The other day, my eldest wondered aloud what our country would be like today had we elected Al Gore as president. Oh, wait. We did. But what if he had actually been honored with that position? No one knows, but I’d wager a guess that at least once in awhile, someone would make a statement that I haven’t heard much lately: “Our president is so smart!”

Check out this snippet from a speech Gore recently made:

…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.

…when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

But wait! We can’t survive without those fossil fuels. How could we possibly get by?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

President or no, that man is smart. The entire speech is here. I’ll be sending that link to my eldest, so he can do some guesswork as to what our country might look like, if only.