On July 17, Former Vice-President Al Gore delivered a speech in Washington, DC, calling for the U.S. to switch from carbon-based to carbon-free electricity within the next 10 years. Such action would benefit the U.S. in two ways, he stated. First, it would contribute to solving the climate crisis. Second, it would make the U.S. less reliant on oil, which has seen rapid price increases, and thus reinvigorate the U.S. economy. By the U.S. becoming less oil-dependent, Gore maintained it would also strengthen U.S. national security, as it will no longer rely as heavily on unstable and potentially unfriendly countries to supply oil. Gore argued that solar, wind, geothermal, and clean coal energy would serve as sufficient substitutes for carbon-based electricity.
The Gore-led Alliance for Climate Protection estimates the total 30-year cost of this plan will be $1.5 - $3 trillion, a sum that will be covered by both the public and private sectors. Gore maintains that while this is a substantial investment, the alternative is to invest more in fossil fuels, which will be substantially higher overall when one considers the cost of matching increasing demand from countries such as China and India. In his speech, Gore suggested that the best way to accomplish this goal would be to “tax what we burn, not what we earn,” meaning that government should tax carbon dioxide emissions. Gore also assumed that the U.S. would maintain current nuclear power levels.
Gore’s carbon-free goal faces difficulties. For instance, the U.S. relies upon coal for more than half of its kilowatt hours, which is responsible for nearly a third of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, switching away from coal is not an easy task. Also, as the Edison Electric Institute stated in response to the speech, Gore’s plan relies too heavily on renewable energy sources and not enough on nuclear energy, natural gas, and clean coal. Moreover, as argued by Robbie Diamond of Securing America’s Future Energy, a bipartisan think tank aiming to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil, the U.S. has invested trillions of dollars into infrastructure supportive of the status quo, thus making it nearly impossible to achieve Gore’s goal within 10 years.