Gore: Is his carbon-free vision a pipe dream?

When it comes to the environment, said John Broder in The New York Times, Al Gore is a true provocateur. But his proposal last week that the U.S. abandon all carbon-based electricity in just 10 years may be his “most audacious” pronouncement yet. Before more than 1,000 cheering admirers in Washington, D.C., Gore urged that the U.S. completely scuttle the “old-fashioned, coal-fired power plants” that help light up our homes and cities and makes our gadgets run. He laid out a vision of a nation electrified mostly by such renewable means as windmills, solar panels, and geothermal sources. With less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity now generated this way, the plan seems out of reach. But Gore reminded Americans that we had met President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon in less than a decade. We need great dreams again, Gore said, warning that continuing to rely on greenhouse-gas-producing fossil fuels would lead to catastrophic climate change. “The future of human civilization is at stake,” he said.

And now, a reality check, said Marlo Lewis in National Review Online. It would take about $3 trillion to realize Gore’s messianic energy project. That price tag would “make even the Pharaohs blush.” Then again, said Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal, Gore never was one for inconvenient facts. He’s forgotten that when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, the power they produce ceases as well. Wind and solar will always have to be backed up by oil, coal, and nuclear. Since Gore routinely ignores both science and sense, why does anyone take him seriously?

Maybe, said E.J. Dionne Jr. in The Washington Post, it’s because Americans would like their leaders to finally do something about the nation’s energy crisis. For nearly eight years, Bush, Cheney & Co. have thrown billions in subsidies to the oil industry, and proposed drilling more wells. All that’s produced is $4.25 gas. “Voters say they hate gimmicks and insist they want bold solutions. Well, Gore is testing that proposition.”

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This hypocrite is always happy to adopt bold solutions for other people’s energy use, said Lorne Gunter in the Toronto National Post. Meanwhile, Gore lives in a 10,000-square-foot Tennessee mansion that “produces a carbon footprint 20 times that of the average American home.” He and his retinue arrived for his speech “in two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-size SUV.” What a phony.

As usual, Gore’s critics would rather mock the messenger than deal with the message, said Bob Herbert in The New York Times. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand, the cynics insist that global warming isn’t real, and if it is, there’s nothing we can do about it. “When exactly was it that the U.S. became a can’t-do society?” Time was when we would rise to any challenge put before us, be it defeating Nazi Germany, putting men on the moon, or confronting our history of racism through the civil-rights movement. “Now we can’t even lift New Orleans off its knees.” Gore deserves our thanks for giving this country an energy initiative worthy of the world’s most ambitious—and idealistic—nation. “It doesn’t matter if his proposal is less than perfect, or can’t be realized within 10 years, or even if it is found to be deeply flawed. The goal is the thing.”