People Have To Decide, First Of All,

I'm Sort Of Optimistic About What We Could Do, But I'm Very Pessimistic About What We Will Do. I Can't Tell You That Al Gore's 10-year Plan Is Impossible. I'm Old Enough To Remember The Second World War - If We Had A World War Ii-type Mobilization, We Might Accomplish Gore's Plan. In 1940 We Were Making Tens Of Thousands Of Automobiles, And In 1941 We Were Making Tens Of Thousands Of Airplanes. We Mobilized As A Nation. If We Get That Kind Of Mobilization As A Nation Or Globally, Then We Could Solve A Lot Of These Problems.

Solving The Population Problem Is Not Going To Solve The Problems Of Racism, Of Sexism, Of Religious Intolerance, Of War, Of Gross Economic Inequality. But If You Don't Solve The Population Problem, You're Not Going To Solve Any Of Those Problems. Whatever Problem You're Interested In, You're Not Going To Solve It Unless You Also Solve The Population Problem. Whatever Your Cause, It's A Lost Cause Without Population Control.

You Take The Huge Income That Comes With A Big Gas Tax, And You Use It To Pay Off Regressive Taxes Like The Fica [federal Insurance Contributions Act] Tax. You Can Help The Poor In Other Ways Besides Giving Them Cheap Gas. You Want To Send The Message That People Want To Be As Efficient As Possible Using Gasoline Until We Can Transition Away From That Need Entirely.

Organisms Are Starting To Move In Response To Climate Change All Over The Place. Bees Are Disappearing And We Don't Have Many Of The Native Pollinators Left To Replace Them. We're In Deep Trouble; There's No Question About It. But Ecologists Tend To Think Of Something That's Going To Be Bad In Ten Years As Very Fast, And Of Course, Politicians Only Think Of Things In A Two-, Four-, Six-year Cycle.

Sometimes I Think The Congress Feels That If You Only Decided Tomorrow To Switch To Wind Power That In Two Years We'd Be Getting 80 Percent Of Our Electricity From Wind Power. It's Nonsense. Normally It Takes 20 To 30 Years After A New Technology Is Demonstrated And Deployed Before It Powers Even 15 Or 20 Percent Of The Grid. There's This Long Lag Time, And We Haven't Even Decided Which Directions To Go.