Gore Calls for Energy Independence within 10 Years
July 18, 2008
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At a speech in Washington, Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Laureate, has challenged the country to be completely independent from fossil fuels within 10 years. The challenge of cutting the country's carbon footprint is being compared to JFK's efforts to put a man on the moon over a generation ago.
Gore said that the current practice of borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East doesn’t make sense and can’t be sustained. Although the top supplier of energy to America is actually Canada.
Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for his work on global warming and popularizing the subject with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Oscar.
Gore said “When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising prices.”
He believes the single biggest step towards cutting the country’s carbon footprint is to implement a tax on carbon emissions – “Tax what we earn – not what we burn.”
However, not everyone is convinced on his plan with critics, of which there are many, saying that being carbon free in 10 years is too short a time and not realistic.
In his speech, Gore said that both McCain and Obama were ahead of most politicians in terms of wanting to take action on global warming, although it is yet to be seen if either candidate will support Gore’s plan.
In 2007, only 28% of the country’s energy came from non-fossil fuel sources, most of which came from nuclear power. Hydro provided another 6% and other renewables including solar and wind accounted for only 2.5% of the total. Nearly half of the country’s energy still comes from coal.
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