Yes We Can!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/opinion/19herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By BOB HERBERT NYTimes Op Ed
Published: July 19, 2008
As I was listening to Al Gore on the telephone, I was thinking:
"Uh-oh, the naysayers will have a field day with this one."
The former vice president was giving me an advanced briefing on the
speech that he delivered on Thursday, calling on the United States to
behave like a great nation and actually do something real about its
self-destructive and ultimately unsustainable reliance on
carbon-based fuel for its 21st-century energy needs.
"I'm going to issue a strategic challenge that the United States of
America set a goal of getting 100 percent of our electricity from
renewable resources and carbon-constrained fuels within 10 years," he
said.
"One hundred percent?" I said.
"One hundred percent."
Mr. Gore's focus is primarily on solar, wind and geothermal energy.
His belief is that a dramatic, wholesale transition to these abundant
and renewable sources of energy is not just doable, but essential.
My view of Mr. Gore's passionate engagement with some of the biggest
issues of our time is that he is offering us the kind of vision and
sense of urgency that has been so lacking in the presidential
campaigns. But the tendency in a society that is skeptical, if not
phobic, about anything progressive has been to dismiss his large
ideas and wise counsel, as George H. W. Bush once did by deriding him
as "ozone man."
The naysayers will tell you that once again Al Gore is dreaming, that
the costs of his visionary energy challenge are too high, the
technological obstacles too tough, the timeline too short and the
political lift much too heavy.
But that's the thing about visionaries. They don't imagine what's
easy. They imagine the benefits to be reaped once all the obstacles
are overcome. Mr. Gore will tell you about the wind blowing through
the corridor that stretches from Mexico to Canada, through the Plains
states, and the tremendous amounts of electricity that would come
from capturing the energy of that wind - enough to light up cities
and towns from coast to coast.
"We need to make a big, massive, one-off investment to transform our
energy infrastructure from one that relies on a dirty, expensive fuel
to fuel that is free," said Mr. Gore. "The sun and the wind and
geothermal are not going to run out, and we don't have to export them
from the Persian Gulf, and they are not increasing in price.
"And since the only factor that controls the price is the efficiency
and innovation that goes into the equipment that transforms it into
electricity, once you start getting the scales that we're
anticipating, those systems come down in cost."
The correct response to Mr. Gore's proposal would be a rush to figure
out ways to make it happen. Don't hold your breath.
When exactly was it that the U.S. became a can't-do society? It
wasn't at the very beginning when 13 ragamuffin colonies went to war
against the world's mightiest empire. It wasn't during World War II
when Japan and Nazi Germany had to be fought simultaneously. It
wasn't in the postwar period that gave us the Marshall Plan and a
robust G.I. Bill and the interstate highway system and the space
program and the civil rights movement and the women's movement and
the greatest society the world had ever known.
When was it?
Now we can't even lift New Orleans off its knees.
In his speech, delivered in Washington, Mr. Gore said: "We're
borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn
it in ways that destroy the planet."
He described carbon-based fuel as the thread running through the
global climate crisis, America's economic woes and its most serious
national security threats. He then asked: "What if we could use fuels
that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly
available right here at home?"
Americans are extremely anxious at the moment, and I think part of it
has to do with a deeply unsettling feeling that the nation may not be
up to the tremendous challenges it is facing. A recent poll by the
Rockefeller Foundation and Time magazine that focused on economic
issues found a deep pessimism running through respondents.
According to Margot Brandenburg, an official with the foundation,
nearly half of 18- to 29-year-olds "feel that America's best days are
in the past."
The moment is ripe for exactly the kind of challenge issued by Mr.
Gore on Thursday. It doesn't matter if his proposal is less than
perfect, or can't be realized within 10 years, or even it if is found
to be deeply flawed. The goal is the thing.
The fetish for drilling for ever more oil is the perfect metaphor
these days. The first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole
is stop digging.
--
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249 607-592-8402 Cell
"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
Mohandas Gandhi
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