Meet the Press transcript of Al Gore interview.

Redrant: No one bothered to challenge Al Gore on weather carbon dioxide is really a threat.
'Meet the Press' transcript for July 20, 2008

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25761899/

NetcastJuly 20: Exclusive! Former Vice President and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore goes one-on-one with Tom Brokaw. Plus, a political roundtable with NBC's David Gregory & Chuck Todd.
Gore backs new energy policy
Gore: We must listen to scientists
Gore sees role outside White House
Gore: Drilling won’t cure oil price ‘hangover’
Trip ‘important’ for Obama’s image
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MR. TOM BROKAW: Our issues this Sunday: He served as Bill Clinton's vice president for eight years, then lost the presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000. He has since focused on his environmental crusade, winning an Oscar for his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. On Thursday he proposed a bold new plan to address global warming and the energy crisis.
FMR. VICE PRES. AL GORE: 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.
MR. BROKAW: With us, our exclusive guest Al Gore. Then, the 2008 presidential candidates turn their attention overseas, as Barack Obama makes his first trip to Afghanistan and arrives this week in Iraq; while John McCain goes on the attack with his first negative television ad.

Narrator: (From McCain political ad) Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan. He hasn't been to Iraq in years. He voted against funding our troops.
(End videotape)
MR. BROKAW: Insights and analysis from NBC News White House correspondent and host of MSNBC's "Race for the White House" David Gregory and NBC News political director Chuck Todd.
But first, the former Vice President Al Gore.
Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS, Mr. Gore.
VICE PRES. GORE: Thank you very much, Tom.
MR. BROKAW: We were just checking the records. It was eight years ago this week that you last appeared here. Now, the old Vaudeville line would be, "What have you been doing in the meantime?" but we all know. Nobel Laureate, Oscar winner and crusader for conservation of energy and attacking the climate change that we're all experiencing in this country. Made a major speech this week. We want to begin with that. I think that probably our audience understands that there is a growing consensus that climate change is real, but the debate is really, internally, how real is it, what are the effects of it going to be, and how serious will it affect us?
This is how The Boston Globe described your audacious plan to change the way that we get electricity in this country: "Gore challenged Americans to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar, and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels."
The reaction was pretty quick and not all of it was favorable, even from those who are aligned with you in thinking that we have to do something about climate change. This is what Philip Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank, had to say. "At this point I don't think there's anyone in the industry who thinks that goal, as a practical matter, could be met. This is not yet a plan for action; this is a superstretch goal." Your friends at MIT, the Energy Initiative Group up there, and they have some radical ideas as well. They said, "Can we do it this quickly? It would be very, very tough." What you have outlined, in fact, is a goal that may not be achievable.
VICE PRES. GORE: I think it is achievable, and I think it's important that we achieve it, Tom. There were also many other reactions from people who said this is the right goal because we need to reset the bar and change the debate. Our current course is completely unsustainable. We are being told by scientists around the world, particularly the international group that is charged with studying this and reporting to world leaders, that we may have less than 10 years in order to make dramatic changes lest we lose the chance to, to avoid catastrophic results from the climate crisis. We're building up CO2 so rapidly that we're seeing the consequences scientists have long predicted. And the only way to take responsible action is to get at the heart of the problem, which is the burning of fossil fuels. And the quickest and easiest way to back out the coal, which is the worst of the problem, and oil, is to look at electricity generation. And there, there have been two important changes. Number one, the cost of the new solar electricity options, wind power and geothermal power, not to mention efficiency gains, have come down and they're coming down as the demand increases the attention paid to innovation. The other change is that oil prices and coal prices have been skyrocketing and because China and other emerging economies are demanding so much of it, and new discoveries of oil have fallen off dramatically, no matter the debate over drilling, the new discoveries have been declining and the new demand has been completely swamping it, and over the long term, those prices, everyone agrees, are going to continue to go up. So now it is competitive to switch over. At the same time we're seeing our national security experts saying we're highly vulnerable with 70 percent of our oil coming from foreign countries, the largest reserves being in the most unstable region of the world, the Persian Gulf; and our economy is being really hurt badly by rising gasoline prices, rising coal prices. So we need to make a big strategic shift to a new energy infrastructure that relies on renewables.
MR. BROKAW: I don't think anyone doubts that we have to make some profound changes in this country and make some tough decisions and maybe even suffer some pain, but let's talk about the cost. This is your own group in terms of describing what this may cost. The numbers are from $1 1/2 trillion to $3 trillion as an estimate. Where does that money come from for a new president who is facing a $400 billion deficit, has two wars going on, needs an economic stimulus if it's a Democrat, as Obama has outlined--we have a housing crisis in this country--and probably diminished tax revenues?
VICE PRES. GORE: Well, those, those are not all public funds. That's the total private and public investment, which is comparable to what we would spend over that same period of time if we continued to rely on coal and oil, which is rising so rapidly in price. It's less than the cost of the Iraq war, according to Joe Stiglitz and some other economists, and it is an investment.
MR. BROKAW: We haven't spent that much on the Iraq war, but we've spent a lot of money.
VICE PRES. GORE: Well, if you--well, Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, estimates the all-in cost of the Iraq war as more than that total. But, but, in any case, when you talk about a large strategic initiative of this kind, whichever direction we take, it's going to cost a lot of money. But, in this case, the investment would be paid back many times over and we could get the equivalent of dollar a gallon gasoline for cars as we switch toward an electric fleet.
MR. BROKAW: What would electricity cost in terms of the transition while it's under way? Most estimates are that it would cost a lot more money, and that would have a devastating effect on Main Street and especially on rural America.
VICE PRES. GORE: Well, I, I don't agree with that, and I think that the devastating effect on Main Street and the rest of the country is coming from the present rising costs for electricity. And the reason why is China and the other emerging economies again are bidding up the price of every lump of coal and every drop of oil, and the new discoveries have been declining, so the estimates are now that these price increases are likely to continue until we stop just taking baby steps and offering gimmicks and, instead, have a strategic initiative.
Now, Tom, among other things, you are the biographer of the, of the greatest generation, and, at the beginning of that period when they rose to that challenge, there were a lot of people who said that couldn't be done. We couldn't make these hundreds of thousands of airplanes, we couldn't mobilize to win that struggle. And yet we did. The only limiting factor here is political will. This climate crisis is threatening our country, threatening all of human civilization. I know that sounds shrill, and I know people don't like to, to hear phrases like that, but it is the reality. We have to awaken to it, and we have to mobilize to confront it.
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MR. BROKAW: But what do we have to give up to reach the cost of a trillion and a half to three trillion dollars? There's going to have to be some pain, some sacrifice on the part of the American taxpayer, isn't there?
VICE PRES. GORE: Well, I, I think we should have a shift in our tax system, and I think we should tax what we burn and not what we earn, and I think we should take account of the incredibly expensive environmental costs that go into burning coal and oil. I also think that the coal and oil industries can play a big role in this if they will make good on the promise that carbon capture and sequestration will be real. Right now, there's no demonstration project, there's nothing real about it. The, the phrase clean coal is a contradiction in terms. There's no such thing as clean coal now. But the industry knows that with an all-out push toward capturing the CO2 and burying it safely, that can be done.