1) Key Players:
Countries, Governments, Oil Companies, Populations, Fossil Fuels, Lobbies, and Environmentalists

2) Big Picture:
Populations use fossil fuels because they're the easiest resource to use. Oil companies get revenue and, not only do they not have an incentive to research alternative fuels, they have an incentive to actually try and halt research. Lobbies get legislation to protect the Oil Companies. They influence the government and halt the flow of funding to alternative fuel research. Governments also feel that if they switch to alternative fuels, they'll be giving up resources to other governments in other countries. They feel that paying for research is too expensive and other countries will just keep taking more of the fossil fuels.

3) Below the Surface:
The reason Governments and Oil Conglomerates are unwilling to change is not due to lack of public support for these changes. The call for change is apparent. The problem is incentives. Until governments and, more importantly, Oil Companies that sign the checks for lobbyists understand that switching to alternative fuels can actually bring them revenue and increase their market share, these changes won't happen.

I hate to keep bringing up Neuro-economics, but it's important for this problem as well. When we evolved it was in the zero-sum world of yesterday when resources were scarce. If I benefit and increase my chances of passing on genes, you lose and decrease your chances, and so-on. Every one of us, including members of Government and Oil Companies, is hard-wired to think that if we spend the time and resources to research things like alternative fuels, we'll be the ones taking the hit and other countries will simply continue to use and profit off of fossil fuels.

4) The Solution:
Environmentalists need to focus on showing Oil Companies and Governments that alternative fuel research is not a zero-sum game and that both can profit dramatically from making these environmentally friendly changes. That's why groups need to pool resources and reach out to experts from a number of fields (economics, business, marketing, advertising, engineers, developers, etc.) who can provide data to these companies. For example: if an Oil Company like BP profited from alternative fuel research dramatically, other oil companies would join. Social media and online collaboration tools are built for this kind of work and they're perfect for this issue.

Forget apocalyptic climate forecasts: focus on the incentives and you'll get much further. It's not losing sight of your goals, it's communicating more effectively in a way that the audience (Oil Execs) will understand.

Chevron chief, environmental lawyer discuss energy policy:

(CNN) -- With oil prices hitting a record high on Monday, the chairman and CEO of Chevron, David O'Reilly, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the National Resource Defense Counsel, appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" to discuss America's energy future.

Kennedy: The fastest way for us to solve our energy problems in this country is immediate conservation. If we improve fuel economy standards in our automobiles by one mile per gallon, we generate twice the oil that's in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If we raise fuel economy standards by 7.6 miles per gallon, we can yield more oil than we are currently importing from the Persian Gulf.

O'Reilly: I agree, that first of all efficiency is the very first thing we ought to be working on. And there are new [fuel efficiency] standards in place that will obligate the automobile manufacturers to be more efficient and, in fact, you can see a shift already toward more efficient cars.

Kennedy: I'm involved with a company called Better Place, which made a proposal a couple years ago to Israel to get Israel completely off of gasoline cars within three years. And Israel is going to do that. Within three years, they will be off of gasoline automobiles.

We can do that in this country, too, using shifting to electricity and electricity gives us a lot more versatility, it allows us to harness wind. We have -- the Midwest this is the Saudi Arabia of wind. We have enough harnessable wind energy in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas combined to supply all the electrical needs of our country, even if every American were driving an electric car.

We have the Scientific American just published a report that shows in 19 percent of the most barren desert lands in the desert Southwest, we have enough solar energy to provide all the electrical needs of our country. ...

What we need now is a national policy that says, OK, let's go out and get those electrons and get them into the marketplace.

O'Reilly: I encourage all these alternatives. I think there's room for all of them.

I'm very concerned because the reality is today that these alternatives are a very small percentage. And just like it takes a long time to drill an offshore well, it takes a long time to find and develop and put in the sort of equipment that Mr. Kennedy is talking about.

