A Political Prediction: Presidential Candidates Won't do What Gore Asks

Have the oil and coal companies ever been offered tax cuts, for investing and developing alternative power sources? Not only would they get the tax savings, but they would be the owners of the surviving technology and output. So, instead of "Big Oil" and "Big Coal", they could be "Big Solar" and "Big Wind".

Only when the voters get behind this will real change happen.

Ralph Nadar has good ideas but how can he implement his ideas when people won't vote for him?

Also, equus raised a good question.

"Nuclear costs 3 times as much as wind"

Nuclear would be cause 100% fewer instances of bird pate' than windmills. Plus comparisons between nuclear and (fill in the "green" power source of your choice) are usually flawed because they never seem to factor in acreage or infrastructure. With the type of solar cells available today we could produce all the electricity we needed with a solar "farm" 300 km by 300km. Now go find someone with a piece of land 90000 km2 available that's also flat, convenient to hooking into the grid, and w/housing for the 20000 or so workers required to build and maintain the system. Oh, and check the price of steel and concrete needed to build the thousands of towers needed to hold the solar arrays. Did I mention we can't physically produce that much solar cell paneling in less than 20-30 years? Or that electrical demand in the US is expected to increase 30%-50% over the same time period? And we're only talking about replacing all the nasty ol' fossil fuel, and nuclear power plants; we're not talking about replacing the energy we consume in our cars, too.

Green power is great. We need more of it. But it's not going to be enough, soon enough. Currently the world consumes a smidgen over 1 cubic mile of oil per year. By the year 2100 demand for oil will grow to about 2.5 cubic miles worth annually. That's the absolute minimum requirement unless you plan on telling the 3rd World to live in grass huts and drown half their babies at birth (I'm only exaggerating a little bit for dramatic effect). To meet that requirement we're going to have to develop every energy source possible - solar, wind, bio, "clean" fossil, and yes even nuclear, and at a pretty good clip.

"We have to store radioactive waste for 250,000 years!"

Not really. They manage it in Europe by reprocessing the fuel and the final "ash" that goes in the caves is only about 5 tons a year last I heard. We don't reprocess here but if we did Yucca would become a mine instead of a repository. Whatever you finally wind up with that can't be reused if you bury it deep enough you can't tell its emissions from the ambient background - Earth's mantle is "hot". We don't glow in the dark because the heavy transuranics tend to sink beneath the lighter elements at the top of the periodic table. In plainer English it's not the problem critics make it out to be.

Properly sited wind turbines kill less than one bird per turbine per year with today's technology. That's fewer than your cat. Nuclear plants take a minimum of eight years to come on line. At best solar and wind can only penetrate the grid by about 30 to 40%, realistically only 25% due to the vagaries of nature and our reluctance to accommodate it.
Clean coal is a farce - the technology and plants are at least thirty years off and still unproven.
What we need is to start massive conservation campaigns. Conserving is a win win, since wasted energy does nothing but force the utilities to build more coal plants.

All you people that want to conserve, recycle your car, tear down your house and live under the stars, recycle your computer.
This is the #1 nation in the world and why you looney marxist want to ruin it is beyond me.
We need to drill, drill, drill and go nuke. This whacked out belief in man made global warming is a joke. It has no basis in fact, it is a religion. With Algore who has made over 100 million dollars off the stupidity of the leftist American haters in the last few years is laughing all the way to the bank.
Have any you seen pictures of ANWAR? It is frozen desert. Have any of you seen a wind farm? Ugly and noisy and solar isnt up to par yet.
Russia and China are drilling in the gulf, so why arent we all dead yet?
If we had drilled by in the 70's like we should have we would be paying 2+ a gallon instead of the 4.5+ we are now.
You know what Im done with you ignorant marxist, why dont you just go live a 3rd world country and leave America alone. You have done enough damage but if you leave now we capitalists can still save it. May God have mercy on your souls-if you have one.