Al Gore's challenge

Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. was born March 31,1948 He's an American environmental activist, an an author, former politician(senator), and former journalist. He served as the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under president Bill Clinton. He also ran for president and lost to George W. Bush.

On July 17 ,2008 Al Gore gave a speech on how our nation is in danger and nobody is doing anything about it. "Our weather has been changing a lot and we have a big crisis on our hands." The United States keeps borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroys the planet. Every bit of this has to change. According to Gore "the solution to our problem is to stop our reliance on carbon-based fuels". Carbon-based fuels products are plastic bottles ,cars, plastics bags, computers and many more things. Al Gore believes we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home. These fuels are solar power, wind power and geothermal power. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth and enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet percent of US electricity demand. We can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.

I believe this is a very big challenge and that maybe 10 years is not enough. I believe that if we don't do nothing to help our nation get better something very bad can happen to our earth.

There's not much I can do myself to meet this challenge but I will definitely talk about this topic with my family , friends and teachers. I am going to try to encourage everyone to listen to Al Gore speech and maybe together we can do something to help our nation before is to late.

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. Most wind power is generated in the form of electricity. Large scale wind farms are connected to electrical grids. Individual turbines can provide electricity to isolated locations. In windmills, wind energy is used directly as mechanical energy for pumping water or grinding grain.

Solar power is a powerful source of energy. The sunlight that shines on the Earth in just one hour could meet world energy demand for an entire year.The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is the sun’s rays (solar radiation) that reach the earth.Solar energy can be converted into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity.

Geothermal power is energy generated by heat stored beneath the Earth's surface or the collection of absorbed heat in the atmosphere and oceans.The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world is located in The Geysers, a geothermal field in California As of 2007, geothermal power supplies less than 1% of the world's energy.