Change the Margins

Google & Warner Bros. Head Honchos on CA's AB 32

I stumbled across this piece on The Huffington Post today from Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google) and Alan Horn (President & COO, Warner Bros. Entertainment). The two encourage the California state air resources board to implement the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act, known as AB 32. The measure calls on Californians to reduce our global warming pollution to 1990 levels over the next 12 years through a variety of tactics.

Energy efficiency is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce global warming emissions from burning fossil fuels, but we can also benefit economically by developing our capacity to generate clean power. California is blessed by its natural resources, including prodigious amounts of wind, sun and geothermal energy. It's nature's gift to us, but so far we've squandered most of it. Why not capture that free energy and simultaneously become the market leader in designing and manufacturing clean power technology for the rest of the world?

I'm proud to live in a state that has often been on the leading edge of change. President-elect Obama has stated many times that a clean energy economy is a priority. I'm hoping that once again, CA will act as an example of how important goals such as this can be accomplished.

Gore's Energy Challenge

"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."

Big bold dreams for the planet from Al Gore...
Inconvenient? Perhaps. But so are high gas prices.

An excerpt from the speech:

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...

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.

Full speech: