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"...For the first time in all of human history, we as a species, have to make a decision," he said, asking rhetorically, "What should we do?"
"We should stop burning coal without sequestering the CO2," said Gore, blaming the coal and oil companies for the climate crisis.
"The coal and oil companies have spent, in the United States alone, a half a billion dollars in the first eight months of this year promoting a lie that there is such a thing as clean coal," he said. "Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes . It does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was cancelled. How many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero."
"What we should do is make a one-off investment to switch our energy infrastructure from one that depends on fuel that is dirty, dangerous, destroying the habitability of this planet and rising in price to a new global energy infrastructure that is based on fuel that is free forever: the sun and the wind and geothermal."
"There is a myth that the technology is not available. It is available," Gore said.
Gore said within 10 years the United States should have a good start on what he calls the Electronet, a unified, national "smart" power transmission grid "with long-distance, low-loss transmission capacity to take the energy from the places where the sun falls and the wind blows to the places where the people live." "And we need it globally," he said, "in Europe, in Africa, Northern Africa particularly."
Gore's solution for the climate and energy crisis may help resolve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan as well. "Let's start with Darfur," he proposed. "Darfur has more sunlight falling on it reliably than almost any other place. There's a belt across that part of Africa into the Middle East. We ought to build solar, electric plants there and connect them with a super grid that goes across the straits of Gibraltar and up through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean and replaces coal and oil."
But instead of working to bring about solutions like that, Gore denounced the "utter insanity" of the course that the U.S. Congress is taking. "Today," he said, "the U.S. Congress is dealing with energy as well. They are, without debate and without a single hearing, preparing to lift the moratorium on the development of oil shale, which would vastly multiply the amount of CO2 from every gallon of gasoline. This is utter insanity and it demonstrates that the wealth and power and influence of the entrenched carbon lobby to twist policy and to put out illusory impressions about this that is overwhelming free debate."
An extension of the ban on oil shale production on federal lands in the West failed to pass the Senate on Friday. Unless Congress extends the moratorium, it expires at the end of September with the end of the current fiscal year. The oil shale of the Green River geological formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contains 800 billion to 1.8 trillion barrels of the equivalent of oil - roughly three times the size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. But the adverse land and ecological impacts of oil shale production are well known from production in Alberta, Canada. Production of oil from shale will result in airborne pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions so worrisome that the U.S. Council of Mayors earlier this year passed a resolution against the purchase of petroleum products produced from shale. Because the entire Green River formation lies in the Colorado River drainage basin, water quality is an important issue, and 2005 study by the RAND corporation warns that "not enough is known about how to prevent water contamination from surface and in-situ operations."
The power demand associated with shale, whether from coal or natural gas-fired power plants, also represents an enormous demand for water. One estimate from a Los Alamos National Lab scientists warns that each barrel of oil from shale could require one to three barrels of water to produce. ..."http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-27-01.asp
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