Al Gore: "A NEW VISION FOR AMERICA'S ENERGY FUTURE" (UPDATED)

UPDATE: The Washington Post covered the speech and Grist's Muckraker was there, too:

Standing against a stately backdrop of American flags -- gone were the flashy visuals that usually accompany his climate speeches -- Gore projected a decidedly more somber and serious persona than the exuberant, almost giddy character we've seen pumping his fists and cracking jokes as he roared around the world on his climate lecture circuit. It was a persona that, if you squinted just right, seemed almost ...

Yes, presidential. Indeed, Gore's protestations that he has no intention of becoming a 2008 presidential contender have been getting weaker. Add to that the recent news that Gore will be publishing a book next May entitled The Assault on Reason -- a meditation on the ineptitude of political leaders paralyzed by their "unwillingness to let facts drive decisions" -- and it's enough to drive the media to distraction.

From Take the Red Pill:

Yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore delivered a major speech on global warming at New York University law school, calling for an immediate freeze on carbon dioxide emissions to fight the effects of global warming.

"This is an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an opportunity to find our better selves and in rising to meet this challenge, create a better brighter future," Gore said. A new report by the Center for American Progress and the Worldwatch Institute envisions a clean and efficient energy system which would decrease our dependence on foreign oil, increase domestic security, shrink trade deficits, revitalize rural communities, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and curb the emissions that cause global warming. The study cites dynamic growth in renewable energy sectors that should be utilized to "turn abundant domestic sources -- including solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass and ocean energy -- into transportation fuels, electricity, and heat." This growth is "driving down costs and spurring rapid advances in technologies" and opening up the possibility of a decentralized and diversified energy market. The study features policy proposals that would help realize this possibility by "jumpstarting the new energy industries while minimizing the cost to American taxpayers" and reversing outdated policies which subsidize fossil fuels. With nine out of 10 voters supportive of plans to encourage alternative energy, the time for reform is now.

This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. It affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of left vs. right; it is a question of right vs. wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours.

What is motivating millions of Americans to think differently about solutions to the climate crisis is the growing realization that this challenge is bringing us unprecedented opportunity. I have spoken before about the way the Chinese express the concept of crisis. They use two symbols, the first of which - by itself - means danger. The second, in isolation, means opportunity. Put them together, and you get "crisis." Our single word conveys the danger but doesn't always communicate the presence of opportunity in every crisis. In this case, the opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common moral purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which we as human beings are naturally vulnerable. America's so-called "greatest generation" found such a purpose when they confronted the crisis of global fascism and won a war in Europe and in the Pacific simultaneously. In the process of achieving their historic victory, they found that they had gained new moral authority and a new capacity for vision. They created the Marshall Plan and lifted their recently defeated adversaries from their knees and assisted them to a future of dignity and self-determination. They created the United Nations and the other global institutions that made possible many decades of prosperity, progress and relative peace. In recent years we have squandered that moral authority and it is high time to renew it by taking on the highest challenge of our generation. In rising to meet this challenge, we too will find self-renewal and transcendence and a new capacity for vision to see other crises in our time that cry out for solutions: 20 million HIV/AIDs orphans in Africa alone, civil wars fought by children, genocides and famines, the rape and pillage of our oceans and forests, an extinction crisis that threatens the web of life, and tens of millions of our fellow humans dying every year from easily preventable diseases. And, by rising to meet the climate crisis, we will find the vision and moral authority to see them not as political problems but as moral imperatives.