“Gore Implores Congress to Save Planet” reported the Associated Press, describing the former vice president’s back to back testimony before House and Senate committees on March 21. It was a media love-fest. And at this congressional hearing, unlike most, real news broke. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers: Nearly every other media outlet followed the AP’s example, reporting Gore’s strong rhetoric, but missing the real story.

Gore has pursued an effective political strategy until now: By talking exclusively about the science of climate change, and pushing the envelope on that front as far as possible (the science, Gore told Congress, is “as certain as gravity”), he goads his critics into fighting him on that ground—where his case is strongest. The more heated that argument gets, the less attention is left over for the much harder question of what we can do that will actually be effective—and affordable.

Until now, Gore has simply urged action, insisting that unspecified solutions are “within our grasp.” But in his congressional testimony he finally presented a (somewhat) specific, wide-ranging, and, as it turns out, completely impractical agenda. The fine points, which he tactfully excluded from his written testimony, are absurd: they include a ninety percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, decentralizing the power grid, and banning the incandescent light bulb. It’s hard to imagine that a man of his political experience could possibly think the program he offered would catalyze bipartisan support for a serious legislative proposal—and that clearly wasn’t his intent.

Having taken control of Congress promising swift action on global warming, Democrats and environmental activists are divided among themselves as to whether they actually want to enact climate legislation this year. Some do, of course—we’ve heard often that the window of opportunity to stop warming is closing rapidly—but the far left would rather campaign on the issue in 2008, with the hope of passing a more radical bill if they win the presidency and pick up more seats in the Senate. Some prominent voices on the left agree: The New Republic recently called for Democrats to put climate change on the back burner, arguing that “there won't be many chances to get this right, and Democrats will need to wait until they can go for broke.”

The most important—and entirely unreported—aspect of Gore’s congressional testimony was his clear signal that he was aligning himself with the do-nothing-now hardliners. For the moment, Gore’s agenda essentially boils down to one thing: Elect Democrats.

Gore has aligned himself with the do-nothing-now hardliners.

Unfortunately, the “go-for-broke” approach that is so appealing to activists is neither the best way to stop warming nor the most likely path to successful legislation. Indeed, it is almost certainly the way to demonstrate to America just how expensive and futile some of the efforts to stop climate change can be. The activists’ agenda is focused entirely on cutting emissions as much and as quickly as possible, regardless of cost or any other practical considerations. But even Gore admits that this is, at best, a multi-decade task. Starting slowly, and taking the time to devise realistic policies that could garner bipartisan support is the only way to succeed in such a lengthy undertaking. This is a marathon, not a sprint—and Gore’s approach would leave us exhausted only yards from the starting gate.

There are three fundamental problems that policymakers must confront: the technological limits on our ability to cut emissions; the cost of large-scale emissions reductions (if they become possible), and the so-called “China-India” problem—the fact that the developing world, the fastest-growing source of emissions and soon to be the source of the majority of global emissions, has a free pass under the Kyoto system that Gore helped create.

Gore’s position on all three of these issues is to essentially dismiss them with a wave of his hand. These problems may or may not be insurmountable in the long run, but refusing to recognize that they even exist—after spending eight years as vice president in an administration that failed to solve any of them—certainly is not a good approach.

Among scholars and policymakers, there is a lively debate about the merits of different approaches—whether to use emissions trading programs, carbon taxes, or even command-and-control regulations; whether to pursue relatively modest short-term emissions reductions or more ambitious, long-term targets; whether government-sponsored scientific research is superior to purely private-sector R&D, and so forth. Gore is openly contemptuous of such concerns: Rather than choosing carefully among different policy options, recognizing the trade-offs and conflicts inherent in each of them, he asks us to simply do them all, simultaneously.

As Gore explained in his House testimony (of which a full transcript has not yet been published),

We should immediately freeze CO₂ emissions in the United States of America, and then begin a program of sharp reductions to reach at least 90 percent reductions by 2050. All of the complex formulas of how we might start reductions years from now, and have a little bit in the first year, a little bit more in the second—I think we need to freeze it right now and then start the reductions. [see minute 55:00 - 55:40]

To someone who knows nothing about global warming, that might seem like a reasonable, measured proposal. But meeting Gore’s demands is technologically impossible, or in any event could only be attempted if cost were literally no object. Serious scholars (see this thoughtful article for an examination of these questions) who have studied the matter think that accomplishing Gore’s goals in twice the time—over the next century—would be ambitious but conceivable.

There are three fundamental problems that policymakers must confront: the technological limits on our ability to cut emissions, the cost of large-scale emissions reductions, and the developing world’s role.

The economic consequences of Gore’s plan would be severe, to say the least—dramatic increases in energy costs, with severe consequences for economic growth and employment. Any honest discussion of the question would have to begin with an acknowledgment of those facts, yet no hint of that was to be found in Gore’s testimony. To the contrary—according to Gore, his plan “will save money and boost productivity.”

Pressed repeatedly in both the House and Senate to explain what his proposals would cost, Gore simply repeated an anecdote about Amory Lovins, a green energy guru, who likes to say that anyone concerned about the costs of alternative energy simply has “the sign wrong”—that is,

instead of putting a minus sign in front of the expenditures that are needed to solve this crisis, you’ve got to put a plus sign in the sense that it’s going to save you money and going to help make the economy stronger. Harry Truman once said when he was president, he said, “I spend 95 percent of my time trying to convince people to do things they ought damn well do for their own benefit anyway.”

With a chuckle, Gore did briefly acknowledge that “it’s not that easy because when you look really closely at it, there are some solutions that have minus signs as well as plus signs”—before insisting that his proposals would “more than pay for themselves.”

