Al Gore on Energy & Oil 2000 Democratic Nominee for President; Former Vice President

Sub-sections under Energy & Oil:
• Global Warming
• Other issues under Energy & Oil

Sustainability revolution at speed of digital revolution

(VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: The Paris agreement handicaps the United States' economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense. They don't put America first. I do, and I always will.

(END VIDEO) Q: What's your response?

GORE: The fastest-growing sector of our economy is clean energy and part of the sustainability revolution. Solar jobs are now growing 17 times faster in the US than other jobs. The single fastest-growing job is wind turbine technician. We're seeing a sustainability revolution that is historic. It has the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution, but the speed of the digital revolution. And rather than trying to recreate the 19th century, we need leadership to gear America for the 21st century. President Trump's decision was unfortunate. It undermined our country's stature.

We're treating the sky as an open sewer

(BEGIN VIDEO) TRUMP: Al Gore wants to eliminate the combustion engine, essentially, and flies around the world on jets and pushes plans that would help create China, make it stronger.

(END VIDEO) Q: This is a criticism we hear from conservatives all the time when talking about people like you or Elon Musk or Leonardo DiCaprio, that you, yourself, have a large carbon footprint.

GORE: Well, I don't have a private jet. And what carbon emissions come from my trips are offset. I live a carbon-free lifestyle, to the maximum extent possible. But the point is, our whole country and our entire world has to change. Today, we'll put another 110 million tons of heat-trapping pollution up there. We're treating the sky as an open sewer. And now we see these climate-related extreme weather events virtually every day. Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.

Obama considered Gore as climate change czar

The Clinton-Gore relationship went sour during the Lewinsky scandal. He also believed that Hillary had snubbed Tipper as a friend. Gore stayed neutral in the 2008 primaries, in part because he depended on the largesse of Clinton Global Initiative donors for his own climate change activities. Gore was grateful to Clinton in August 2009, when Clinton traveled to North Korea to bring back two reporters who had been jailed while working for Gore's TV network.

Obama signed off on Gore's protege, Carol Browner, as climate change czarina. Browner came out of the old command-and-control world of top-down government regulations, but she became a convert to market-based solutions, including a cap-and-trade system.

2000: stabilize prices with release from Petroleum Reserve

Bush immediately whacked Gore's flip-flop on the oil reserve as "bad policy" that sought "shor -term political gain at the cost of long-term national security." The next day, Clinton released 30 million barrels of oil from the reserve and we stepped up the attack.

Responding to the media frenzy over his switch, Gore stumbled again by saying that "I've been a part of the discussions on the strategic reserve since the days when it was first established." The Strategic Reserve was established in 1975, two years before Gore entered Congress. He just couldn't stop himself from embellishing.

Science is settled on global warming

But even if you were to grant Al Gore and Barack Obama their premises on the causes and effects of climate change, there's even more reason to doubt the effectiveness of their proposed fixes--especially once you see how these policies have become special-interest porkfests.

We borrow from China to buy Gulf oil; both should change

Immediate freeze now; then reduce CO2 emissions 90% by 2050

One way to do it, Gore said, was to kill the payroll tax and impose a “carbon tax,” thus embedding the cost of pollution (we can say that now--thanks Supreme Court!) in the market. He wants greatly increased gas mileage on cars and a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants except those that can sequester their carbon. In order to get industry on board, he’s advocating a cap-and-trade system that would allow heavy greenhouse gassers like coal companies to buy “credits” from, say, solar producers, thus offsetting the carbon by increasing profits and investment in clean industries, producing a carbon neutral“ result.

Ocean warming causes stronger hurricanes, like Katrina

As the oceans get warmer, storms get stronger. In 2004, Florida was hit by 4 unusually powerful hurricanes. That same year, Japan set an all-time record for typhoons. The previous record was 7. In 2004, 10 typhoons hit Japan.

The emerging consensus links global warming to increasingly destructive power of hurricanes, increasing the strength of the average hurricane a full half-step on the well-known 5-step scale. As water temperatures go up, wind velocity goes up. One major study came out less than a month before Hurricane Katrina hit.

