●○不都合な真実○●コミュの10年でアメリカの電力供給をCarbon Freeに！

というのがゴアの最新の提案です。
案の定、アメリカのボンクラマスコミの中には
あまりに極端な提案だとゴアを嘲笑する雰囲気もあるようです。

ただ、おそらくゴアの本心は
ガソリンの値段が超高騰し家計を直撃しているという追い風、
さらに大統領選のさなかでさまざまな政治的な選択肢について
みんながそれなりに考えているというさらなる追い風の中で、
刺激的な提案で注目をあつめ議論を促すことこそが第一の目的。

そのあとの展開は、

Plan A：
議論の結果として、国民の多くがこれに同意し
本当にこの目標に向けて2008年から取り組む＝10年計画

Plan B：
バカにされ、いったん忘れかけられるが
5〜10年以内に北極の氷が夏になると完全消滅するようになり、
国民がやっとこの提案に真剣に取り組むようになる＝15〜20年計画

という風に、
20年以内くらいを本音ベースの目標に据えているんじゃないでしょうか。

それにしても嘲笑覚悟でもこういう提案を胸を張って行うゴアは
アメリカという国の底力を本当に信じているんだなあ、
という感慨もありますね。


（引用　NY Times）
July 18, 2008
Gore Calls for Carbon-Free Electric Power
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that
Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a
decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly
sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as
their creature comforts.

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at
risk,” Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. “The
future of human civilization is at stake.”

Mr. Gore called for the kind of concerted national effort that enabled
Americans to walk on the moon 39 years ago this month, just eight years
after President John F. Kennedy famously embraced that goal. He said the
goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable
energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not
some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental
changes in political thinking and personal expectations.

“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore
said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to
all Americans, in every walk of life — to our political leaders,
entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”

Although Mr. Gore has made global warming and energy conservation his
signature issues, winning a Nobel Prize for his efforts, his speech on
Thursday argued that the reasons for renouncing fossil fuels go far
beyond concern for the climate.

In it, he cited military-intelligence studies warning of “dangerous
national security implications” tied to climate change, including the
possibility of “hundreds of millions of climate refugees” causing
instability around the world, and said the United States is dangerously
vulnerable because of its reliance on foreign oil.

Doubtless aware that his remarks would be met with skepticism, or even
ridicule, in some quarters, Mr. Gore insisted in his speech that the
goal of carbon-free power is not only achievable but practical, and that
businesses would embrace it once they saw that it made fundamental
economic sense.

Mr. Gore said the most important policy change in the transformation
would be taxes on carbon dioxide production, with an accompanying
reduction in payroll taxes. “We should tax what we burn, not what we
earn,” he said.

The former vice president said in his speech that he could not recall a
worse confluence of problems facing the country: higher gasoline prices,
jobs being “outsourced,” the home mortgage industry in turmoil.
“Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan
appears to be getting worse,” he said.

By calling for new political leadership and speaking disdainfully of
“defenders of the status quo,” Mr. Gore was hurling a dart at the man
who defeated him for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush. Critics of
Mr. Bush say that his policies are too often colored by his background
in the oil business.

A crucial shortcoming in the country’s political leadership is a
failure to view interlocking problems as basically one problem that is
“deeply ironic in its simplicity,” Mr. Gore said, namely “our
dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.”

“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to
burn it in ways that destroy the planet,” Mr. Gore said. “Every bit of
that’s got to change.”

And it can change, he said, citing some scientists’ estimates that
enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth in 40 minutes to
meet the world’s energy needs for a year, and that the winds that blow
across the Midwest every day could meet the country’s daily electricity
needs.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic candidate
for president, immediately praised Mr. Gore’s speech. “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,”
Mr. Obama said.

A shift away from fossil fuels would make the United States a leader
instead of a sometime rebel on energy and conservation issues worldwide,
Mr. Gore said. Nor, he said, would the hard work of people who toil on
oil rigs and deep in the earth be for naught. “We should guarantee good
jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by
impacts on the coal industry,” he said by way of example. “Every
single one of them.”

“Of course, there are those who will tell us that this can’t be
done,” he conceded. “But even those who reap the profits of the
carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one
OPEC oil minister observed, ‘The Stone Age didn’t end because of a
shortage of stones.’ ”

The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens said in a statement that Mr. Gore’s
plan would still not address “the stranglehold that foreign oil has on
our country.” Mr. Pickens has called for a blend of government
leadership and private enterprise to harness the full potential of wind
power to help break what he calls “our deadly addiction to foreign
oil.”