Green Options

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Former Vice-President Al Gore says we cannot wait until 2050 to curtail our carbon emissions.  In Washington this week Gore made his case for eliminating petroleum from the United States economy by the year 2018.  Is his goal too ambitious?

Editor’s Note: This is Anthony’s first post as a contributor to Gas 2.0. Anthony works on sugar-based biofuels at the Raines Lab of Petroleum Alternatives, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have a lot of admiration for Al Gore.  I was in the 7th grade when he lost his bid for the presidency, and even then I could feel that something awful was upon us.  Fast forward eight years and we find ourselves in a world where Al Gore is running a campaign to help mankind in a much more focused manner.  Instead of defecting to the private sector, Gore remains a public servant dedicated to the environment.  Recently, he called for the United States to lead the way to stop global warming, and now he is calling for the United States to be off of carbon based fuels by the year 2018.

Gore’s battle cry could not have come at a better time.

Can kids really influence their parents to reduce carbon emissions? Apparently so, says Cool the Earth, a new climate-change enrichment program, launched by a mom in Kentfield, California. The program has already saved more than 8 million pounds of carbon from going into the atmosphere and has influenced 6,000 households to take 10,000 positive actions to reduce carbon emissions. With additional funding in place and a web-based delivery system available this summer, this program—currently running in 25 Northern California schools–expects [...]

Hey, we should all laugh at ourselves once in a while, right? Thanks, as always, to Brad and Peter…

It has been one of the most polarizing movies of cinematic history, and it didn’t even feature Brad Pitt. Rather, Al Gore, for the majority of An Inconvenient Truth, stood in front of a crowd of people – or journaled from the road – and told people that global warming was bad, and that we had done it.

From that moment on, the global warming debate waged hotter and longer than ever before.

Some have said that science plays no part in what Gore decided to impart to us. Others contended that while he may have put an emotional spin on it, there was still plenty of validated science in there. Regardless of what you believe, you can’t deny that global warming is now on everyone’s lips thanks to what Gore did.

So it’s nice to see scientists come out, not in heated attack of the movie, but rather, in calm scientific debate; the way it should be.

Very funny video clip from Saturday Night Live showing Al Gore giving a Presidential address. One of the best lines is when he says that there is no need to worry about hurricanes and tornadoes because of the “anti-hurricane and tornado machine I was instrumental in helping to develop.”

I re-watch Al Gore’s acceptance speech again and again – and I always choke back tears. I suppose I choke them back because I’m an Englishman – with that supposed stiff upper lip.

Massive change is his message. Though of course individual action is beneficial, action on a larger scale is what’s needed.

Political will.

Praise then goes to the Irish government who have decided on a complete ban of incandescent light bulbs as of 2009.

This ties in so strongly with Mr Gore’s speech where he demanded – and eloquently too – that change needs to happen.

Now.

Not beleagueredly in a few years.

But now.

So is my government concurrent with regards to light bulbs?

No.

Environmental News: Al Gore last night urged a climate conference to be ambitious in its attempts to check global warming and to ignore US objections because President Bush would soon be out of office.

The stage was set with a single podium, and beside it were two flags. The first flag was colored red white and blue, no stars and stripes, but three bands of red white and blue. The second flag was blue, and in its center was a circle of yellow stars. The keynote speaker stepped up to the mike. He was there to present a revolution. "A revolution in our way of thinking and in

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In a fight where political gain is seen as the prime motivator, and any actual fact seems to be spun out to support such a theory, Al Gore has been the voice for real climate change. It is a tough fight, and he’s been at it for a while, too. Attacked from the right for political bias, attacked from the critics for supporting a supposedly unproved theory, Al Gore now has reason to smile.

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Oslo, October 12, 2007, could see the Nobel Peace Prize – sometimes noted as the highest accolade on Earth – awarded to campaigners against climate change. In line for this according to Nobel experts are Al Gore and Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

The winner for the Nobel Peace Prize carries away $1.5 million, but more than that, if a climate change advocate succeeds in winning, it could further shift the momentum towards actual climate

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When giving your kids, "the talk", it always helps to have a book as back-up. It justifies your broaching a sensitive, potentially uncomfortable topic like…global warming. And although conservation and environmentalism is a topic for all ages, those children in pre-adolescence are just about ready to hear about the big guns of climate change. Three recent children’s books broach the topic of climate change to your middle-grades children (ages 9-12); two

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