In January I suggested in this blog that reframing the issue of sustainable energy was key to the success in finding and funding alternatives. Global Warming has become a theoretical and political argument that’s preventing us as a nation from confronting the very practical issue that alternatives must come online if we expect to continue to enjoy our place as a global superpower. The opportunity is to use the space race as a model to energize the country and our politicians in a bipartisan effort to quite literally keep American in power. I dubbed the campaign, The Energy Race. (I’ve included that first post below.) Since then I’ve seen several dozen articles digging deeper into the lead that China has in The Energy Race in different areas of sustainable energy. All of it seemed to make excuses or suggest that the US was losing in this area but winning in other areas. There was nothing quite as all-encompassing or definitive in illustrating we are losing this race as when Americans woke up to newspaper headlines that the first man in space was a Russian Cosmonaut. That event turned rhetoric to action and created a sense of urgency to find a way to move past the Soviets in the space race. Kennedy and his science advisers to came up with a plan. To safely land a man on the moon. Congress accepted the challenge and today we’re still benefiting from the technological push of a nation united to achieve what seemed impossible. And in other good news space exploration ultimately was on of the causes the US and USSR first found common ground on. By 1975 we already had joint missions into space. A little healthy competition turned into even healthier collaboration. Let’s hope we see more of the same in clean energy production. Well today’s NY Times headline seems like it’s pretty close to a Yuri Gagarin moment. It’s about as plain as can be. China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy. So there it is. The words “energy” and “race” in the same headline. Maybe not in the catchiest order but it’s a start. Quite literally, The Energy Race is already under way and China is out of the blocks and running while we still wait to hear the starter’s gun. I hope everybody in America and Washington especially gets the news today. I hope they hear the starter’s gun today. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?hp#
Excerpt from Jan 3rd.
It's certainly obvious that the call to save a fevered planet if falling on deaf ears and has become a politicized argument. Disagreement on the science behind Global Warming has become good political sport. With a disastrous consequence. The thinking now seems to be: if Global Warming isn't real, then good ole fashioned polluting of any kind is justified. Our environment is caught in the cross-hairs. And so is our future. Whether or not Global Warming is real (and I've seen enough evidence to be convinced that it is), we are certainly running out of oil. OPEC reports on reserves would suggest that they are actually making oil. The figures haven't changed in years, but by most independent projections, we are already on the backside of supply. The issue can be depoliticized based on this simple fact: the next superpower will be the first nation to create an unlimited power supply for itself. It's pretty simple.
Thomas suggests that we need to "rely on the force of greed," to kick-start American interest; that the proposition of "a whole new industry," might be more compelling. It might be. But I have two concerns. The first being that it will still be politicized - with traditional energy mostly represented by the Republicans, and alternative energy ("a whole new industry") represented by Democrats. A new political stalemate. Secondly, in this sort of scenario, we will need politicians to level the playing field or even tip it a little in the favor of alternative energy businesses. It is difficult to put much faith in an effective energy bill passing in a system where fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber their clean energy counterparts by a hundred to one.
The Earth Race might ultimately get caught up in the same quagmire that has ensnared Global Warming in part, because of semantics. But I do believe in the potential of the "Race" half of Friedman's idea.
Mr. Friedman mentions the Space Race as a model for the Earth Race. I think this is right on. And with the last work the team and I conceived for Al Gore's Alliance, we wanted to cast the issue in this very same light. The newspaper ad above wasn't very creative and never ran, but we thought the key was just to get the idea out there, to let Americans know they are losing the "Energy Race." The Space Race was a race for global supremacy, not an economic race, and it wasn't "American greed" that won the race, but rather another attribute of the American condition: Competition. Americans hate to lose. They are not okay with it in any way, and this is a race they need to know they are losing. And we're not just losing to gentle nations like Sweden and Denmark. America is losing to nations like Egypt, Morocco, and China. The Chinese government clearly doesn't give a shit about polar bears. They aren't doubling their wind energy production every year for the last four years because they are worried about glaciers. And they aren't building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined because they don't emit carbon dioxide. The reason is simply that they plan to be energy independent and thusly, the next global super power.
Americans deserve to know that this race has already begun and we're getting our collective ass kicked. Would America have gotten to the moon if the Russians hadn't been the first to put a man into space? Hard to know. But Americans hate losing, and losing the first leg of that race kicked the national compulsion to compete into high gear. Who know what we spent to get to the moon and who cares? That investment created the computer age and most of the technologies which have transformed our lives. The Energy Race, if we decide to participate, can do the same thing for our future. If a cleaner, more livable planet is a byproduct of our next great progression, then all the better.
China, like Russia during the Space Race, has an advantage. They have a political system somewhat less beholden to global corporations. America, on the other hand, may no longer have the old-school political power of the Kennedy Era to steer the national destiny in opposition of big business interests. Certainly not without a mandate from the American public. The Energy Race can motivate Americans, but can Americans still steer their own destiny?
It's certainly worth a try since the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.
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