Evo Morales: A letter to the indigenous peoples of the world

Evo Morales: A letter to the indigenous peoples of the world

November 16, 2010
While we assert that capitalism is the cause of global warming and the destruction of forests, rainforests and Mother Earth, they seek to expand capitalism to the commoditization of nature with the word “green economy”
Indigenous brothers of the world:
I am deeply concerned because some pretend to use leaders and indigenous groups to promote the commoditization of nature and in particular of forest through the establishment of the REDD mechanism (Reduction Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and its versions REDD+ and REED++.
Every day an extension of forests and rainforest equivalent to 36,000 football fields disappears in the world. Each year 13 million hectares of forest and rain forest are lost. At this rate, the forests will disappear by the end of the century.
The forests and rainforest are the largest source of biodiversity. If deforestation continues, thousands of species, animals and plants will be lost forever. More than three quarters of accessible fresh water zones come from uptake zones in forests, hence the worsening of water quality when the forest condition deteriorates. Forests provide protection from flooding, erosion and natural disasters. They provide non-timber goods as well as timber goods. Forests are a source of natural medicines and healing elements not yet discovered. Forests and the rainforest are the lungs of the atmosphere. 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gases occurring in the world are caused by deforestation.
It is essential to stop the destruction of our Mother Earth.
Currently, during climate change negotiations everyone recognizes that it is essential to avoid the deforestation and degradation of the forest. However, to achieve this, some propose to commoditize forests on the false argument that only what has a price and owner is worth taking care of.
Their proposal is to consider only one of the functions of forests, which is its ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and issue “certificates”, “credits” or “Carbon rights” to be commercialized in a carbon market.This way, companies of the North have the choice of reducing their emissions or buy “REDD certificates” in the South according to their economic convenience. For example, if a company has to invest USD40 or USD50 to reduce the emission of one ton of C02 in a “developed country,” they would prefer to buy a “REDD certificate” for USD10 or USD20 in a “developing country”, so they can they say they have fulfilled to reduce the emissions of the mentioned ton of CO2.
Through this mechanism, developed countries will have handed their obligation to reduce their emissions to developing countries, and the South will once again fund the North and that same northern company will have saved a lot of money by buying “certified” carbon from the Southern forests. However, they will not only have cheated their commitments to reduce emissions, but they will have also begun the commoditization of nature, with the forests.
The forests will start to be priced by the CO2 tonnage they are able to absorb. The “credit” or “carbon right” which certifies that absorptive capacity will be bought and sold like any commodity worldwide. To ensure that no one affects the ownership of “REDD certificates” buyers, a series of restrictions will be put into place, which will eventually affect the sovereign right of countries and indigenous peoples over their forests and rainforests. So begins a new stage of privatization of nature never seen before which will extend to water, biodiversity and what they call “environmental services”.
While we assert that capitalism is the cause of global warming and the destruction of forests, rainforests and Mother Earth, they seek to expand capitalism to the commoditization of nature with the word “green economy”.
To get support for this proposal of commoditization of nature, some financial institutions, governments, NGOs, foundations, “experts” and trading companies are offering a percentage of the “benefits” of this commoditization of nature to indigenous peoples and communities living in native forests and the rainforest.
Nature, forests and indigenous peoples are not for sale.
For centuries, Indigenous peoples have lived conserving and preserving natural forests and rainforest. For us the forest and rainforest are not objects, are not things you can price and privatize. We do not accept that native forests and rainforest be reduced to a simple measurable quantity of carbon. Nor do we accept that native forests be confused with simple plantations of a single or two tree species. The forest is our home, a big house where plants, animals, water, soil, pure air and human beings coexist.
It is essential that all countries of the world work together to prevent forest and rainforest deforestation and degradation. It is an obligation of developed countries, and it is part of its climate and environmental debt climate, to contribute financially to the preservation of forests, but not through its commoditization. There are many ways of supporting and financing developing countries, indigenous peoples and local communities that contribute to the preservation of forests.
Developed countries spend tens of times more public resources on defense, security and war than in climate change. Even during the financial crisis many have maintained and increased their military spending. It is inadmissible that by using the needs communities have and the ambitions of some leaders and indigenous “experts”, indigenous peoples are expected to be involved with the commoditization of nature.
All forests and rainforests protection mechanisms should guarantee indigenous rights and participation, but not because indigenous participation is achieved in REDD, we can accept that a price for forests and rainforests is set and negotiated in a global carbon market.
Indigenous brothers, let us not be confused. Some tell us that the carbon market mechanism in REDD will be voluntary. That is to say that whoever wants to sell and buy, will be able, and whoever does not want to, will be able to stand aside. We cannot accept that, with our consent, a mechanism is created where one voluntarily sells Mother Earth while others look crossed handed.
Faced with the reductionist views of forests and rainforest commoditization, indigenous peoples with peasants and social movements of the world must fight for the proposals that emerged of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth:
1) Integrated management of native forests and rainforest not only considering its mitigation function as CO2 sink but all its functions and potentiality, whilst avoiding confusing them with simple plantations.
2) Respect the sovereignty of developing countries in their integral management of forests.
3) Full compliance with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples established by the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention No. 169 of the ILO and other international instruments; recognition and respect to their territories; revalorization and implementation of indigenous knowledge for the preservation of forests; indigenous peoples participation and indigenous management of forest and rainforest.
4) Funding of developed countries to developing countries and indigenous peoples for integral management of forest as part of their climate and environmental debt. No establishment of any mechanism of carbon markets or “incentives” that may lead to the commoditization of forests and rainforest.
5) Recognition of the rights of Mother Earth, which includes forests, rainforest and all its components. In order to restore harmony with Mother Earth, putting a price on nature is not the way but to recognize that not only human beings have the right to life and to reproduce, but nature also has a right to life and to regenerate, and that without Mother Earth Humans cannot live.
Indigenous brothers, together with our peasant brothers and social movements of the world, we must mobilize so that the conclusions of Cochabamba are assumed in Cancun and to impulse a mechanism of related actions to the forests based on these five principles, while always maintaining high the unity of indigenous peoples and the principles of respect for Mother Earth, which for centuries we have preserved and inherited from our ancestors.
Evo Morales Ayma
President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia

CAN CAPITALISM BE GREEN?

