Lots of talk yesterday at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative about whether the current financial crisis would have a negative impact on global health and development investment. Consensus was that that shouldn't be allowed to happen--no surprise there.
The plenary session was kind of a sleepy affair until Al Gore started talking. He really woke up the room with a harangue about how the coal industry has spent half a billion dollars advertising "clean coal."
"Clean coal is a lie," Gore said, his voice rising. "It's like healthy cigarettes." He argued that the current financial crisis is nothing compared to what's going to happen with the environment. "The world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets," he said. Then he went on to call for a national "smart grid" for electricity and a carbon tax to reduce the payroll tax.
Another point that caught my attention: a worldwide smart grid would allow countries in the developing world to export electricity from renewable energy sources (like wind and the sun) to the rich world.
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