Former VP Gore tells students to battle oil, coal lobbyists

Washington - Former US vice president Al Gore told a group of young green energy proponents on Friday they must take on the job of battling the anti-climate lobbyists in the nation’s capitol, telling them the answer to that problem “has to come from you.”

Giving the keynote speech on Friday night at the Power Shift 2011 conference in Washington, DC, Gore urged the attendees, mostly college students, to take on the daunting task of challenging oil, coal and gas industry lobbyists. “It’s true that governments by and large have been politically paralyzed because the energy companies, the coal companies, the oil companies, the coal-burning utilities, they have spent enormous amounts of money and they have succeeded in many countries in paralyzing the political process,” Gore said at the opening of the April 15-18 conference, according to The Hill. The conference, attended by some 10,000, is being held to promote the environment and clean energy. It has organized a protest for Monday, in front of the White House. Gore urged his audience of young advocates to begin building a stronger political movement necessary for countering the powerful lobbyist industry in Washington. “There are four anti-climate lobbyists on Capitol Hill in this city for every single member of the House and every single member of the Senate,” Gore continued. The conference is being held at a time when the Obama administration is dealing with GOP-led legislation attempting to strip the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of many of its powers, including the regulation of greenhouse gases. That legislation, recently passed by the House, appears to not have the 60 necessary votes in the Senate that would push it into law. In his speech, Gore urged action on the part of conference attendees: “The answer will be you. All we need is political will, but political will is a renewable resource ... Let’s get to work,” The Hill reports.