What bothers me about this is everyone portrays it as an either/or debate. It's not and either/or debate. ... We need alternative and we need efficiency and we need conventional oil and gas.
Kennedy: I really think that they talk windfall profit tax [on oil companies], whether it's good thing or it's a bad thing, it's not a long-term energy policy. What we need is really a long-term -- and drilling off the coast is not a long-term energy policy. What we need is an energy policy.

Today, Larry, we are borrowing a billion dollars a day mainly from countries that don't like us to import oil from countries that don't like us.

When I was a little boy, our country owned half the wealth on the face of the Earth. We are now transferring that wealth at a historic rate to other countries, again, mainly nations that don't like us.

We have solutions. Unfortunately, we have a Congress that's really brain dead. I'll tell you something that the Congress did today. First of all, they killed the investment tax credits for solar and wind which are absolutely vital to the growth of this burgeoning industry.

Second of all, today, Congress and the White House declared a moratorium, a two-year moratorium on any solar plants being built on federal lands while they study supposedly the environmental impact.

O'Reilly: In the first quarter, we made $5 billion, which is 7 percent of sales and exactly the median for all of the industry. ... The percentage has been about the same. You've got to keep in mind that as the revenues are going up, the costs are also going up. So it's not as if this is all going to the bottom line.

U.S., China lead way in tapping wind power:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- From Dallas, Texas to Dabancheng, China, energy companies are staking fortunes on harnessing wind power.

Several Texan transmission companies announced Monday they were forming a consortium to invest in the $5 billion cost of building new power lines to take advantage of the state's vast wind power.

The consortium, comprised of existing transmission operators, includes Dallas-based Oncor, the state's largest power delivery company, Electric Transmission Texas (ETT) and units of American Electric Power Co. among others.

Those new lines, dubbed by Oncor as a "renewable energy superhighway," will accommodate about 18,500 megawatts of wind generation by 2012-- enough energy to power 4 million homes.

Texas currently leads the nation in wind capacity at about 5,500 MW.

The companies are hoping to take advantage of a landmark ruling on Friday that gave Texas preliminary approval for a $4.9 billion plan to build transmission lines to carry wind power from West Texas to urban areas.

It is said to be the largest investment in clean, renewable energy in U.S. history. Texas citizens will have to assist with the plan's construction; paying an extra $3 to $4 per month on their bills for the next few years.

However, they stand to recoup these costs in what they will save in energy bills later.

Not surprisingly, energy companies are eager to jump on the bandwagon to build a large part of the superhighway.

Oncor Senior Vice President of Transmission Charles Jenkins said in a news release: "At Oncor we want to be an important part of the solution. Texas is already a leader in wind energy and this is the next step in maintaining that leadership position.

The wind energy industry has benefited from the support of billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, who is planning to build the world's largest wind farm on about 200,000 acres in the Texas Panhandle.

When completed, his 2,700 turbines will be capable of producing enough electricity to power 1.3 million homes.

Pickens spoke to CNN about his plans to increase reliance on natural resources like wind and solar.

He said: "What I want to do is to fold in the great resource we have in the central part of this country, which is wind. And then you have resource from Texas west to California.

"You've got solar. Those two resources have to be developed. So when you develop the wind, you can then remove natural gas from power generation and put it into a transportation fuel market.

"Wind power is ... clean, it's renewable. It's everything you want. And it's a stable supply of energy. It's unbelievable that we have not done more with wind."

Meanwhile, China could well be on its way to blowing the U.S. out of the water when it comes to harnessing wind energy.

This is a rare energy success story for a country whose carbon emissions were recorded as the highest in the world last year, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

But the Chinese energy revolution has been quietly gaining strength, observers say.

Like their American counterparts, Chinese tycoons are increasingly directing their investment into renewable power.

Zhu Yuguo, ranks at 102 on the Forbes China Rich List, with a personal fortune of 5.71 billion Yuan and has invested heavily in the wind power industry.

Steve Sawyer of the Global Wind Energy Council said: "China's wind energy market is unrecognizable from two years ago."

"It is huge, huge, huge. But it is not realized yet in the outside world," Sawyer said in an interview with London's Guardian newspaper.

