Al Gore on Meet the Press

Al Gore on Meet the Press with host Tom Brokaw:

MR. BROKAW: This is how The Boston Globe described your audacious plan to change the way that we get electricity in this country: "Gore challenged Americans to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar, and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels."

The reaction was pretty quick and not all of it was favorable, even from those who are aligned with you in thinking that we have to do something about climate change. [...] What you have outlined, in fact, is a goal that may not be achievable.

VICE PRES. GORE: I think it is achievable, and I think it's important that we achieve it, Tom. There were also many other reactions from people who said this is the right goal because we need to reset the bar and change the debate. Our current course is completely unsustainable. We are being told by scientists around the world, particularly the international group that is charged with studying this and reporting to world leaders, that we may have less than 10 years in order to make dramatic changes lest we lose the chance to, to avoid catastrophic results from the climate crisis. We're building up CO₂ so rapidly that we're seeing the consequences scientists have long predicted. And the only way to take responsible action is to get at the heart of the problem, which is the burning of fossil fuels. And the quickest and easiest way to back out the coal, which is the worst of the problem, and oil, is to look at electricity generation. And there, there have been two important changes.

Number one, the cost of the new solar electricity options, wind power and geothermal power, not to mention efficiency gains, have come down and they're coming down as the demand increases the attention paid to innovation. The other change is that oil prices and coal prices have been skyrocketing and because China and other emerging economies are demanding so much of it, and new discoveries of oil have fallen off dramatically, no matter the debate over drilling, the new discoveries have been declining and the new demand has been completely swamping it, and over the long term, those prices, everyone agrees, are going to continue to go up. So now it is competitive to switch over.

At the same time we're seeing our national security experts saying we're highly vulnerable with 70 percent of our oil coming from foreign countries, the largest reserves being in the most unstable region of the world, the Persian Gulf; and our economy is being really hurt badly by rising gasoline prices, rising coal prices. So we need to make a big strategic shift to a new energy infrastructure that relies on renewables.