01:00 AM EDT on Monday, August 15, 2005

Bill Clinton was in Portsmouth Thursday, and he said something that jumped out at us. We should all be discussing climate change, he told the throng at the fancy new Carnegie Abbey Club -- "and how to make money from it." In short, America must launch a major effort to find alternatives to oil. It was the biggest applause line of the evening.

The environmental catastrophe posed by climate change -- less euphemistically known as global warming -- should be reason enough to launch a Manhattan Project for alternative energy (the Manhattan Project, of course, was the all-out World War II effort to make the atom bomb). America's frightening dependence on the oil sheiks who fund terrorism should be another motivation.

Yet the Bush administration has failed to wage a national campaign to develop alternative-energy sources. Indeed, the just-signed energy bill is mostly goodies for the already vastly profitable oil, coal and gas industries.

Since our national "leaders" clearly don't consider America's environment and security reason enough to get us off fossil fuels, maybe money will inspire them. In speaking to the basic impulses that animate today's Washington, Mr. Clinton seemed to understand this.

Money is in fact already being made from alternative energy, but not much in the United States. Denmark, by contrast, has become the leader in wind power; the Danish Vestas Wind Systems takes orders from all over the world for its power-generating wind turbines.

Vestas once toyed with building a plant in Oregon or Washington State. When it didn't, people there were very disappointed. The company will be shipping turbine parts through the Port of Vancouver, in southern Washington; just that little piece of alternative-energy business is being welcomed.

The few American companies that have entered the alternative-energy game are generally doing well. For example, United Solar Ovonic, which makes solar panels in Auburn Hills, Mich., has a six-month backlog in orders. It recently broke ground on a second plant, which will hire 200 people.

Americans, who pioneered in space and still have the most outstanding research universities, should indeed be out in front in the development of new sources of energy. Bravo, Bill!