When Katrina first hit, it was only a category 1 storm. Then, it passed over the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico [and became category 5].

Global warming causes more floods & also more droughts

Recently, for example, there were huge floods in Sichuan and Shandong provinces. Paradoxically, however, global warming also causes not only more flooding, but also more drought. The nearby Anhui province was continuing to suffer a severe drought at the same time the neighboring areas were flooding.

One of the reasons for this paradox has to do with the fact that global warming not only increases precipitation worldwide but at the same time causes some of it to relocate.

A second reason for the paradoxical effect of global warming is that while it produces more evaporation from the oceans to fill the warmer atmosphere with increased moisture, it also sucks more moisture out of the soil. Partly as a consequence, desertification has been increasing in the world decade by decade.

Supported ethanol in 1970s & cellulosic ethanol now

Skeptics point to historical warming--but today is hotter

Nevertheless, the so-called global warming skeptics often say that global warming is really an illusion reflecting nature’s cyclical fluctuations. To support their view, they frequently refer to the Medieval Warm Period. But as [the historical] thermometer shows, the vaunted Medieval Warm Period was tiny compared to the enormous increases in temperature of the last half-century.

In any given year, it might seem as if the average global temperature is going down, but the overall trend is very clear. And in recent years, the rate of increase has been accelerating. In fact, if you look at the 21 hottest years measured, 20 of the last 21 occurred within the last 25 years. The hottest year on record during this entire period was 2005.

Arctic ice is melting & may disrupt global weather patterns

The melting of the ice cap represents bad news for creatures like polar bears. A new study shows that for the first time, polar bears have been drowning in significant numbers.

What does it mean to look at a vast expanse of water that used to be ice? We ought to care about this because it has serious planetary effects. An increase of 5 degrees actually means an increase of only 1 or 2 degrees at the Equator, but more than 12 degrees at the North Pole. And so all those wind and ocean patterns that formed during the last ice age, are now up in the air.

Our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this.

Current tech can reduce CO2 emissions to 1970 levels

• Reduction from more efficient use of electricity in heating and cooling systems, lighting, appliances and electronic equipment.
• Reduction from end-use efficiency, meaning we design buildings and businesses to use far less energy.
• Reduction from increased vehicle efficiency by manufacturing cars that run on less gas and putting more hybrid and fuel-cell cars on the roads.
• Reduction from making other changes in transport efficiency, such as designing better mass transit systems.
• Reduction from increased reliance on renewable energy technologies that already exist.
• Reduction from the capture and storage of excess carbon from power plants and industrial activities.

Dealing with global warming inconvenient for rich & powerful

The truth about global warming is especially inconvenient and unwelcome to some powerful people and companies making enormous sums of money from activities they know full well will have to change in order to ensure the planet’s livability.

These people--especially those at a few multinational companies with the most at stake--have been spending many millions of dollars every year in figuring out ways of sowing public confusion about global warming.

1993: Hard line on deficit reduction, paid for by BTU tax

For several house more, we again debated how much deficit reduction we had to try for, beginning five years out and working back to the present. Gore took a hard line, saying if we went for the biggest possible reduction, we'd get credit for courage and create a new reality, making it possible to do previously unthinkable things, like requiring Social Security beneficiaries above a certain income level to pay income tax on their benefits.

No drilling in ANWR & off coasts; protect pristine areas

Gore vowed to clean up air pollution from the dirtiest power plants, called for protecting pristine roadless areas in our National Forests and restated his opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. [His program:]
• Enforce realistic, achievable air quality standards.
• Oppose any Congressional actions designed to roll back protections for clean air and clean water.
• Make it a priority to protect the country’s last remaining wild places.
• Take decisive steps - not only in the US but also in developed and developing nations - to reverse the rise in global warming in a way that creates jobs.
• Encourage smarter growth and more livable neighborhoods with measures enabling communities to protect open space and fight traffic congestion.
• Oppose all new oil and gas drilling off the coasts of California and Florida - and continue the moratorium on new offshore drilling leases nationwide.

