Vice President Al Gore spoke to local high school and college students on the afternoon of May 17, as part of The Panetta Institute’s 2010 Lecture Series at CSU-Monterey Bay. He also appeared at Monterey’s Golden State Theater for an evening forum, which was broadcast on Cable Channel 26, KAZU (90.3 FM) and www.panettainstitute.org.

The former U.S. vice president, Nobel Peace Prize winner and subject of Oscar-winning global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth addressed topics ranging from the carbon footprint of factory farms to campaign financing. Frank Sesno of PBS's Planet Forward moderated. (Read the Weekly's exclusive interview with Sesno here.)

Highlights of Gore’s comments at CSUMB follow.

On nuclear power:

“The cost is extremely high, and it’s been going up at the rate of 15 percent every single year. And it’s not cost-competitive in any way, except for massive government subsidies…

"They only come in one size, extra-large. What used to cost 300-400 million dollars is now 4-5 billion dollars…

“For the eight years that I worked in the White House, every single nuclear weapons proliferation problem we had to deal with was connected to a nuclear reactor program…If you’re the dictator of some little country, and if you’ve a team of scientists or engineers that can manage a nuclear reactor program… you can force them to work secretly at night building nuclear weapons.”

Solar, wind and geothermal power, along with biofuels, are better solutions, he added. He expects the cost of photovoltaic cells to decrease much in the way computer chips have.

On corporate accountability:

“We need to recognize the price tag that CO2 has. It directly threatens the future of our civilization…Just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean we can’t measure it and keep track of it.

“The most important changes we need is changes in laws and regulations, and global treaties. And the principle objective has to be to recognize the significance of global warming pollution and put a price on it, so that they take into account in business plans. The money that is collected from that can be given right back to people in a tax rebate or reduction of the payroll tax, there are planty of ways to do it. But if it’s free, and if it’s OK to use the atmosphere as an open sewer, they’re gonna do it."

On the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate talks:

“Our country is the leader of the world, and that’s something we’re proud of. But if you’re the leader of the world, you gotta step up to the plate and lead…[Other countries] look to the United States because they think we’ve got a moral core in this country…'If the United States of America, the strongest military, greatest democracy—if they’re not doing anything about it, we’re not gonna do anything about it.'”

The House of Representatives passed climate legislation before Copenhagen, he added, but the Senate fiddled with it for 17 months, and Obama had to go to Denmark without a bill.

“The lobbyists have so much influence [in the Senate], they almost have to get permission from the polluters to do anything…

"You need to know the truth. Our system has gotten to the point now where money plays such a big, outsized role that the lobbyists have way too much power…Lobbyists control enough [senators] that it has thus far been impossible to get 60 votes. So President Obama was forced to go to Copenhagen without having that law passed. So the other countries said, ‘If the United States is not going to do anything about it, you can’t expect us to.’

"If the Senate passes legislation this year, then the meeting in Mexico in December could be a breakthrough meeting.”

On the Gulf oil spill’s impact on future policy:

“I hope that at a minimum they clean out that rat’s nest at the Minerals Management Service…

"What the investigative reports have shown is that there was really scandalous corruption in that part of the government…Apparently in recent months they had given the approval to these operators to go ahead and drill even without requiring them to complete the environmental reviews that are required by law and go through the permit process. I think that’s outrageous.

"Now, that agency gets its budget in part from the fees paid when the oil is produced. So if they turn down a permit, their budget’s cut. That’s what the economists would call a misalighned incentive. In other words, they’re encouraged to do something that may be contrary to the public interest.

"So I think that’s one of the changes that ought to be made. And we ought to do an assessment of whether this deep-ocean drilling is anywhere near as safe as they told us it was.”

On domestic offshore drilling:

“It’s almost irrelevant to the volume of oil that we’re importing. It might be great for oil company profits, but in terms of meaningfully reducing our dependence on foreign oil, it means virtually nothing. So they’ve sold the impression that the way we can be less dependent on a foreign oil market dominated by oil reserves in the Middle East is by going all-out, ‘drill, baby, drill.’

"Well, even if they got everything they wanted, it wouldn’t equal a little sliver [of our current oil consumption]…I would not buy into the illusion that our energy independence is going to be affected in any way by offshore oil drilling. It’s virtually insignificant.”