China's wind generation has increased by more than 100 percent per year since 2005 and 20 per cent of the power supply to the venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will come from wind generators, according to the official state agency, Xinhua.

It was initially hoped the country would generate 5 gigawatts of wind by 2010, but that goal was met three years early in 2007. The 2010 goal has now been revised to 10 gigawatts but experts say this could well hit 20 gigawatts.

The Guanting Wind Farm in Beijing has installed capacity of 64.5 megawatts and has supplied 35 million kilowatts of electricity to Beijing so far.

The wind farm is estimated to supply 100 million KWH per year to Beijing, or 300,000 KWH per day, enough to satisfy the consumption of 100,000 households.

However, China still relies heavily on using coal, which supplies 70 per cent of China's energy needs.

But Junfeng Li of the China Renewable Energy Industries Association has a more optimistic outlook.

In a paper last month, he wrote: "China is witnessing the start of a golden age of wind power development and the magnitude of the growth has caught policymakers off guard.

"It is widely believed that wind power will be able to compete with coal generation by as early as 2015."

Warehouse getting 33,000 solar panels
Calif. utility giant hopes to expand to 3.5 million panels on 150 rooftops

The first of 3.5 million solar panels planned for 150 business rooftops were installed Wednesday, utility giant Southern California Edison announced, calling it the start of what it intends to be the world's largest solar panel installation, covering two square miles.

SCE is installing 33,000 panels on top of a 600,000-square-foot warehouse in Fontana, Calif., that is being leased from ProLogis, a company that owns and manages distribution centers.

"When completed, this first installation will be capable of generating 2 million watts of power, enough electricity to supply approximately 1,300 average Southern California households at a point in time," SCE said in a statement. "This new, clean power supply will be fed directly into the nearest neighborhood distribution circuit, strengthening grid reliability in the nation's fastest growing urban area, the Inland Empire region of Riverside and San Bernardino counties."

"The solar modules will be connected directly to the nearest neighborhood circuit, eliminating the costly, time-consuming step of building new transmission lines to bring power to customers," SCE added in elaborating on the benefits of solar. "The output of solar panels closely matches peak customer demand -- lower in the morning and evening, higher in the afternoon."

If regulators approve its plans, SCE intends to install 3.5 million solar panels, or 250 megawatts of solar generating capacity, over five years. That's enough to serve 162,000 homes. SCE said other building sites and suppliers had yet to be decided.

First Solar, a company that developed proprietary thin-film photovoltaic technology, is installing the Fontana panels.

"First Solar's successful bid validated our cost forecast to regulators -- SCE's solar energy project will significantly reduce the cost of installed photovoltaic generation in California," said SCE President John Fielder.

SCE said it had told regulators that the expected capacity cost per installed watt would be about $3.50, "half the average current capacity cost of other photovoltaic installations."

Per kilowatt-hour costs are expected to be around 20 cents, SCE added.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has championed solar power in the state with a "Million Solar Roofs" program that provides financial incentives. Solar power is also seen as helping California with its goal of curbing emissions of greenhouse gases tied to warming, and generating 20 percent of the state's electricity from renewable energy.

Texas gives green light to lots more wind power:
Already U.S. leader, state moves ahead on $5 billion transmission project



AUSTIN, Texas - Texas officials gave the go-ahead Thursday to the nation's largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas.

Texas is already the national leader in wind power, and wind supporters say Thursday's move by the Public Utility Commission will make the Lone Star State a leader in moving energy to the urban areas that need electricity.

"We will add more wind than the 14 states following Texas combined," said PUC Commissioner Paul Hudson. "I think that's a very extraordinary achievement. Some think we haven't gone far enough, some think we've pushed too far."

Expected to be finalized later this month, the approval represents a middle ground between five transmission scenarios ranging from $3 billion to $6.4 billion. The PUC had been asked by the Texas legislature to select the best transmission plan.

"It is expected that the new lines will be in service within four to five years," The PUC said in a statement.