Why does the United States want so badly to make sure there are no restrictions placed on China when it comes to Climate Change?

Hopefully this question will be discussed at our forum "Can Capitalism Be Green?" later in October.

As one of the panelists (see flyer below), I do intend to address this issue relating to China and I hope others will as well.

To get discussion going I am including this article from the big-business think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, since most of the corporations involved in this group support Barack Obama and Barack Obama wrote a lengthy article for "Foreign Affairs Magazine," the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations; an article, by-the-way, which most liberals, progressives and most on the left either chose not to read or intentionally ignored what they had read which is proving detrimental to solving the problems the working class and our nation face today with Barack Obama at the helm working on Wall Street's behalf no matter what the issue.

Interview

Decoupling China in the Climate Debate

http://www.cfr. org/publication/ 20247/

Interviewee: Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies

Interviewer: Toni Johnson, Staff Writer


September 22, 2009

The bargaining positions of India and China have received increasing attention from Western countries ahead of the UN's December 2009 climate change meeting in Copenhagen, particularly from U.S. lawmakers worried about competitiveness issues. CFR Director of Asia Studies Elizabeth C. Economy says one possible concession China and India could offer on binding commitments for cutting greenhouse gas emissions relates to timing. "Certainly we shouldn't be asking them to do what we're doing today, but to get a firm and binding promise a decade down the line is not an unreasonable thing for both sides to come to terms on," she says. Economy also says China has a much greater capacity for addressing climate issues, and should be decoupled from the rest of the developing world. "China should be put into its own category. Other developing countries who have far fewer resources should be the primary targets for an international fund for supporting the development, implementation, and deployment of climate-related support," she says. "I would include India in this group [of countries] that are more in need of international resources."



The media and many policymakers have a tendency to lump China and India together in the climate debate. Can you talk a little bit about how China's challenges differ from India's?



China's economy is roughly three times as large as that of India, and its per capita GDP [gross domestic product] is three times greater. It can provide power to the vast majority of its people. India has not quite half of its people with access to electricity. India is still very much more a developing country than China is. China has also made far greater strides toward trying to address its environmental challenges. A greater percentage of China's energy comes from coal than in India, so in some respects its challenge moving forward in terms of addressing climate change is tougher, but it has greater financial resources to address the problem.



The two countries have been working very closely together to present something of a united front on climate change. How united is this front and what are the major differences between India and China's approach?



India and China, two decades ago, presented a united front on the Montreal Protocol to reduce ozone-depleting substances on many of the same issues that they are now united on: issues related to sovereignty, to the responsibility of the developing world, and to the desire for financial and technology transfer. Many of these same issues have arisen again. In the case of the Montreal Protocol, once the international community agreed in essence to pay for China and India to do the right thing, China said okay and signed on very quickly. India was left holding the bag on principle--principl es of sovereignty and a desire to not have an intrusive international regime.



While both [China and India] say they are not interested in binding targets, both have talked about non-binding targets as a possibility and both want to be perceived as responsible participants in a climate change regime.

This time around, India has moved closer to the Chinese position. While both countries say they are not interested in binding targets, both have talked about non-binding targets as a possibility and both want to be perceived as responsible participants in a climate change regime. They want to be viewed as countries that are helping to address the problem. Both agree that the developed countries should bear the lion's share of responsibility; both are calling for large-scale technology transfer and large funding initiatives from the developed world. India has come around to be a bit closer to the Chinese position, although it is sometimes viewed as more obstreperous because of its tough rhetoric. I don't think it wants to be left behind this time.



EU officials have been pushing to link international climate funding to action by developing countries to lower their emissions: "no actions, no money." How realistic is it to tie financing to action and what kind of effect is this going to have on the China-India position in the climate debate?



In China and India, you probably have two countries that are reasonably willing to equate funding and action. It probably depends on how broadly you define action. For example, they would certainly be interested in funding for technology development, so if that counts as action, there would likely be common ground. If capacity building counts as action, then that would also be a very important element of developing China's and India's ability to address climate change. What the Chinese and Indians have said is that they are only willing to allow monitoring, reporting, and verification of actions that have resulted from international funding, so they don't want to be on the hook for demonstrating to the rest of the world that what they've said they're going to do they are actually doing, unless the rest of the world is paying for them to do it. But as long as you have a broad enough range of activities that constitute action, both countries would be willing to sign on to something that said "funding equals action."



Developing countries, including India, have called for the United States and other developed nations to reduce emissions by up to 40 percent below 1990 levels. Meanwhile, developed countries so far have had trouble selling less than half that level of cuts domestically. White House climate envoy Todd Stern said unless China and India do something in the binding or serious commitment level the U.S. Congress is going to impose carbon tariffs on imports. What kind of concessions need to happen?



I don't think there's much that China and India can do to get their calls for 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels made into policy in the developed countries. What China and India realistically can do within their own systems --what ought to be probably acceptable here in the United States and in Europe and Japan--would be perhaps not immediate binding targets, but voluntary targets up until 2015 or 2020, and then firm and binding targets in 2020. That actually has been proposed by the well-known environmentalist/ economist Hu Angang in China. It doesn't seem to have gotten much positive play in China but he's quite vocal about it. The idea that China and India and other developing countries should trail the West in terms of their commitments, both in terms of when they're binding and the degree to which they're promising to cut, is an appropriate one. Certainly we shouldn't be asking them to do what we're doing today, but to get a firm and binding promise a decade down the line is not an unreasonable thing for both sides to come to terms on.



[Y]ou now have a wide range of officials and scholars who are putting forth their own ideas about what China might or might not do looking ahead. It's very difficult at some points to tell what is real policy.

Earlier this year Chinese officials said they were looking into a carbon tax. Would something like that work in China and India, and would that decrease international pressure?



