Obama Accepts Gore's Challenge

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) accepted former Vice President Al Gore's challenge on Thursday to have the nation producing all its electricity using renewable, clean energy sources in a decade.

"I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President," Obama said in a statement. "It's a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer."

Gore issued his challenge during a speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, saying the goal of 100 percent carbon-free energy is "achievable and affordable." He argued that it is the very same thing the nation needs in order to revive the economy as well as to ensure security against threats from the Middle East.

"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," Gore said. "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."

Gore listed a number of steps the nation needed to take to reach the goal, including upgrading the nation's "antiquated" national electric grid and helping auto makers manufacture electric cars.

He also decried the Bush Administration's plan to end the ban on offshore oil drilling and refusal to agree to a multilateral clean energy plan without the commitments of China and India.

"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," the former vice president said. "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."

President George W. Bush, Gore's opponent in the 2000 election, has been calling on Congress to lift the legislative ban on coastal oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). He has admitted that doing so will not cause oil prices to decrease immediately, but said that it would assuage fears among ordinary Americans as well as send a strong signal to the international community about the prospects of U.S. energy independence.

The President entered an agreement with G8 nations early this month to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. The agreement, which was strongly criticized by environmentalists, includes a key demand from Bush that emerging economies such as China and India similarly make concrete commitments to cut carbon emissions.

Gore, the 2000 Democratic Party nominee and 2006 Nobel Prize winner, endorsed Obama last month.