Environmentalist and consumer groups called the move a critical expansion of the "renewable energy superhighway," predicting it will spur wind energy projects, create jobs, reduce energy costs and reduce pollution.

$4 more a month on bills
Texas electric customers will bear the cost over the next several years, paying about $4 more per month on their electric bills.

Tom Smith, director of the Texas office of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called that a small price to pay for clean energy.

State officials note those increases could be several years away, and the payments would be no different than the current system of paying for new transmission lines from power plants.

Wind power benefits from a 2-cents-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit. The credit is set to expire in December, and wind backers have urged Congress to enact a long-term extension.

The 2-1 vote by the PUC didn't commit to as large a project as some environmental groups and state lawmakers had wanted. The plan would transmit a little more than half the energy some advocated.

Texas already generates about 5,000 megawatts of wind power, more than any other state. The new plan would add transmission lines to boost capacity to about 18,000 megawatts.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas says one megawatt of power provides enough electricity for 500 to 700 average homes under normal conditions in Texas, or about 200 homes during hot weather.

Visionary, or socialism?
"The capacity for wind generation in west and north Texas is so great that we could position ourselves in Texas to be the world leader in wind and renewable energy in the next 100 years, just as we were the world leader in oil and gas for the past 100 years," Democratic state Rep. Mark Strama said earlier this week.

Opponents include the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates for limited government.

"The costs of building those new transmission lines should be borne by the companies who develop the wind and solar farms, as well as the consumers who purchase that energy," foundation analyst Drew Thornley was quoted in the Houston Chronicle as saying. "They should not be socialized across every ratepayer."

PUC Commissioner Julie Parsley said she was worried about relying too heavily on wind since it doesn't blow all the time, potentially putting stress on the grid.

"I worry about the reliability of the system," Parsley was quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying.

Oilman an early backer
One of wind's most surprising backers is legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens.

Pickens' company, Mesa Power, is purchasing hundreds of wind turbines to eventually cover 400,000 acres near Pampa, Texas, and generate enough power for more than 1.3 million homes.

"We are making Pampa the wind capital of the world," Pickens said last May.

Pickens said it would be the world's largest wind farm at a cost that could grow to $12 billion before its scheduled completion in 2014.

"It's clear that landowners and local officials understand the economic benefits that this renewable energy can bring not only to landowners who are involved with the project, but also in revitalizing an area that has struggled in recent years," he said.

Al Gore: A Generational Challenge to Repower America
Ladies and gentlemen:
There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more - if more should be required - the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse - much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.

Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an "energy tsunami" that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.

Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that's been worrying me.

I'm convinced that one reason we've seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately - without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective - they almost always make the other crises even worse.

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.
The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.

But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation's problems, we need a new start.

That's why I'm proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It's not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America.

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans - in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here's what's changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power - coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal - have radically changed the economics of energy.

When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy.

And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram.

You know, the same thing happened with computer chips - also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months - year after year, and that's what's happened for 40 years in a row.

To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I've seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.

When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

Of course there are those who will tell us this can't be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo - the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. 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."

To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world's scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don't act in 10 years. The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up. When the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down.

To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people's appetite for change.


I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.

What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it's meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.


When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.

To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity. Our national electric grid is critical infrastructure, as vital to the health and security of our economy as our highways and telecommunication networks. Today, our grids are antiquated, fragile, and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost US businesses more than $120 billion dollars a year. It has to be upgraded anyway.

We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid.

At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That's the best investment we can make.

America's transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them.

Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.

In order to foster international cooperation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on CO2 emissions and a global partnership that recognizes the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world's agenda for solving the climate crisis.

Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they're going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it. If we keep going back to the same policies that have never ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again. But the Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people.

If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term.

However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.

Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we've simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests. And I've got to admit, that sure seems to be the way things have been going. But I've begun to hear different voices in this country from people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different and bold approach.

We are on the eve of a presidential election. We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president's term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because moving first is in our own national interest.


So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge - for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.

This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org.We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy's challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.

I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket's engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.