There is a great danger to looking at ideas that are being floated in China or India as policy. One of the things that's happened over the past year and a half, in particular in China--India is a democracy so it's always had this issue--is that you now have a wide range of officials and scholars who are putting forth their own ideas about what China might or might not do looking ahead. It's very difficult at some points to tell what is real policy and what is an advisory policy, and what nobody is actually listening to except for the person who's saying it. The only way to understand what China is going to try to do is to look at what President Hu Jintao says or what the Chinese negotiators put on the table.



You've just recently come back from China. How do domestic issues right now, particularly the economic downturn, come into play in their approach?



I actually just came from a set of discussions where economics as well as green technology and climate change were a major focus of the overall discussions. In general, there is a sense that China has weathered the economic downturn better than everybody else. They're first out of the box; among many Westerners and Chinese, there was almost a sense of economic triumphalism about China's situation. Most, not all, Chinese economists and senior government officials seem to be quite bullish on the state of the Chinese economy right now, and certainly that is what they are pushing within the Chinese media. There were some outliers, however, who questioned the conventional wisdom that China had gotten the recovery right.



If, in fact, China has emerged from the financial crisis as strong as ever, that should then allow them to be more aggressive when it comes to an issue like climate change. However, it doesn't seem to have shifted their overall stance. Instead, what you get is the sense that yes, we're doing much better than we'd anticipated and much better than everybody else economically, but the same facts still hold true in terms of what we're able to do with regard to global climate change and what we expect the rest of the world to do.



What I did find interesting, however, was that among the participants at the meeting, some of the strongest supporters of China taking more aggressive action on climate change were from the business sector. Some of the other Chinese participants were adamant that China should not target climate as a priority, that this was something for the rest of the world to address, and that this was something the Chinese people did not feel strongly about. It may be that we are seeing some of the same trends that we've seen in this country, where we have had a number of senior business leaders step up to the plate and say that they want to move forward on climate change and want certainty about their obligations for the future. They see opportunities whereas many political leaders simply see costs.



It's been suggested that the United States should decouple China from India since research suggests that China's emissions will be the real game changer if the current trajectory of China's growth and infrastructure stays the same. Do you think that this is the right approach?



It's the right strategy to decouple China from the rest of the developing world, not just China from India, but China from the rest of the world. China should be put into its own category; other developing countries who have far fewer resources should be the primary targets for an international fund for supporting the development, implementation, and deployment of climate-related support. China is in a better position to stand on its own to contribute to addressing the problem, whereas there are other countries, and I would include India in this group, that are more in need of international resources.



What are the broader opportunities for India and China to work together on climate bilaterally?



One of the most important issues that China and India will confront is the issue of shared water resources. China is in the midst of diverting water that India and Bangladesh consider essential for the livelihood of their people. As climate change intensifies, these water resources are likely to become even more precious and the source of significant conflict, unless the two sides can sit down and talk.



Is this because of the glaciers?



Part of the challenge will be because of the glaciers melting--first there will be flooding and then drought. But frankly, much of China's north is already water scarce, so the actions that China is taking today are to address a problem that exists today. The challenge will only become greater over the next decade or two if the melting of the glaciers accelerates.

A 3CTC PANEL DISCUSSION ANSWERING THE BURNING QUESTION:



CAN CAPITALISM BE GREEN?



SPEAKERS:



MIKE CAVLAN--Formerly of the Green Party



DAN DIMAGGIO--Socialist Alternative



CHRISTINE FRANK--Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities & Socialist Action



ALAN MAKI—Save Our Bog & Lake-of-the- Woods Communist Club



MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 7:00 PM

MAYDAY BOOKS

301 CEDAR AVENUE SOUTH

WEST BANK, MINNEAPOLIS



Sponsored by the Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities (3CTC). Free & open to the public. The Clean-Energy Vigil to Cool Down the Planet takes place on the plaza outside the bookstore at 5:00 PM, followed by the 3CTC Business Meeting at 6:00 PM. All are welcome. For more information, EMAIL: christinefrank@visi.com or PHONE: 612-879-8937. SAVE MOTHER EARTH! SEE YOU THERE!



Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432

Check out my blog:
http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Moratorium on coal burning electric generating plants?

An Open Letter to "Fresh Energy"

From: Alan L. Maki

I find it rather ironic “Fresh Energy” now calls for a complete moratorium on coal-fired electric generating plants in the fight against global warming since your organization did not lift one little finger to bring the Hydro Dam powering the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant under public ownership to save two-thousand jobs and insure that this hydro generating plant would begin being used as a cheap source of energy by people in the Twin Cities...



Why your organization never proposed that instead of the Ford Motor Company being allowed to sell-off excess power generated by the hydro dam to Excel, that this power instead be provided to light the public schools and other public institutions for free, just like Ford received free power for its operations, I do not understand… maybe you can explain? This could have meant a very substantial reduction in property taxes with all the money saved by public schools.



In fact, your organization, and your “coalition partners,” have been no place to be seen in the struggle to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant even though it is a model of “green manufacturing.” If every manufacturing facility of this size was as “green” as the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant we would not even be discussing global warming… yet “Fresh Energy” and your coalition partners remain silent through it all... even as the hydro dam is sold to a foreign corporation after being subsidized to the hilt by tax-payers.



I think your organization, Fresh Energy, is bogus.



In fact, it appears to me you raise demands you know are impossible to meet--- a moratorium on new coal fired plants--- as long as the quest for maximum profits is the goal and objective of production.



I also find it very strange, that along with calling for a moratorium on coal fired plants, you do not suggest any solution to rising energy costs for most people. This I find especially interesting since you are well aware that what you are proposing would force our electric bills up even as we are forced to conserve.



There is a solution which the foundations supporting your organization would never go along with:



Public ownership of the entire energy producing and distribution complex; a more feasible and workable solution if you are serious about having a moratorium on building coal fired plants.



