"I have not made a Sherman statement." - Al Gore

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21759787/
Gore Coy on Domestic Plans
By Fiona Harvey and Brooke Masters
Financial Times
updated 9:12 p.m. PT, Mon., Nov. 12, 2007

When the United Nations convenes a crucial meeting to discuss the future of the Kyoto protocol in Bali next month, Al Gore will make the keynote speech urging ministers to forge agreement on a successor.

Proponents of a new agreement hope his visit will be more successful than that of Bill Clinton at a similar meeting two years ago, which did not produce a breakthrough.

Mr Gore will come fresh from his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo a few days before. Mr Gore earns up to £50,000 ($100,000, €70,000) a time for speaking engagements and by his own estimate, he makes "about a dozen speeches a week".

The influence the former vice-president exerts internationally among governments is clear from the roll-call of world leaders he is regularly photographed with.

In the last few weeks, he has held meetings with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, eager to shore up his own environmental credentials at home, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, numbers among his previous conquests.

Mr Gore's influence in US politics is also still considerable. Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are still neck and neck in some polls, and the backing of Mr Gore could prove a valuable fillip to their campaigns. All of the candidates have spoken at some length on global warming, seeing it as an issue on which they can distinguish themselves from Republicans and from each other.

But Mr Gore himself is still somewhat coy on the issue. After winning the Peace Prize last month, Mr Gore appeared to rule himself out of the next presidential race. But when asked by the Financial Times last week, he warned: "I have not made a Sherman statement."

General William Tecumseh Sherman, a civil war general, in 1884 declined the opportunity to run for president by saying: "If drafted, I will not run. If nominated, I will not accept. If elected, I will not serve."

Mr Gore said: "There is no need for me to make that statement." Nor would he divulge whether he intended to endorse another candidate.

He told the FT: "I have not decided whether I will endorse any candidate or not, much less who I would endorse."

But Mr Gore is clearly involving himself in the electioneering. He said: "I have talked to all the major candidates in my party, and a couple in the other party, about the climate crisis. I have given advice and answered their questions and will continue to do so."

Mr Gore himself has some radical political solutions in mind for how he thinks global warming should be approached in the US.

"None of the [candidates] have proposed what I think we should propose.

"I think we ought to eliminate the payroll tax and replace it with a carbon dioxide tax. That would be a smart economic policy and a smart environmental policy. It would put a price on carbon dioxide."

He would also provide tax cuts for the kind of businesses that would receive investment under his new partnership between Generation Investment Management and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

For instance, he would like to see a full investment tax credit for advanced solar thermal power plants, a technology that generates electricity from the sun with the use of giant mirrors and steam turbines. This would enable regions such as California to export electricity around the US, he said.

He would also upgrade electricity distribution systems to a "smart grid", or electranet, that would allow people to generate their own electricity from renewable sources and sell it back to power suppliers.

"Individuals as homeowners or business people could sell unlimited quantities of renewably generated electricity into the . . . grid at a price not set by the utility but by a public authority at a public clearing price."

Changing the grid would have an effect similarly explosive to that of the internet on the adoption of computers - an effect that helped to make the early careers of Mr Gore and KPCB.

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