Washington —- Former Vice President Al Gore called Thursday for a "man on the moon" effort to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources within 10 years, a goal that he said would solve global warming as well as economic and natural security crises caused by dependence on fossil fuels.

"The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels," Gore told a packed auditorium in Washington's historic Constitution Hall. "When you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices."

Gore compared the challenge to establishing Social Security and the interstate highway system, as well as landing a man on the moon —- all successes that took more than a single presidency to accomplish and required members of both political parties to overcome their partisanship.

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group Gore leads, put the 30-year cost of his plan —- both government and private —- at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion.

To speed up the transition to new energy sources, Gore said the single most important policy change would be to "tax what we burn, not what we earn," advocating a tax on carbon dioxide pollution.

Gore's proposal would represent a significant shift in where the United States gets its power. In 2005, coal supplied slightly more than half the nation's 3.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Nuclear power accounted for 21 percent, natural gas 15 percent and renewable sources, including wind and solar, about 8.6 percent.

Coal is responsible for more than a third of the United States' carbon dioxide pollution, blamed as the chief culprit for global warming.

Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm about climate change and his documentary on the issue, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar.

In an interview the day before the speech, Gore said that one of the largest obstacles will be updating the nation's electricity grid to harness power from solar panels, windmills and dams and transport it to cities.

The Edison Electric Institute, the private utility industry's trade association, said it shares Gore's support for more renewable generation, a "smarter" power grid and plug-in hybrid motor vehicles.

"But we cannot do the job with renewables and efficiency alone," it said. A portfolio for the future must also include "an expanded role for nuclear energy, as well as natural gas and clean coal with carbon capture and storage."

Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America's Future Energy, a bipartisan think tank, said weaning the nation away from fossil fuels —- coal, oil and natural gas —- can't be done in a decade.

"The country is not going to be able to go cold turkey," Diamond said. "We have hundreds of years of infrastructure with trillions of dollars of investment that is not simply going to be made obsolete."

Gore said Wednesday he hoped the speech would contribute to "a new political environment in this country that will allow the next president to do what I think the next president is going to think is the right thing to do."

He said that both John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

McCain supports building more nuclear power plants as one solution to global warming.

Of the goals Gore outlined Thursday for generating more electricity with solar and wind resources, McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable."