"We Need To Go Far and We Need To Go Quickly"

Al Gore's speech that we watched in class from TED.com was more than inspirational. He is so knowledgeable and he has been in positions of power in our government. Many people are likely to listen to him just out of respect. It seems like he is the only person in our governmental history that I have heard preach on matters of Global Warming. I have heard Obama preach clean coal technologies in his election, but there is no such thing. Watching Al Gore's video in class inspired me to see if there were any other videos of him on TED.com. I found another similar video in which he explains that there is no such thing as clean coal. Coal and other fossil fuel burning in our country is the single highest producer of CO2 emissions along with deforestation. We don't think about it every day, but driving our car every day is equivelent to tearing down trees in the rain forest. We are killing our planet with every tank of gas. I'm not saying that we must stop driving cars but we do need to look to electric cars. In a previous blog I've even talked about electric cars that are going to be made by Tesla Motors for the year 2011. These cars run fully on battery power and can go up to 300 miles on a charge. We need to begin to change our use of these dirty polluting fossil fuels to a cleaner way.

Al Gore proclaims that we must be that hero generation that rise up and meet this crisis. Why can't we? We have the capabilities. We can implement solar and wind and geothermal and every clean renewable source of energy out there. We have the tools to do it. We just need elected government officials to come through for us. If only Al Gore could have won that questionable presidential race in 2000, our country would be in such a different position. As he states, "If we had just one week's worth of what we spend on the Iraq War we would be well on our way to solving this problem." He's right. We need government funding to put in place new powerplants that implement solar and wind technologies. We can change our lifestyles to curb how much energy we use, but we can't really control where it comes from like our government can. If we could replace fossil-fueled power plants we could be well on our way to a "better and brighter future." We need more people in government to be educated on this the way Al Gore is. He knows what is important and that is the future of our human race, which isn't looking pretty if we don't change our ways.

Sources: http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_s_new_thinking_on_the_climate_crisis.html and http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/al_gore_warns_on_latest_climate_trends.html