Gore Makes His Move

If you want to know why Al Gore hasn't run for President since 2000, it's because he thinks he has a better chance to enact an agenda he cares about from the outside instead of from the inside. And here's how he's going about it:

Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection has some environmental advice for the incoming Obama administration: focus on energy efficiency and renewable resources, and create a unified U.S. power grid.

On Thursday, the group Gore founded rolled out a new media campaign to push for immediate investments in three energy areas it maintains would help meet Gore's previously announced challenge to produce 100 percent clean electricity in the United States in a decade [...]

The plan advocates immediate investment in energy efficiency, renewable power generation -- including public investment in wind, solar and geothermal technology -- and the creation of a unified national smart grid.

"Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation," the alliance said in a statement.

The alliance favors "national electricity 'interstates' that move power quickly and cheaply to where it needs to be (and) local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars."

This is the lasting infrastructure that can be a part of the upcoming stimulus package. Modernizing the energy grid is one of the most important things we can do right now. Generating all this wind and solar and geothermal power doesn't do much good unless it can be transmitted nationwide. We actually lose billions in productivity from power outages and loss of electricity on the existing grid, which is crumbling, so this investment will pay off fairly quickly. This is the kind of common sense move that I think will be a hallmark of an Obama Administration.

Gore is also planning to use social media to press the advantage, though he didn't really elaborate on that.

If Gore tried to ram this through as a President or "energy czar" I truly think it would have less impact. His independence is an asset.