I also find it very strange that your organization never mentions the fact that tax-payers are underwriting the costs of a very primitive electric distribution system… from the point of energy production until it arrives to where it will be used as much as thirty percent of the energy is being lost (often more; seldom less)--- energy which is being lost is being wasted and we, as consumers pay for this massive loss in our electric bills and as society in many ways--- including a huge unnecessary carbon footprint.



In this waste, capturing this wasted energy, there is your moratorium and more.



But, what we have is corporations feeding at the public trough as they are wasting our resources--- I guess since these corporations are getting a free lunch they don’t mind making a pig of themselves and throwing most of the food away that they take at the self-serve buffet we so generously, and gratuitously, provide for these profit gouging corporations.



In fact, the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities assembly plant, under public ownership, could be turned to producing inexpensive vertical and horizontal wind generating equipment to power our entire state, and we could be free of coal-burning power plants in a few years. These inexpensive wind generators could replace every farm fence post in Minnesota, and could be placed along our roads and highways and even on bridges without any harm to the environment or the scenery.



Solar units and water equipment could also be produced all in the same plant… yet, "Fresh Energy's" “coalition partners” are proposing the demolition of this plant… do you not have any concept of the “carbon footprint” involved in the construction (and unwarranted destruction) of a huge plant like this?



I would suggest that you have a little discussion with the Ford Site Planning Committee and Task Force… and your coalition partners at the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.



It might not hurt to put a halt to the war machine, either, which is creating quite the “carbon footprint.”



I really think your philanthropist funders have you pointed going on the wrong track, the wrong way… but, then again, I notice many of the donors to "Fresh Energy" are Excel CEO’s and run like a Who’s Who of the Minnesota State Chamber of Commerce and the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers--- no doubt looking for a nice fat tax-write-off as they try to derail the movement for real energy reform.



Even the media, including public radio, seems to be beholden to the corporate interests in the energy industry… just take radio station KAXE up here in northern Minnesota… the Blandin foundation and Excel give them a few bucks and it is like the pollution from their coal-burning plant--- one of the worst polluters in the world--- north of Grand Rapids, doesn’t even exist… the mercury and other contaminants just vanishes mysteriously into the clouds… and when the plant manager is asked what is coming out of the smokestacks he will tell you, “Nothing to worry about, just some harmless water vapor.”



Perhaps this entire matter can be discussed by the “Progressives for Obama,” too. No doubt Obama will quickly adopt a program suitable to the likes of Excel.



I find it equally interesting that those who had been talking about holding a “Conference on Dis-Investment” at the University of Minnesota canceled their conference quickly after becoming concerned the issue of saving the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant and the hydro dam along with two-thousand jobs would become the central issue of the conference... doing something by organizing in their own back-yard was just too much... too much for those whose "philanthropy" dictates university decisions.



Really, I find it thoroughly and completely hypocritical that “Fresh Energy” would call for a moratorium on building coal-burning electric generating plants without even considering any of the alternative proposals brought forward here.



I await a response from “Fresh Energy.” I think a lot of people would like to read a response from "Fresh Energy" to my "Open Letter."



Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Check out my blog:



Thoughts From Podunk



http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/

Windmills split town and families

Windmills split town and families

By HELEN O'NEILL,

AP Special Correspondent

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080816/ap_on_re_us/a_bitter_wind


"Listen," John Yancey says, leaning against his truck in a field outside his home.

The rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wind turbines echoes through the air. Sleek and white, their long propeller blades rotate in formation, like some otherworldly dance of spindly-armed aliens swaying across the land.

Yancey stares at them, his face contorted in anger and pain.

He knows the futuristic towers are pumping clean electricity into the grid, knows they have been largely embraced by his community.

But Yancey hates them.

He hates the sight and he hates the sound. He says they disrupt his sleep, invade his house, his consciousness. He can't stand the gigantic flickering shadows the blades cast at certain points in the day.

But what this brawny 48-year-old farmer's son hates most about the windmills is that his father, who owns much of the property, signed a deal with the wind company to allow seven turbines on Yancey land.

"I was sold out by my own father," he sputters.

Yancey lives in a pine-studded home on Yancey Road, which he shares with his wife, Marilyn, and three children. The house is perched on the edge of the Tug Hill plateau, half a mile from the old white farmhouse in which Yancey and his seven siblings were raised.

Signs for fresh raspberries are propped against a fence. Horses graze in a lower field. Amish buggies clatter down a nearby road. From the back porch are sweeping views of the distant Adirondacks.

But the view changed dramatically in 2006. Now Yancey Road is surrounded by windmills.

Yancey and some of his brothers begged Ed Yancey to leave the family land untouched. But the elder Yancey pointed to the money — a minimum of $6,600 a year for every turbine. This is your legacy, he told them.

Yancey doesn't want the money or the legacy or the view.

"I just want to be able to get a good night's sleep and to live in my home without these monstrosities hovering over me," he says.

For a long time he didn't speak to his father. The rift took a toll on his marriage. He thought about leaving Yancey Road for good.

___

The Tug Hill plateau sits high above this village of about 4,000, a remote North Country wilderness of several thousand acres, where steady winds whip down from Lake Ontario and winter snowfalls are the heaviest in the state.

For decades dairy farmers, Irish and German and Polish immigrants, and lately the Amish, have wrested a living from the Tug — accepting lives of wind-swept hardship with little prospect of much change.

Then, a few years ago, change came to Tug Hill, and it arrived with such breathtaking speed that locals still marvel at the way their land and lives were utterly transformed.

Overnight, it seemed, caravans of trucks trundled onto the plateau, laden with giant white towers. Concrete foundations were poured. Roads were built and for a couple of years the village was ablaze with activity.

Today, 195 turbines soar above Tug Hill, 400 feet high, their 130-foot long blades spinning at 14 revolutions per minute.

The $400 million Maple Ridge wind project, the largest in New York state, brought money and jobs and a wondrous sense of prosperity to a place that had long given up on any. Lately, it has also brought a sense of importance. Lowville and the neighboring hamlets of Martinsburg and Harrisburg, which also host turbines, are at the forefront of a wind energy boom that T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore have hailed as the wave of the future.

