Greentech Media

From his early days as a West Point economics professor, when he wrote papers on the U.S. military's role in securing foreign oil supplies for America's, retired Gen. Wesley Clark has seen energy issues in the light of global politics.

The former NATO supreme allied commander continued the theme at the Solar Power International conference in San Diego on Tuesday. He called for a "long-term fight" to meet the energy challenges that the country first grappled with in the 1970s and still face today.

"All of us together have to pull for the long term," Clark said in his keynote address to a packed conference hall. "This is not about one company's profits. It's really about America's national security, That's what it was in the 1970s, and that's what it remains."

Despite the ongoing financial crisis now gripping global markets, Congress' long-awaited passage of an eight-year extension of solar-power tax credits should help the solar industry weather the economic storm, Clark said (see Lawmakers Approve Energy Tax Credits, Bailout.)

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But Clark said that solar's victory will have to be followed with better and long-term government incentives for a host of other renewable-energy sources, such as wind power, to meet the nation's energy challenges and to combat the threat of global warming.

"That's where we have to move, regardless of what the price of oil is today or tomorrow in the market," he told reporters after his speech.