On future global warming impacts:

“If we continue on the current course, the impact would be catastrophic…

"In the last 100 years, we have quadrupled the number of people on the planet. When I was born it had just crossed 2 billion people, and now it’s almost 7 billion people…

"The direct impact is, [global warming] acidifies the ocean and it raises the temperature. The cascading impacts include the melting of all of the mountain glaciers, including in the Sierras by the way, which is one of the most important sources of agricultural water and drinking water for California. In the Andes, the Alps, the Himilayas, et cetera, they’re already beginning to melt.

"And the polar ice caps I talked about, that has secondary effects…When it melts, the dark ocean absorbs it, so the temperatures are going up three times faster in the Arctic than in the rest of the world right now. And in the Arctic there’s a frozen tundra, and there’s a lot of frozen methane it contains there, and CO2. And as that thaws out, it’s already started to release that. And if that ran its course, that alone could double the amount of global warming pollution…

“And each meter of sea level rise creates 1 million climate refugees. Thousands have already had to move from some of the low-lying island nations. You take a country like Bangladesh, which already has so many millions of people already living at a low altitude, near sea level, that is an example of many areas around the world. Most people live near the coast all over the world—includin’ y’all…

“Bigger droughts and longer droughts are among the consequences, because solar moisture is evaporated much more quickly with higher temperature. That means bigger fires, and California’s certainly had more than its share…

“Bigger floods, because the warmer oceans evaporate moisture into the atmosphere…so when there are storm conditions, more of it thaws at one time, and you get much bigger floods…

“[Scientists] would say it’s a mistake to say that any particular extreme weather event is caused by global warming, because there’s natural variability in weather and there are always multiple causes. But the odds of having a big downpour like that go way up…Everywhere in the world, [there’s] 4 percent more humidity in the air than when I was born, and each additional degree puts another 3 to 4 percent in…We’re loading the dice…

“You have tropical diseases that move into the tropical latitudes…

"And the biologists would say that probably the most serious consquence in their eyes is the extinction crisis. The rate at which species are going extinct is now 1,000 times above the natural background rate, and if it stays on this trajectory…it could reach the levels that accompanied the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And this time, instead of an asteroid colliding with the Earth, it’s us colliding with the Earth.

"And we don’t have to collide with it. We can become more vigilant, adopt more renewable energy and change the technologies that we’re using, and we can let up all this impact.”

On global warming skeptics:

“Even if you don’t believe it’s happening, help us become less dependent on Middle East oil. Help us create the tens of millions of good new jobs building solar and wind and geothermal, and get this economy going again.”

On young people’s power to change the world:

“Don’t doubt yourself…Empower yourselves with knowledge. Learn about it. And then, decide if you’re serious about it, pick a field of study that will equip you with the ability to be very effective on this. Get involved as a citizen, and get involved in the political process…

"If you decide you want to make a difference, you can. You really can.”

On the most promising sources of alternative energy:

“Number one, by far, is efficiency improvements…

"Solar energy, particularly if we make a commitment to really invest in solar energy. Wind power: huge source of energy. Enhanced geothermal energy. And second- and third-generation biofuel. I supported making ethanol out of corn. I now think that was a mistake …

"If we come in with better biofuels that don’t rely on food crops and don’t compete with food, we can cycle that CO2 through the environment. Some people are working with algae…

"Those are the five that I think are the most promising, but again, efficiency is the most important one."

On public service:

“If you go into public service, you’ll be sharing responsibility for making important decisions that are gonna have a huge impact…Stay true to your values and principles…

"Losing an election’s not the worst thing in the world. You know what’s worse than that? Going against your core principles and pretending to be what you’re not.”

On the 2000 election:

“I’ve long since moved on. I figure, you win some, you lose some, and then there’s that little-known third category…

"Everything I want to say [on the subject of U.S. elections] is in that book, The Assault on Reason…

"Starting a half-century ago, television overtook newspapers as the main means of communication, and it’s so dominant now that these 30-second TV ads are the principle means of political dialog. And they don’t lend themselves to rational discussions of what the right thing to do is. They press emotional hot buttons, and as I said earlier, they’re extremely expensive. More often than not, the candidate that wins, all other things being equal, is gonna be the one that’s raised the most money to buy the most ads on television…

"And a candidate that’s not independently wealthy, the only place they can get that much money is by going to these special interests and saying, ‘Will you support me?’…All too often, human nature takes its course…

"It’s not gonna happen, but I believe that all federal elections should be completely publicly financed…

"The Internet is becoming much more important. And as that continues, I do think we have the chance to see the re-creation of a political conversation where logic and ideas and positions on the issues and articulateness has a much bigger role to play.”