But for all the benefits of clean, renewable energy, the windmills come with a price — and not just the visual impact.

"Is it worth destroying families, pitting neighbor against neighbor, father against son?" asks John Yancey, whose family have farmed Tug Hill for generations. "Is it worth destroying a whole way of life?"

Similar questions are being asked across the state and the country as more and more small towns grapple with big money and big wind. For many, the changes are worth it. With rising oil and gas prices and growing concerns about global warming, wind is becoming an attractive alternative. The U.S Department of Energy recently released a report that examines the feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20 percent of the nation's total electricity by 2030. U.S. wind power plants now produce less than 1 percent.

The Maple Ridge project produces enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes. Other wind projects are going up all over the state. Pickens is talking about building a $10 billion wind project — the world's largest — in the Texas panhandle. Everyone, it seems, is talking about wind.

Yancey understands its seduction. An electrician, he knows as much about the turbines as anyone. He helped build and install the ones on Tug Hill. He can rattle off statistics about the bus-sized nacelle at the top of the tower which houses the generator and the sophisticated computer system that allows the blades to yaw into the wind. He talks about the 1.65 mw Vestas with authority and respect.

Turbines have their place, Yancey says, just not where people live.

And he accuses the wind company of preying on vulnerable old-timers like his father.

___

Ed Yancey sits in the front room of the little house on Trinity Avenue where he moved after retiring from farming. His eyes are bright and his handshake is strong and the only concession to his 92 years seems to be his poor hearing.

He says doesn't feel preyed upon. He feels lucky. He feels proud to be part of a change he thinks is inevitable.

"It's better than a nuclear plant," Ed Yancey says. "And it brings in good money."

Next to him, daughter Virginia Yancey Lyndaker, a real estate agent who infuriated her brothers by siding with her father, nods in agreement. You can't stop progress, she says.

Ben Byer, a 75-year-old retired dairy farmer, feels the same way. Like Ed Yancey, Byer felt lucky when the wind salesmen knocked at his door. He was one of the first to sign up.

Now he can count 22 windmills from his Rector Road home. Seven are on his land.

"The sound don't bother me," he says. "And it sure beats milking cows."

But Byer, who is John Yancey's uncle, understands the lingering resentments the windmills fuel. The wind company signed lease agreements with just 74 landowners over a 12-mile stretch and "good neighbor" agreements with several dozen more, offering $500 to $1,000 for the inconvenience of living close to the turbines. In a small community, that kind of money can cause tensions between those who profit and those who don't.

Byer also understands the strain windmills can place on a family. His 47-year-old son, Rick, lives higher up on the plateau in a small white ranch house with a two-seat glider parked in a shed. The glider is Rick Byer's passion. He flies on weekends when he's not working at the pallet-making company.

In order to launch, the glider has to be towed by truck down a long rolling meadow across the road. When the wind company began negotiating with his father to put turbines on his "runway," Rick Byer delivered a furious ultimatum.

"I told him if he allowed turbines in that field he would lose a son."

The son's rage won out over the father's desire for easy cash, but Rick Byer still seethes at the forest of turbines that sprouted across from his home. Now he speaks out in other area towns where windmills are proposed.

"I tell people it's not a wind farm, it's an industrial development," he says as he mends wooden pallets in a barn one warm summer night. Rock music crackles from a radio propped crookedly on a pile of wood. Every now and then, Byer adjusts the set for a better reception. The windmills interfere with the signal, he says. They interfere with television too.

And they transform the night. As dusk falls, red strobe lights appear on every third windmill, glowing eerily atop the blades spinning ghostlike in the moonlight.

___

Like most of their neighbors, the Yanceys and Byers had a hard time believing the wind salesman when he first rolled into town in 1999. Years earlier there had been talk of natural gas on Tug Hill, but nothing ever came of it. People assumed the wind project would go the same way.

"No one thought it would happen," John Yancey says.

But Bill Moore, a Maryland-based energy consultant and investor who worked on Wall Street before going out on his own, was persistent. And persuasive. For several years he drove all over Tug Hill in his Land Rover, knocking on doors, talking to farmers in fields, hosting meetings at the Elks Lodge, preaching the gospel of wind.

At first local officials were skeptical, too. But they listened, and learned, and they started hammering out agreements with Moore's company, Atlantic Renewable Corp., and its partner company, Zilka Renewable Engergy. (The companies have changed names and ownership several times and the Maple Ridge Wind project is now jointly owned by PPM Energy of Portland, Ore., which is part of the Spanish company Iberdrola SA, and Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy LLC, which is owned by the Portuguese conglomerate Energias de Portugal.)

Eventually officials from Lowville, Martinsburg and Harrisburg, along with Lewis County legislators, negotiated a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement that gave the three jurisdictions $8.1 million in the first year.

"We knew we were going to change the landscape, maybe forever," says Martinsburg supervisor Terry Thiesse. "We knew some people would be unhappy. But the benefits far outweighed the objections of a few."

Martinsburg, with a population of 1,249, got the biggest municipal cut because it hosts the largest number of windmills — a total of 102. Thiesse, who receives payments for a windmill on his own land, says Martinsburg's budget went from just under $400,000 to more than $1.2 million with the first wind payment in 2006. The municipality is currently negotiating a deal with another wind company for an additional 39 turbines.

In Lowville, school Superintendent Ken McAuliffe is thrilled to be buying new computers, expanding school buildings and planning new athletic fields. The school district, which serves all jurisdictions, received $2.8 million in 2006 and $3.5 million in 2007.

Still, McAuliffe said, negotiating the deal was the most demanding experience of his professional life.

"I'm an educator, not a wind expert or an investor," McAuliffe said. The hardest part, he said, was understanding the amounts of money involved, trusting that the community would get it, and "the great unknown, which is how much the wind company is making."

Wind finances are a source of great confusion for many locals, who assumed they would get free electricity once the turbines were installed. In fact, the energy is sold to utility companies and then piped into the grid.