So, if we are to believe Gore, we all have the chance to make ourselves rich while saving the planet—we’ve just been too shortsighted to see these opportunities. Could it really be that simple? Gore’s plan for making us wealthier and more competitive in the global economy is for America to:

• Immediately freeze greenhouse gas emissions, and cut them by at least 90 percent by 2050. Emissions would be slashed through a combination of taxes, “cap-and-trade” programs, and command-and-control regulations such as banning incandescent light bulbs. Revenues from stiff greenhouse gas taxes would be used to cut payroll taxes and somehow compensate the poor for the cost of these policies. Strict energy-efficiency standards would be set for cars and trucks, as well as buildings and electric utilities.

• Halt the construction of any new coal-fired power plant that is incompatible with carbon capture and sequestration—which means, essentially, a moratorium because, as Gore admits, this is an experimental technology with limited near-term potential. Instead of burning coal, build a distributed-generation “electranet” of residential rooftop solar panels generating electricity that individuals would sell right  to electric utilities at a government-mandated price—which, of course, would ultimately be paid by consumers. At the same time, “Connie Mae”—a “carbon-neutral mortgage association”—would be created to provide financing for the cost of stringent energy-efficiency requirements for homes and appliances.

• Meet the Kyoto Protocol’s targets—which would require cutting our emissions by roughly one-third in just the next few years—a wildly unrealistic target, at any cost—and quickly negotiate a new treaty to replace the expiring Protocol.

Having personally negotiated an impractical treaty that earned a unanimous vote of disapproval in the Senate, Gore now admits that “Kyoto, as a brand if you will, has been demonized”—so he believes America should simply dispense with the formalities of Senate ratification and somehow meet the unrealistic targets that he agreed to a decade ago. The fact that the European experience with Kyoto has been an unmitigated failure to date also doesn’t concern Gore—he waves those issues aside as mere technicalities that can be easily fixed with time.

Gore also wants the world to move the start date for Kyoto’s successor agreement up two years, to 2010, so it might be negotiated in the early days of the next president’s term, when his (or her) political capital is presumably the strongest. This president, Gore believes, will then be able to find “some creative way” to make China and India accept limits on their own emissions—something that Gore, of course, was unable to accomplish. His faith in the next president’s creativity is touching but misplaced.

The Kyoto Protocol accepted the developing world’s right to unconstrained emissions growth, and it seems quite unlikely that those countries would give up that right now, particularly given the rapidly rising energy demand in fast-growing countries like China, which is building a new coal-fired power plant once every seven to ten days. Gore’s answer to this problem is to force countries to accept Kyoto-style caps or pay green tariffs on the goods they sell to Kyoto-complying nations. Such a proposal would never be accepted by the World Trade Organization—but again, Gore is not concerned with such details.

Gore also tells us that American leadership is what’s needed to convince the Chinese to accept emissions limits. The truth, in fact, is almost certainly the opposite: The more stringent our emissions limits are, the more they will drive up the cost of doing business in America, driving more of our most energy-intensive industries to relocate to developing countries. That gives those countries an even greater incentive to reject our demands for them to accept their own emissions limits. The Kyoto Protocol’s system of funding emission-reduction projects in the developing world to offset Western emissions is another incentive for those countries to refuse emissions limits: Why agree to do voluntarily something that you are being paid to do now?

Rather than choosing carefully among different policy options, recognizing the trade-offs and conflicts inherent in each of them, Gore asks us to simply do them all, simultaneously.

Gore’s confidence in the ability of nations to put their self-interest aside is only matched by his faith-based economics. Gore earnestly insists that we are morally obliged to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions—but that we also stand to make a great deal of money doing so. As Gore explained in the House, “this is not some alchemy or some mysterious process. Pollution is waste. You’ve got to buy raw materials in order to make pollution. If you can figure out how to be more productive and put more of those raw materials into your product, and less into the waste stream, you’re going to save money.”

If that were the truth, there would be no pollution. Yes, there are opportunities to cost-effectively reduce emissions—and most businesses are very aggressive about seeking them out. Indeed, between 2000 and 2004, (the most recent years we have data for) America companies have been more successful than their European counterparts at cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, voluntarily, for that very reason.

But these are small, incremental improvements—not the sort of radical restructuring of every aspect of energy generation and consumption in the country that Gore advocates. Pollution is waste, yes—but most of it is waste that is very difficult to remove. The technologies needed to achieve emissions reductions on the scale Gore imagines simply don’t exist—and, at best, it will cost trillions of dollars to develop and deploy them over the course of many decades. No matter how much Gore calls on us to redefine the possible, these inconvenient truths cannot be ignored.

A feel-good, can-do attitude toward climate change is no substitute for hard-headed analysis of the choices we have before us and the consequences of our actions. Gore has been very successful at perpetuating the idea that we face an absolute choice between do-nothing conservative hardliners and easy, win-win solutions. The truth could hardly be further from reality. America is already doing much to address climate change—and we should do more. But the choices before us are not simple.

Gore’s “solutions” to climate change are to simply compound the mistakes of the past decade, rather than to learn from them. In contrast, a more realistic approach is offered by Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, who testified alongside Gore. He has called upon every country to commit just 0.05 percent of their annual gross domestic product on research and development of zero-emission energy technologies. This would cost about $25 billion per year—much less than Kyoto, or the successor agreement that Gore wants. That would almost certainly produce vastly greater emissions reductions, at a price that Americans—and even Chinese—might be able to afford.

Samuel Thernstrom is managing editor of the AEI Press and director of the W. H. Brady Program in Freedom and Culture at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image credits: Globe with smokestacks by Darren Wamboldt; Al Gore explaining the ocean's currents by Flickr user nando.quintana