Blue Spot

Obama says climate change a matter of urgency | Reuters

CHICAGO, Dec 9 (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue.

In remarks to reporters, Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on Jan. 20.

He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with former Vice President Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago.

"All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over," Obama said.

He said he would work with Democrats and Republicans, businesses, consumers and others with a stake in the issue to try to reach a consensus on a bold, aggressive approach to tackling the problem.

"This is a matter of urgency and of national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That's what I intend my administration to do," Obama said.

Obama had a willing accomplice in Gore, whose won a Nobel in 2007 for his years-long effort to educate people about the gradual warming of the planet and to argue against those scientists who believe a warming trend is a naturally occurring event.

There was no talk of offering Gore a job in the Obama administration. Gore has indicated he is not interested in a position of climate "czar" or any Cabinet post.

Just two days after Obama won the Nov. 4 election, Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection rolled out a media campaign to push for immediate investments in energy efficiency, renewable power generation like wind and solar technology and the creation of a unified national power grid.

Gore and his group are in line with most U.S. environmental groups, which believe the Obama administration has a chance to stem global warming.

Critics have accused the outgoing Bush administration of stalling on the issue, but the White House insists it is taking steps aimed at addressing the problem without damaging the U.S. economy.

"We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country, in all 50 states, to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy, to think about how we are increasing efficiency, to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us competitive for decades to come, even as we're saving the planet," Obama said.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Global Warming, Green/Energy related, President-elect Obama

Op-Ed Contributor - The Climate for Change - NYTimes.com

THE inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.

The electrifying redemption of America’s revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet.

The world authority on the climate crisis, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, after 20 years of detailed study and four unanimous reports, now says that the evidence is “unequivocal.” To those who are still tempted to dismiss the increasingly urgent alarms from scientists around the world, ignore the melting of the north polar ice cap and all of the other apocalyptic warnings from the planet itself, and who roll their eyes at the very mention of this existential threat to the future of the human species, please wake up. Our children and grandchildren need you to hear and recognize the truth of our situation, before it is too late.

Here is the good news: the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis.

Economists across the spectrum — including Martin Feldstein and Lawrence Summers — agree that large and rapid investments in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way. Many also agree that our economy will fall behind if we continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign oil every year. Moreover, national security experts in both parties agree that we face a dangerous strategic vulnerability if the world suddenly loses access to Middle Eastern oil.

As Abraham Lincoln said during America’s darkest hour, “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” In our present case, thinking anew requires discarding an outdated and fatally flawed definition of the problem we face.

Thirty-five years ago this past week, President Richard Nixon created Project Independence, which set a national goal that, within seven years, the United States would develop “the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy sources.” His statement came three weeks after the Arab oil embargo had sent prices skyrocketing and woke America to the dangers of dependence on foreign oil. And — not coincidentally — it came only three years after United States domestic oil production had peaked.

At the time, the United States imported less than a third of its oil from foreign countries. Yet today, after all six of the presidents succeeding Nixon repeated some version of his goal, our dependence has doubled from one-third to nearly two-thirds — and many feel that global oil production is at or near its peak.

Some still see this as a problem of domestic production. If we could only increase oil and coal production at home, they argue, then we wouldn’t have to rely on imports from the Middle East. Some have come up with even dirtier and more expensive new ways to extract the same old fuels, like coal liquids, oil shale, tar sands and “clean coal” technology.

But in every case, the resources in question are much too expensive or polluting, or, in the case of “clean coal,” too imaginary to make a difference in protecting either our national security or the global climate. Indeed, those who spend hundreds of millions promoting “clean coal” technology consistently omit the fact that there is little investment and not a single large-scale demonstration project in the United States for capturing and safely burying all of this pollution. If the coal industry can make good on this promise, then I’m all for it. But until that day comes, we simply cannot any longer base the strategy for human survival on a cynical and self-interested illusion.

Click here to read the rest.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Oil

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

OSLO, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said in a statement released after the award was announced. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," he added.

Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize.

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change, Global Warming, Nobel Prize

Al Gore, on his new book, "The Assault On Reason."