Though the wind itself is free, companies have enormous startup costs: a single industrial wind turbine costs about $3 million. In New York, companies benefit from the fact that the state requires 25 percent of all electricity to be supplied from renewable sources by 2013. They also get federal production tax credits in addition to "green" renewable energy credits, which can be sold in the energy market.

In this context, the annual payments of about $6,600 per turbine are relatively small. But for some cash-strapped farmers, they amount to a retirement supplement.

"It's the best cash cow we ever had," booms retired dairy farmer Bill Burke, who has six turbines on his land. "This cow doesn't need to be fed, doesn't need a vet, doesn't need a place to lie down."

Burke, a blustery 60-year-old, is proud of his credentials as the wind company's biggest local cheerleader. A school board member and county legislator, he also works part-time for the company, giving lectures and tours. His son, Bobby, works for it full-time.

Burke sold the last of his herd in 2004. Without the income from the turbines, he says, he might have had to sell his 100-year-old farm too. He has no regrets about grabbing his "once in a lifetime chance at prosperity."

"This project was happening, like it or not, and you would have to be a fool not to participate, to be excited and take advantage of it," Burke says.

____

Not everyone agrees.

For many, the realities of living with windmills are more complicated than clean energy and easy money. People have mixed feelings about the enormous scale of the project and the speed at which it went up. They question what will happen when the 15-year agreements expire. There are concerns about the impact of turbines on bird and bat populations. Some accuse lawmakers of getting too cozy with wind developers in order to profit from turbines on their land — allegations that prompted New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to launch an investigation into two wind companies and their dealings with upstate municipalities. (The investigation does not involve Maple Ridge.)

Such concerns have ignited furious debates in upstate towns where more than a dozen wind power projects are being considered — in Cape Vincent, Clayton, Prattsburgh. Some towns passed moratoria on industrial turbines in order to learn more. Malone and Brandon recently banned them completely.

"It seemed like the cost, in terms of how it changed the community, was too high," Malone supervisor Howard Maneely, said after visiting Lowville.

Pat Leviker, 60, who grew up on Tug Hill, thinks so too. Leviker cried the day the first turbine went up, "like a giant praying mantis peering at my home." Now she and her husband Richard, who both work for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, plan to sell their home and move off the plateau when they retire.

"We want clean energy as much as anyone," says Leviker, who rejected a $1,500 payment from the wind company for the disruption of her view. "But we also want quality of life."

Over on Nefsey Road, which runs parallel to Yancey Road, Dawn Sweredoski, a sixth-grade teacher, finds a certain beauty in the windmills.

But she is sympathetic to her neighbors' concerns. The Amish farmer across the road, who bought her husband's farm seven years ago, rejected the wind company's offer of two turbines. He hates how the towers have changed the scenery and disrupted the sense of tradition and tranquility that lured his family from Maryland in the first place.

Sweredoski, whose house has magnificent views of the valley, sees the windmills only in the distance. She understands John Yancey's annoyance at living with them up close.

"It's hard when change is for the common good but some people suffer more than others," she says.

No one understands that better than the Yanceys, struggling to patch fractured family relationships, even as they struggle to come to terms with the turbines.

High on Tug Hill sits the Flat Rock Inn, a popular gathering point for snowmobilers and all-terrain vehicle riders. Twenty years ago, Gordon Yancey carved out this chunk of land with the help of his father, creating miles of forest trails and camping areas, set around a six-acre, man-made pond.

"People come for the scenery, the serenity," says Yancey, 49, proudly driving through his property, describing the "jungle" that he and his father cleared. He rolls to a halt in front of the inn, a rustic wooden structure with a bar, restaurant, a few rooms and a large wraparound porch.

All around stretch windmills, miles and miles of them. Yancey chokes up just looking at them. They have hurt his business, he says. And, like his brother, he hates the view and the noise.

"Dad taught us such respect for the land. For my father to be part of this..." His voice trails off and he shakes his head and walks away, too angry to continue.

This particular weekend is a busy one for Yancey's inn, which is hosting a huge watercross event — in which snowmobiles roar across the pond, their speed keeping them from sinking. Campers roll in to watch. There are campfires and barbecues and squealing children darting about. The atmosphere is festive and carefree and very noisy as racers' engines scream and a helicopter whirs overhead giving 10-minute joyrides for $25.

In the distance, Rick Byer's glider floats above the turbines. On the ground John Yancey works an enormous homemade gas grill turning 50 sizzling chickens on spits. Gordon Yancey is down by the pond, bellowing race results through a loudspeaker. Another brother, Tim Yancey, wanders by with his girlfriend, anti-wind activist Anne Britton. Patriarch Ed Yancey is there too, cooling off in a storage shed near the grill, talking about the old days — before snowmobiles and turbines.

All around the windmills spin. John Yancey looks up from the grill occasionally and grimaces at them. Right now, no one else seems to care.

Global Warming: Al Gore Articulates The Problem; Short On Solutions

A dangerous threat to Social Security linked to proposed "carbon tax" from Al Gore
Please distribute this widely to all your e-mail lists and list serves so Al Gore's speech gets the kind of discussion these ideas deserve in a democracy.

Here is Al Gore's entire speech on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U

Just click, watch and listen.


My response to Al Gore's speech


The time has come to start talking about the politics and economics of livelihood... working class politics.

Al Gore has proposed that the solution for keeping Social Security solvent is to fund it with a "carbon tax."

Think about this: The idea behind the "carbon tax" is to end pollution... as carbon emissions decline, so will revenue from the "carbon tax."

Social Security should continue to be funded from the sources that are taxed right now... any change jeopardizes the very existence of Social Security.

If anything, Social Security taxes on the employers needs to be increased.

This idea of creating a "carbon tax" to fund social programs like Social Security is a very regressive and reactionary idea aimed at destroying the best progressive social program we have in this country--- Social Security.

Contrary to Al Gore's reactionary neoliberal thinking on this question, wealth should be taxed... and wealth should be taxed to the hilt to pay for universal social programs like Social Security.

