In some respects our position is similar to that of the late eighteenth-century pioneers in electricity and magnetism, and also to that of early 20th… - Brian O'Leary

Dear Mr. [Al] Gore: I am a former astronaut, Cornell professor, physics faculty member at Princeton University and visiting faculty member in technology assessment at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, I was Mo Udall’s energy advisor and speechwriter during his 1975 Presidential campaign, author, AAAS Fellow, World Innovation Foundation Fellow, NASA group achievement award recipient, and founder of the New Energy Movement.<p>You have asked the public to address the important question, “How can we reverse global climate change?” I agree that taking on that task is critical for our collective survival. You have also stated that we must freeze and drastically reduce our carbon emissions. I agree.<p>The most promising answer to your question is surprisingly simple and can be summed up in two words: new energy. My experience finds that serious discussion of new energy is still politically incorrect in mainstream circles, which is appalling. Delays in implementing life-saving innovation will be at our collective risk and peril. The urgency for action in these times is unprecedented in the human journey. Quantum leaps in energy innovation, which some of us in the scientific community are aware of, can provide the needed solution, hopefully in time to avert global disaster.

The governments and private industry in India and Japan are funding top-level scientists and engineers to develop free energy for commercial applications, something about which the American government appears to know little or nothing. Cold fusion pioneers Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons, formerly of the University of Utah, are now in France being funded by a Japanese consortium. The inventor of the N-machine, Bruce DePalma, formerly of MIT, is now developing his free energy concepts in New Zealand. Other American inventors and researchers have gone underground most of the time (e.g. Thomas Bearden and Sparky Sweet), have been sued (Sweet), had their devices confiscated by the Government (e.g., the Canadian inventor John Hutchinson and American Dennis Lee), been convicted and jailed under questionable charges (Lee) and in at least one case have been told by the Government to change careers – or else (e.g. Adam Trombly).<p>In all, I have met several dozen free energy researchers. What all of these individuals have in common is the underfunding of their work such that it proceeds to proof-of-concept but no further. Developing useful prototypes requires a much larger effort as would come from bringing the researchers together in a research and development effort analogous to the Apollo or Manhattan projects. But there has been no public and little private support for free energy inventors – particularly in the United States – even though this country is where most of the ideas come from. We seem to be so active in repressing this technology we have driven most of our brightest inventors away or underground. <p>The remarkable fact is, we seem to have had this technology for one century! Nikola Tesla was among the first of such energy mavericks, who through the decades, have repeatedly demonstrated free energy, only to be suppressed later. For a whole century we probably didn’t have to pollute the Earth to meet our energy needs!

I sympathize with my former colleagues in Houston who are spending ten years, perhaps forever, awaiting their flights into space. But this alone cannot justify the shuttle.<p>On the positive side, I believe that an unmanned space program emphasizing applications satellites and the exploration of the planets would be both economical and fundamental in our quest for knowledge. Such a program could be funded annually for between one and two billion dollars and thus free money and resources for more urgent priorities. Cooperating with the Soviet Union may reduce the costs further.