Labels: Al Gore, Climate change

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress - Climate Change - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - Al Gore spoke out on his signature issue Wednesday, telling Congress that the world faces “a true planetary emergency” unless it dramatically and immediately reduces emissions that most scientists tie to global warming.

In a return he described as emotional, the former vice president testified before House panels that it is not too late to deal with climate change “and we have everything we need to get started.”

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.

But several Republicans sharply questioned Gore's recommendations.

“A lot of those recommendations are more regulations and more taxation,” said former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, although he added that he agrees with Gore that the scientific debate on climate change is over. “I think we can find answers to use the coal energy, to use the natural gas we have.”

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a former chairman of the House energy committee, questioned scientific evidence from Gore’s popular film and said cutting carbon dioxide emissions would “provide little benefit at a huge cost,” particularly to major coal-producing and coal-burning states.

“You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,” Barton said as he challenged Gore’s conclusion that carbon dioxide emissions cause rising global temperatures. Barton and Gore’s exchange grew testy at one point — Barton demanding that Gore get to the point and Gore responding that he would like time to answer without being interrupted.

Labels: Al Gore, Global Warming

"News" outlets pick up the swiftboating efforts of the neocon pundits and report that Al Gore's energy bills are high because he lives in a big house, giving the false impression that he doesn't live up to his own standards of environmental conservation. As usual, the neocons and media get it wrong and Americablog gets it right.



read more | digg story

Labels: Al Gore, Green/Energy related, Media

OK, we all know Al Gore should have been president back in 2000. After all, he did win the popular vote; he would have one Florida if he sought and received a statewide recount; and as Michelle Martin explained in a NOW show episode:

Harris's office hired a private company to draw up a list of people to be removed from Florida's voting rolls because they were felons. Florida is one of seven states that doesn't allow felons who've served their time the right to vote.

But there was something fishy about Harris's list. Thousands of people on the list weren't felons at all. They were perfectly eligible voters, many of them African American, who showed up on Election Day and found they couldn't vote.

In testimony two months after the vote, Katherine Harris admitted she was aware of concerns about the list.

All this made me wonder, what if you took King George's record and applied it to a President Gore? Let's say, despite numerous warnings (remember: the 8/6/01 PDB titled Bin Laden Determined to Atttack U.S.) the nation suffers the worst terrorist attack ever. How would the Republicans have reacted to that? How would the Republicans react to a President Gore who sold the country on a reason to go to war that did not exist and then continued to justify his war by trying to fool the American people, passing false information, using his VP as a proxy to allege false ties by our opponent's dictator to terrorists that were never in his country before we decided to put our young men and women in harm's way? What if under a President Gore, the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world was still at large 5 years later? What if the country witnessed the worst response ever under a President Gore, to one of the country's worst natural disasters ever? What if a year later, this same region was being neglected under a President Gore? What if a President Gore leaked the name of a covert CIA agent for political reasons? What if a President Gore sought to eavesdrop on Americans and listen in on their telephone conversations? What if a President Gore showed contempt for the Constitution, Congress and the whole notion of checks and balances? What if Ken Lay was a friend of a President Gore and was on the short list to become President Gore's Energy Secretary and one of the worst corporate scandals in this country's history (Enron) happened under a President Gore? What if a President Gore held only a handful of press conferences during his first term? What if a President Gore alienated our allies because of his extreme policies and damaged our reputation throughout the world? How would the Republicans have reacted?

He would have been IMPEACHED! Whenever the GOP identifies a target, they go after him until he is impeached or recalled (remember: Grey Davis in CA). If we win back Congress this year, we should do the same. Or at the very least, support Sen. Feingold's measure to censure.

The damage that is being done will not be appreciated until after King George has left office. His energy policies have accelerated global warming. And now, as expected, King George has dashed the hopes of millions of people with his (first ever) veto of the stem cell research bill. When Americans finally realize that Bush and his followers were on the wrong side of history, hopefully it will not be too late to fix the damage. Make sure you do your part to make them see the truth sooner rather than later.

Labels: Al Gore, Comment