WASHINGTON, Feb. 23, 2009
Gore, Clinton Headline Energy Conference
Former VP Warns That Lower Oil Prices Could Stall Efforts To Combat Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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Former Vice President Al Gore, when he was testifying last month on Capitol Hill before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on global climate change. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
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Interactive Eye On The Environment Find out how global warming, air pollution and alternative forms of energy impact our world.
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Gore, the Nobel prize winner who has focused on global warming since losing the presidency in 2000, told a clean energy conference that oil prices are like a roller coaster and will go up again. He said that the country must reduce carbon dioxide pollution from the burning of fossil fuels and “we've got to wean ourselves from this dangerous foreign oil.”
Gore was among 28 leaders from Congress, the Obama administration, labor and the energy industry participating in a panel discussion on the need to reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil, the need to develop renewable energy such as wind and solar, and to modernize the electric power grid.
“Let's don't undersell the efficiency investment angle,” said former President Bill Clinton, another participant in the conference. He too warned against being misled by falling oil prices, which have plummeted from a high of $145 a barrel last summer to the $35 range.
In the past, Clinton said, “oil dropped and everybody said give us our Hummer back.”
Gore and Clinton headlined the high-profile conference on the need to develop clean energy sources. Among other participants were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California as well as the administration's top energy officials.
Pelosi and many of the other panel members called for expansion of the nation's power transmission grid and development of a “smart grid” that allows increased efficiency and access to remote wind and solar energy resources.
“In the end, unless we are able to solve this juggernaut and deal with the transmission issue we're simply going to be standing in place,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki, one of the few Republicans at the conference, said the federal government must get more involved in establishing power transmission lines.
“If you try to run a wire through someone's community that becomes about as contentious as you get,” said Pataki, and if that power is going through a state “you don't have to take a poll, no one is going to be for it.”
© MMIX, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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- If Al Gore had been allowed to continue the recount in Florida that the republican controlled Supreme Court prevented the world today would have been different. We would have been a decade ahead in being free of Middle East oil dependence and great strides ahead in the cesspool our would is being left by the republican conservatives who are only Conservative toward any real responsibility they have in the damages they cause while filling their pockets. Conservatives are like a bunch of spoiled rotten children who create a tax credit to help them buy their gas guzzling, over priced, impractical Hummers and SUV's to feed their selfish, poor, starving, self images and provide the illusion that they are in a lifestyle above the middle class. It is sickening how arrogant and ignorant some of these posts are under this thread.... These are examples of republican radicals who have been brain washed into fools carrying the water for the very, very wealthy hoping to find a drop as their reward for doing such a good job with the dirty work... Wake up and smell the chaos. Wealthy republicans don't give a damn about the middle class or even lower. They are self indulging greedy slobs using our system to empower themselves into empires with golden castles where no one can trespass. The guards around these castles are just working middle class who have become willing to die in their job to protect their master's castle just like loyal dogs.
The brain washing by the republican machine will be exposed this term. The days of the tools like Tokyo Rush, OReilly, Fox News and Pat Robertson's religious right are numbered because finally the Truth Will Set Us FREE!!! - Reply to this comment
- ...he is pissed he lost his chance to be pres.
Posted by libsbloww at 06:39 PM : Feb 23, 2009
He didn't lose his chance at anything. If he had have CHOSE to run for President, he probably would have won. - Reply to this comment
- Gort tells us how to live, yet he lives in a huge estate, he is pissed he lost his chance to be pres. and now he cries to the heavens of his lies about his methane gas problem he has becasue he eats so much food to make him pass it! then he calls it global warming and green house gasses. What a liberal a$$hole!
- Reply to this comment
- Al "fat a$$" Gort, he and the loser Cliton are bad for this country, it's people, the working class, business growth, liars of course. They want to develope stupid things that don't work! They never have and never will until you kill this country's progress of hard work. That is what the liberals want to do...time for a revolution to take this country back, time to throw more than a couple of shoes at Gort, Clito, Reid, Piglosi, Patty Murray, Kerry, Kennedy, Frank, Dodd, and the rest of the liberal killer machine of this country.
- Reply to this comment
- Al Gore and Clinton and all the rest of the Global Warming collective can go straight to Hades. I don't trust them. They do not care about the American public. They are selling us out for their idiotic power struggle. We must dispense with these morons.
- Reply to this comment
- "I heard he made changes with the pool. For starters, didn't he make it a saltwater pool?"
Posted by erasmus606
That's probably a good idea. Isn't Algore predicting that Tennessee will be underwater soon? - Reply to this comment
- I could have sworn I hear he made changes with the pool. For starters, didn''t make it a saltwater pool?
Posted by erasmus606 at 03:47 PM : Feb 23, 2009
Maybe I should try that again.
I heard he made changes with the pool. For starters, didn't he make it a saltwater pool? - Reply to this comment
- He has an outdoor HEATED pool.
Posted by HawkSprings at 03:37 PM : Feb 23, 2009
I could have sworn I hear he made changes with the pool. For starters, didn't make it a saltwater pool? - Reply to this comment
- ubrew,
I'll say this again because apparently it's too difficult of a concept for a liberal to understand.
Algore doesn't really believe in his claptrap or he would live differently than he does.
He preaches the end of the world, but he lives with just one other human being in a mansion that uses more than 20 times energy than your home does.
He has an outdoor HEATED pool.
He flies around the world in a private jet that on one trip probalby spews more CO2 than your car does in 5 years.
He gets richer everytime he does a "presentation" and gets people to buy into his 'carbon credit' scam called GMI.
Algore is one of the fattest hypocrits on the planet.
But you just go ahead and keep buying his 'carbon credits.'
He's got a jet payment to make. - Reply to this comment
- HawkSprings said: "will Algore scrap plans to put the solar panels on his mansion? He never did that, did he? "
If you live in the Southern Half of Florida, your house is already worthless. You're going underwater.
And you think this is about celebrity? You are seriously scr*wed up. - Reply to this comment
- With oil prices so low, will Algore scrap plans to put the solar panels on his mansion?
He never did that, did he?
Posted by HawkSprings at 02:54 PM : Feb 23, 2009
YES, HE DID! - Reply to this comment
- With oil prices so low, will Algore scrap plans to put the solar panels on his mansion?
He never did that, did he? - Reply to this comment
- "Gore, Clinton Headline Energy Conference"
Two of my favorite people! :)
Posted by erasmus606
Oh erasmus, you make it too easy to pick on you. - Reply to this comment
- Why do people keep inviting Gore to energy conferences? The man's the biggest hypocrite alive.
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=764
My God, what a fraud. - Reply to this comment
- Well, your day is coming conservatives because after that last 8 years a dead dog could do a better job.
Posted by antoniof123 at 02:05 PM : Feb 23, 2009
Hahahaha! Yeah, I would say that about covers it.:) - Reply to this comment
- The biggest fear of the conservatives is now they know that if the Democrats are even a little more succussful than they were they will be toast.
Well, your day is coming conservatives because after that last 8 years a dead dog could do a better job. - Reply to this comment
- Pelosi and Reid drag the credibility down on any project they support. They bring to mind a popular retort from not that long ago; 'what's in it for me?'. Sums it up. For those two to get on board with anything there has to be something in it personally for them...parasites.
- Reply to this comment
- "Gore, Clinton Headline Energy Conference"
Two of my favorite people! :) - Reply to this comment