Should there be a "carbon tax?" You bet, and the "carbon tax" should be so stiff that it forces real action.

However, there are other methods, working in conjunction with this proposed "carbon tax" which will get better results quicker; quicker than Al Gore is suggesting for a time frame.

Again, contrary to Gore's claim, he has provided no real solutions to global warming.

Gore talked about switching out incandescent light-bulbs--- Wal-mart is making big profits from people switching out their incandescent light-bulbs; Hugo Chavez is providing millions of new bulbs for free... again, the capitalists profit at the expense of people; socialism provides real solutions to help people and the environment.

Al Gore's proposals will see tax-payers subsidize the multi-national corporations and Wall Street coupon clippers and Wall Street entrepreneurs... if the decision-making process is left to Gore and Obama, workers will continue to lose jobs, the new "green" jobs will pay poverty wages, and poverty will worsen.

Shifting industrial production overseas where we can't see what is going up into the clouds is no solution.

The source of funding for Social Security is just where it belongs right now… the only reform in funding required is to drastically increase the burden on employers so Social Security will provide all those in retirement a real living income; and, retirement age should be reduced to 50 so that the millions of unemployed will have jobs so they continue to build-up the Social Security fund… unemployed people contribute nothing towards Social Security; apparently mercury emissions have retarded thinking among some politicians.

There is nothing wrong with Social Security that full-employment wouldn’t solve. Plain old common sense tells us that millions of unemployed workers are not contributing to Social Security--- neither are employers paying into the Social Security fund for unemployed workers. Unemployment is killing social security. The work week needs to be cut to 32 hours while paying all workers real living wages.

The minimum wage needs to be raised to a real living wage based upon the calculations of the United States Department of Labor's calculations for a real living wage. Raising the minimum wage will result in greater funding for the Social Security fund.

Social Security should derive its funding from the point nearest where wealth is being created; not where wealth is being destroyed.

A “carbon tax” should be placed on each and every corporation and industry, including a very heavy carbon tax on any industry using coal, gas and oil; this tax should be used to finance the creation of new clean, green industries being proposed by Barack Obama.

In fact, if these industries were threatened with nationalization and public ownership we would see more rapid compliance than with the threat of taxes or fines.

What is really bizarre is that Al Gore and Barack Obama have been completely silent when it comes to what kind of concrete action is required to save closing auto plants like the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant… ironically, this present clean, green manufacturing operation would pay no Social Security taxes at all under the Gore proposal supported by Barack Obama. Obama supports this hare-brained scheme like that advocated by Al Gore to finance Social Security; but he has not raised his voice to save the jobs of two-thousand auto-workers, who, with their employer are paying into Social Security in a very big way… Do Al Gore and Barack Obama support the capitalist scheme to close the St. Paul Ford Plant Twin Cities Assembly Plant, place a hydro dam powering the operation into the hands of a private foreign corporation, and shipping these two-thousand jobs to Thailand… this is really a boon to Social Security, isn’t it?

At some point there has to be some accountability from politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama--- this is not a one-way street; in return for votes, politicians have to be taught to listen respectfully to working people with an eye towards solving problems in favor of working people and their standard of living and livelihoods.

How much will carbon emissions increase when the Ford Motor Company brings its new Ford Ranger plant in Thailand into full production once they begin shipping to North America? How much will the Ford Motor Company contribute towards the U.S. Social Security fund from "carbon taxes" on its operations in Thailand… The same amount they will pay into Social Security in Thailand--- absolutely nothing. Al Gore and Barack Obama have not considered this.

Why not nationalize any corporation that doesn’t meet Gore’s proposed guidelines?

Alan Greenspan is laughing like heck over all the dates set way into the future at which point these industries will have to come into compliance with carbon emission and pollution standards… Greenspan figures by these far distant dates established for compliance by these dirty industries, they will have been replaced with new technologies paid for compliments of U.S. tax-payers and the impoverishment of the working class in North America.

We could force 100% compliance with carbon emission and pollution standards in five years, instead of fifty, if these industries were threatened with nationalization for lack of compliance with clean air and water standards.

Again, transferring funding for Social Security from its present base of "wealth" to deriving revenue from a "carbon tax" is not the way to go.

Barack Obama and Al Gore propose that tax-payers fund this "new green economy" creating an entirely new industry and subsidizing corporations to the hilt... to the tune of trillions upon trillions of dollars; what tax-payers finance, tax-payers must own... including a share of the profits the equivalent of tax-payer funding. We must introduce this new kind of thinking into the political process right at the initial beginning stage.

Al Gore talks about tax-payers subsidizing the auto industry for the production of electric cars... fine, but tax-payers need to become joint owners of these subsidized corporations.

Al Gore talks about solving the problems of poverty... bottom line: Poverty cannot be ended as long as workers are paid poverty wages.

Modern state-monopoly capitalism has concocted these neoliberal schemes to confuse working people while standards of living are driven down through such schemes; before workers know what has hit them the damage is done. Workers create all wealth... the working class' standard of living must rise along with this "new clean, green industry."

The time has come for working people to assert themselves into the decision making process in a very vocal and decisive manner. Keeping quiet until after Election Day is not the answer. Speak up now.

Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore have finally come to the conclusion that the last eight years of the Bush Administration have been a complete failure. Well, we know from experience Democrats have not done any better so we better get busy and participate in this discussion, dialogue and debate.

Al Gore talks about "bold solutions" to our problems... Al Gore and Barack Obama need to be coerced to consider the bold solutions suggested here.

Al Gore is right in talking about how the war in Iraq is related to the problems related to global warming... however, Al Gore fails to understand that this drive to war is part and parcel of the imperialism's drive for maximum profits--- this insane drive for maximum profits is the source of our problems.

The capitalist system is on the skids to oblivion... do you want to stand by and see your families and your country dragged down with this rotten system as it crashes? Make no mistake, the system is crashing and we are the victims.