Tax credits & business incentives for energy efficiency

Gas tax should be higher than 4.3 cents per gallon, & wider

Gore disagreed. They had to keep their flexibility, the vice president said. They might want to go higher on the gasoline tax. The energy tax was a point of principle for the administration, he said, and they should let the process unfold in Congress. Clinton could be attacked on character if he dropped it, Gore said.

Finally, on July 29, the House and Senate negotiators agreed on the modest 4.3-cent-a-gallon gas tax. [Their Congressional adviser called it] "pathetic", but it was all they could get.

In some respects, Gore had lost the most. The ambitious, sweeping BTU tax, initially designed to shift fuel use from polluting coal and oil to natural gas, and improve the environment, had been whittled down to a piddling 4.3-cent gas tax.

Broad-based energy tax to help the environment

Gore told the group he favored a broad-based energy tax--something not on Bentsen's list--such as a tax levied on the use of British thermal units, or BTUs, a basic measure of energy. A BTU tax would be environmentally sound, he said, because coal, the dirtiest fuel, would be hit the hardest, though oil and natural gas would also be taxed. This emphasis would create political problems in coal states. But such a tax would put the US on the side of the environmental angels, Gore felt, because the Europeans and Japanese had said they would enact their own broad-based energy taxes if the US did.

Renewable energy instead of nuclear power

A: I strongly believe we need to take measures to increase our nation’s energy security and decrease our dependence on unreliable foreign sources of oil. However, I do not support an increased reliance on nuclear power. In order to achieve sound economic and environmental goals, I believe that we must increase renewable energy sources and environmentally sound domestic energy production and develop new energy-saving technologies, while reducing our reliance on imported energy. Through the power of free markets and American ingenuity, my plan will dramatically reduce pollution and enhance our energy security - and create more jobs in the process.

Drilling ANWR too high a price for a few months of oil

BUSH: We need an active exploration program in America. The only way to become less dependent on foreign sources of crude oil is to explore at home. And you bet I want to open up a small part of Alaska because when that field is online, it will produce a million barrels a day. Today we import a million barrels from Saddam Hussein. I would rather that a million come from our own hemisphere, our own country, as opposed from Saddam Hussein.

Tax incentives for development of renewable energy

GORE [to Bush]: We have to free ourselves from big oil, from OPEC. We have to give new incentives for the development of resources, like deep gas in the western Gulf, but also renewable sources of energy and domestic sources that are cleaner and better. I’m proposing a plan that will give tax incentives for the rapid development of new kinds of cars, trucks, buses, factories, boilers, and furnaces that don’t have as much pollution.

BUSH: I want to build pipelines to move natural gas. I want to develop coal resources. It’s an issue I know a lot about. I was a small oil person for a while. This is an administration that’s had no plan. And now, the results of having no plan have caught up with America. We’ve got abundant supplies of energy here, and we better start exploring it. There’s an interesting issue up in the Northwest, as well. And that is whether or not we remove dams that propose hydroelectric energy. I’m against removing dams in the Northwest.

Release oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve

We Indeed, global warming is expected to push temperatures up much more rapidly in the polar regions than in the rest of the world. As the polar air warms, the ice here will thin; and since the polar cap plays such a crucial role in the world’s weather system, the consequences of a thinning cap would be disastrous.

$150B Energy Security and Environment Trust Fund

A: Encouraging consumers and producers to use cleaner energy is critical to ensuring we have clean air and fighting the threat of global warming. That is why I have proposed a bold, unprecedented Energy Security and Environment Trust Fund - a $150 billion fund to help develop clean new technologies. This fund will provide tax credits and financial incentives to power producers who reduce pollutant emissions; consumers who purchase energy-efficient vehicles, homes and home appliances; and communities that build energy-saving forms of public transportation. These measures will stimulate economic growth, create new jobs, reduce our nation’s dependence on unreliable foreign sources of oil and clean up the nation’s air and water.

Tax breaks for fuel efficiency will fuel prosperity

New energy technology will lead to more prosperity

Energy policy: focus on future tech & incentives