Looking Beyond the Climate Bill Disaster
Clint Wilder
Considering it was a result that I very much expected, I still found
the U.S. Senate's complete abandonment of carbon-cap legislation on July
27 pretty devastating. Beyond the negative effects on the U.S.
clean-tech industry and its creation of much-needed jobs, it sends a
terrible signal to the rest of the world about America's willingness to
finally lead by example on greenhouse-gas reduction and clean- energy
transition. In the wake of the acknowledged failure of the global
climate talks in Copenhagen last December, the outlook for a meaningful
global climate-change agreement and price on carbon is grim indeed.
Back in May,
I
predicted this type of outcome in the Senate, hoping that "the
world's greatest deliberative body" would prove me wrong. I won't rehash
my critique of current Senate politics and obstructionism when one
Senator recently said it so well himself. Sen. Michael Bennet, the
freshman Colorado Democrat appointed to fill Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar's former seat, told The New Yorker's George Packer, "Sit
and watch us for seven days—just watch the floor. You know what you'll
see happening? Nothing. When I'm in the chair, I sit there thinking, I
wonder what they're doing in China right now?" At the end of Packer's
dissection of the Senate in the Aug. 9 issue of the magazine, he
concludes, "And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food
safety, pilot training, veterans' care, campaign finance, transportation
security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of
executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the
world's greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing."
For several years now, when clean-tech executives, investors, and
advocates are asked to name one policy action that would have the most
significant impact on the industry, the answer has been nearly
unanimous: put a price on carbon. So when the U.S. Congress refuses to
act on the single most important action that would move the clean-tech
economy forward, what is left to do?
Well, plenty.
Not all of Washington, D.C. is crippled by the powerful forces of
inaction. Just one week before the Senate pulled the plug on climate
legislation, Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu hosted the top clean-
energy officials of 24 countries in the first-ever Clean Energy
Ministerial meeting. The attending nations represented 80 percent of
world energy use, four billion people, and $50 trillion in GDP. It
wasn't just promises and platitudes;
different countries signed on to 11 separate initiatives covering
appliance and building efficiency, smart grid development, electric
vehicles, solar and wind expansion, off-grid solar, bioenergy, carbon
capture and storage, and other areas.
Obviously, multi-lateral agreements and initiatives have a long history
of going nowhere. I'll be anxious to check back in six months and see
what has been accomplished, and it's a good sign that the ministers have
already committed to meet again next year in Abu Dhabi and in 2012 in
London (which will host the Summer Olympics the same year). And it's not
just government policy wonks; the building-efficiency initiative, for
example, includes private-sector participation from 3M, Dow Chemical,
Grubb & Ellis, Marriott, MIT, Nissan, Target, and Walmart.
Some of the initiatives came with actual dollars committed, but others
did not. To me, that brings up this decade's biggest challenge.
Accelerating the global transition to clean energy requires hundreds of
billions – whether in dollars, euros, yuan, or other currencies -- in
new investments. Even among government and corporate leaders who want to
make it happen, where will the money come from, as we battle out of
recession? As White House top science advisor John Holdren said at the
Ministerial, "Our current (clean-energy) investments are not remotely
commensurate with the size of the challenge."
The most hopeful note may have been sounded not by an energy minister,
but from a top business official: U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. In
a brief speech, Locke said simply, "Clean-energy technologies represent
the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century." It's not a new
thought, but one that bears repeating – loudly and often -- as the
unfortunate chorus of "we can't afford this, our economy is too fragile"
seems to be gaining new momentum, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Whether
you're an entrepreneur, corporate executive, investor, government
leader, engineer, student, or citizen, do not follow the lead of the
U.S. Senate. For clean energy, inaction is not an option.
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Wilder is Clean Edge's senior editor, co-author of The Clean Tech
Revolution, and a blogger about clean-tech issues for the Green section
of The Huffington Post. E-mail him at
wilder@cleanedge.com and
follow him on Twitter at Clint_Wilder.
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