down, and another has a big crack and a bad leak. It's kind of depressing to think about the amount of money they would need to bring the place up to scratch after decades of decay.
"Is this goal remotely realistic?"
If anyone can make it happen, Gore can. It's a pity, in a way, although entirely predictable that we're hearing this from him rather than from McCain or Obama.
Blind squirrel, Gore talked a bit about updating the grid to accommodate renewable energy - he made the excellent point that the domestic grid needs to be updated anyway (as the blackouts a few summers back showed) so why not do it in a way that links the parts of the country that produce renewable energy efficiently with the parts that need it?
Ian, both Obama and McCain put out responses - they're on the wecansolveit.org website:
Sen. John McCain, likely Republican presidential nominee:
McCain said he admires Gore as an early and outspoken advocate of addressing the global warming problem even though "there may be some aspects of climate change that he and I are in disagreement (on)." Of the goals Gore outlined Thursday for generating more electricity with solar and wind resources, McCain said, "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." Source: Associated Press
Sen. Barack Obama, likely Democratic presidential nominee:
"For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat. I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President. It's a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer."
I wondered if Obama would make an appearance yesterday, but I think they really wanted the focus to be on the challenge, and they're trying very hard to make this bipartisan. Bringing in the nominees would probably have been self-defeating - more press, yes, but more confrontational press.
"ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target"
Is this still true? Seems like we have national ADHD.
I like the Pickens Plan, but even T. Boone Pickens says that making a move towards wind power is going to cost us over a trillion dollars in new infrastructure. His zinging the current administration though, is farcical. The Democratic Party have been in charge of Congress for quite a while now, and we haven't seen much from them either. So rather than playing the stupid partisan politics ploy, they all need to shut up, sit down, listen to people who know what to do ... and then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Is it do-able? I think it is, especially if we up our nuclear energy output. Nuclear is already an established utility, and supplies ~20% of our electricity. If we actually allow a few more to be built, and then use the coal and natural gas that is freed up to generate CNG for fuel ... we'd be doing alright.