While he didn’t sing or quote Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind,” Former Vice President Al Gore was on today’s Meet The Press and he answered questions about his goal for our country to switch all of its electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within ten years.  It is an energy plan that addresses the root problems, similar in that regard to Jon Powers’ (Democratic candidate for Congress in NY-26) Energy Plan.  Just watching Gore speak made me long for a president who is an intellectual, who thinks and can express ideas articulately.  Aren’t we all starving for this?

Here, excerpts from Gore’s interview:

Our current course is completely unsustainable. We are being told by scientists around the world, particularly the international group that is charged with studying this and reporting to world leaders, that we may have less than 10 years in order to make dramatic changes lest we lose the chance to, to avoid catastrophic results from the climate crisis. We’re building up CO2 so rapidly that we’re seeing the consequences scientists have long predicted. And the only way to take responsible action is to get at the heart of the problem, which is the burning of fossil fuels. And the quickest and easiest way to back out the coal, which is the worst of the problem, and oil, is to look at electricity generation.

(snip)

there have been two important changes. Number one, the cost of the new solar electricity options, wind power and geothermal power, not to mention efficiency gains, have come down and they’re coming down as the demand increases the attention paid to innovation. The other change is that oil prices and coal prices have been skyrocketing and because China and other emerging economies are demanding so much of it, and new discoveries of oil have fallen off dramatically, no matter the debate over drilling, the new discoveries have been declining and the new demand has been completely swamping it, and over the long term, those prices, everyone agrees, are going to continue to go up. So now it is competitive to switch over.

(snip)

MR. BROKAW: What would electricity cost in terms of the transition while it’s under way? Most estimates are that it would cost a lot more money, and that would have a devastating effect on Main Street and especially on rural America.

VICE PRES. GORE: Well, I, I don’t agree with that, and I think that the devastating effect on Main Street and the rest of the country is coming from the present rising costs for electricity. And the reason why is China and the other emerging economies again are bidding up the price of every lump of coal and every drop of oil, and the new discoveries have been declining, so the estimates are now that these price increases are likely to continue until we stop just taking baby steps and offering gimmicks and, instead, have a strategic initiative.

Now, Tom, among other things, you are the biographer of the, of the greatest generation, and, at the beginning of that period when they rose to that challenge, there were a lot of people who said that couldn’t be done. We couldn’t make these hundreds of thousands of airplanes, we couldn’t mobilize to win that struggle. And yet we did. The only limiting factor here is political will.

Bush may have been the guy you’d be most comfortable having a beer with but after eight years of his egregious mismanagement, we all need that beer to chase the economic blues away.  He’s not going to make me lonesome when he goes.