REPOWER AMERICA.

Once seemingly reduced to a punchline to a joke, Al Gore has impressed me over the years since he lost the election he won by not becoming a bitter recluse, but continuing to fight for the environment, which he does seem to actually care about. Sure, he's a politician at heart and always will be, but I wish to hell he had been elected in 2000 rather than Bush, and at the time of that controversy, I didn't necessarily think that way. Anyways, whatever you think of Gore the politician or the man, consider this site, endorsed by him but created by a groundswell of concerned citizens:

http://www.repoweramerica.org/

And the details of this seeming far-fetched plan?
http://www.repoweramerica.org/plan/

It seems nice and tidy, though I've just begun to read the technical details. I'm a naturally suspicious (but hopeful) person, and being of a scientific bent I'm greatly interested to find out how exactly we can achieve completely clean power within the meager span of 10 years, as they claim. Surely if it was that easy it would be underway? Well, perhaps not, since the petroleum industry and its lobbyists tend to thwart anything like this at every step.

Nonetheless, even a partial accomplishment of a goal like this is far better than no progress toward energy independence and greatly reduced carbon emissions. Believe me, I was one of the last holdouts on the reality of global warming, knowing something about the sun's natural cycles, the role sunspots play in climate as evidenced in ice cores containing samples of ancient atmospheres, the earth's geological past which saw both extreme ice ages and world-wide tropical conditions alike. But even I at last had to admit that what we are currently experiencing in just a few decades, and now seemingly each year, cannot be explained by nature alone. It's at least contributed to if not wholly caused by human activity, I now believe.

Anyway, like I was saying, cleaning up our act and modernizing our energy procurement, management, and emissions cannot possibly be a bad thing. At least check it out, even if you're not American. No one's forcing you to do anything. It's just a choice we all have and if enough people get involved even a little bit, maybe we can counteract those gas company lobyists and compel our politicians to put plans like this into practice. Thanks.