Gore has come up with a cute little rhyme: "We should tax what we burn; not what we earn." This is a simple minded perverse logic excluding corporate profits from the scheme of things. Al Gore conveniently ignores the fact that all wealth is created by labor; he also ignores the little fact that capitalists steal this wealth created by labor.

Al Gore would have us confuse this corporate wealth with what we "earn" in the form of our pay-checks. Wealth should be taxed... in addition to what the capitalists burn... most of us don't burn much of anything except a few paper bags and old newspapers.

We had this consumer society forced upon us; we had no part in the decision making process and we had better learn the lesson real quick that we shouldn't allow Al Gore and Barack Obama to allow a bunch of capitalists to do our thinking for us because humanity might not get another chance to collectively think these problems through if Al Gore's prognosis is correct, which I think it is... for delivering the warning Al Gore deserves a lot of credit... however, this doesn't give him and Barack Obama the right to force solutions on us without our participation.

Something to think about while sitting around the dinner table.

Alan L. Maki

58891 County Road 13

Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432

Cell phone: 651-587-5541

E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net



Check out my blog:



Thoughts From Podunk



http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/



Below is the New York Times coverage of Al Gore's speech which is followed by the speech itself.

New York Times coverage of Al Gore's speech:

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/washington/18gorecnd.html

Gore Calls for Carbon-Free Electric Power


By DAVID STOUT
Published: July 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Al Gore spoke about energy policy in Washington on Thursday.

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk,” Mr. Gore said in a speech to an energy conference here. “The future of human civilization is at stake.”
Mr. Gore called for the kind of concerted national effort that enabled Americans to walk on the moon 39 years ago this month, just eight years after President John F. Kennedy famously embraced that goal. He said the goal of producing all of the nation’s electricity from “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” within 10 years is not some farfetched vision, although he said it would require fundamental changes in political thinking and personal expectations.

“This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative,” Mr. Gore said in his remarks at the conference. “It represents a challenge to all Americans, in every walk of life — to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”

Although Mr. Gore has made global warming and energy conservation his signature issues, winning a Nobel Prize for his efforts, his speech on Thursday argued that the reasons for renouncing fossil fuels go far beyond concern for the climate.

In it, he cited military-intelligence studies warning of “dangerous national security implications” tied to climate change, including the possibility of “hundreds of millions of climate refugees” causing instability around the world, and said the United States is dangerously vulnerable because of its reliance on foreign oil.

Doubtless aware that his remarks would be met with skepticism, or even ridicule, in some quarters, Mr. Gore insisted in his speech that the goal of carbon-free power is not only achievable but practical, and that businesses would embrace it once they saw that it made fundamental economic sense.

Mr. Gore said the most important policy change in the transformation would be taxes on carbon dioxide production, with an accompanying reduction in payroll taxes. “We should tax what we burn, not what we earn,” he said.

The former vice president said in his speech that he could not recall a worse confluence of problems facing the country: higher gasoline prices, jobs being “outsourced,” the home mortgage industry in turmoil. “Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse,” he said.

By calling for new political leadership and speaking disdainfully of “defenders of the status quo,” Mr. Gore was hurling a dart at the man who defeated him for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush. Critics of Mr. Bush say that his policies are too often colored by his background in the oil business.

A crucial shortcoming in the country’s political leadership is a failure to view interlocking problems as basically one problem that is “deeply ironic in its simplicity,” Mr. Gore said, namely “our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.”

“We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet,” Mr. Gore said. “Every bit of that’s got to change.”

And it can change, he said, citing some scientists’ estimates that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth in 40 minutes to meet the world’s energy needs for a year, and that the winds that blow across the Midwest every day could meet the country’s daily electricity needs.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, immediately praised Mr. Gore’s speech. “For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat,” Mr. Obama said.

A shift away from fossil fuels would make the United States a leader instead of a sometime rebel on energy and conservation issues worldwide, Mr. Gore said. Nor, he said, would the hard work of people who toil on oil rigs and deep in the earth be for naught. “We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry,” he said by way of example. “Every single one of them.”

“Of course, there are those who will tell us that this can’t be done,” he conceded. “But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, ‘The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones.’ ”

The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens said in a statement that Mr. Gore’s plan would still not address “the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our country.” Mr. Pickens has called for a blend of government leadership and private enterprise to harness the full potential of wind power to help break what he calls “our deadly addiction to foreign oil.”



This is Al Gore's actual speech

July 17, 2008

A Generational Challenge to Repower America

D.A.R. Constitution Hall

Washington, D.C.

Ladies and gentlemen:

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more – if more should be required – the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse – much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland’s largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.

Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an "energy tsunami" that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.

Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that’s been worrying me.

I’m convinced that one reason we’ve seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately – without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective – they almost always make the other crises even worse.

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges – the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.

But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.

But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start.

That’s why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America.

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans – in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power – coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal – have radically changed the economics of energy.

When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy.

And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram.

You know, the same thing happened with computer chips – also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months – year after year, and that’s what’s happened for 40 years in a row.

To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I’ve seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.

When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

Of course there are those who will tell us this can't be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo – the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, "The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones."

To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world's scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don’t act in 10 years. The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up. When the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down.

To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people's appetite for change.

I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.

What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something

40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it’s meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.

When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.

To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity. Our national electric grid is critical infrastructure, as vital to the health and security of our economy as our highways and telecommunication networks. Today, our grids are antiquated, fragile, and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost US businesses more than $120 billion dollars a year. It has to be upgraded anyway.

We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid.

At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That’s the best investment we can make.

America's transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them.

Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.

In order to foster international cooperation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on CO2 emissions and a global partnership that recognizes the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world’s agenda for solving the climate crisis.

Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they’re going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it. If we keep going back to the same policies that have never ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again. But the Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people.

If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term.

However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.

Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we’ve simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests. And I’ve got to admit, that sure seems to be the way things have been going. But I’ve begun to hear different voices in this country from people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different and bold approach.

We are on the eve of a presidential election. We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president's term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because moving first is in our own national interest.

So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge – for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.

This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you – each of you – to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.

I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.