Gore pitches 10-year shift to clean energy

updated 5:19 p.m. ET July 17, 2008

WASHINGTON - Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other climate-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global warming.

Rising fuel costs, climate change and the national security threats posed by U.S. dependence on foreign oil are conspiring to create "a new political environment" that Gore said will sustain bold and expensive steps to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

"I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," Gore said ahead of a speech on energy and climate Thursday in Washington.

In his speech, Gore said some of the nation's biggest success stories have come from making commitments to goals well beyond the next election, citing the Marshall plan for rebuilding Europe, Social Security and the interstate highway system, in addition to putting a man on the moon.

"A political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that's meaningless," he said. "Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit the target."

He said it also coincides with experts' predictions that unless dramatic changes to reduce global warming pollution are made within the next decade, "our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis" may be lost.

Gore said the single most important policy change would be placing a carbon tax on burning oil and coal.

He received encouraging words from Obama. "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," Obama said in a statement.

"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," he added. "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."

But Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America's Future Energy, a bipartisan think tank, said weaning the nation away from fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — can't be done in a decade.

"The country is not going to be able to go cold turkey," Diamond said. "We have hundreds of years of infrastructure with trillions of dollars of investment that is not simply going to be made obsolete."

Estimated price: up to $3 trillion
The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that Gore chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money.

But he said it would cost about as much to build coal plants to satisfy current demand. "This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels."

Called an alarmist by conservatives, Gore has made combating global warming his signature issue, a campaign that has been recognized worldwide — from starring in the Academy Award-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" to sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He portrayed Thursday's speech as the latest and most important phase in his effort to build public opinion in favor of alternative fuels.

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