Environmental Community Offers Obama a Green Economic Recovery Plan
- Frances Beinecke
- President of NRDC, New York City
- Blog | About
- Posted November 25, 2008 in Green Enterprise , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
After 35 years working as an environmental advocate, I have done my share of consensus building and coalition tending. It's not always easy finding common ground, even among those who are fighting for the same cause. But today the environmental community reached an unprecedented level of agreement. More than 30 leading conservation, climate, and environmental groups representing millions of members released a joint plan for President-Elect Obama's transition team.
The plan covers a wide range of issues that merit prompt presidential attention, but it underscores the immediate need to channel America's ingenuity into solving the entwined economic, climate, and environmental crises.
As members of our coalition worked tirelessly over the past few weeks to devise the plan, I noticed that many of us were grappling with the same two conflicting emotions.
The first was hope. Our meetings and conference calls had a level of excitement I have not detected in years. After two terms of failed leadership, we see the promise in a president who made solving global warming the subject of his second major policy announcement.
But that optimism is tempered by a terrible sense of urgency. The people who drafted this roadmap come from the frontlines. They are the climate scientists who witness the quickening loss of Arctic sea ice and the punishing Southwestern drought. They are the agency watchdogs who have seen what an unchecked energy industry has done to our Western wildlands. They are the men and women who know that key indicators--from toxins in our bodies to global warming pollution levels--are at the tipping point.
But it's not just the Earth that's in danger. Even as we drafted this report, the financial news kept getting worse. What could be more urgent than rebuilding our economy?
These days, as I bounce between the feelings of urgency and hope, I draw inspiration from the way President-elect Obama seems to be viewing this moment in time. In his victory speech, he reminded us that America is facing a long list of significant obstacles, but out of these challenges can arise opportunity. We can face these difficult times with bold measures and visionary leadership.
The plan drafted by our environmental coalition offers a starting point. It details how we can lift ourselves out of this economic crisis through investing in clean energy solutions that solve global warming. Done right, this approach will revitalize our economy by generating millions of good-paying jobs that use the skills workers already have to install clean energy and green infrastructure right here in the United States.
Remember, it is not just my NRDC colleagues and I who believe in this approach. Environmentalists of all stripes have united behind it, as well as a host of other solutions for healing our landscapes, waterways, wildlife, oceans, and the air we breathe.
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Comments
Rick Rossi — Nov 25 2008 12:37 PM
While there is much excitement over the prospect of reducing our dependence on foreign oil as an energy source, building wind and solar array farms can involve a lengthy and intricate process of clearing economic, regulatory, and environmental hurdles.
But what if you could effectively eliminate many of the obstacles?
What if you could eliminate the cost for land, the cost for maintenance of the land, and the cost for security? What if you had guaranteed accessibility for both repairs and proximity to our electrical grid? What if you could drastically diminish the public resistance over issues like unsightliness, noise, and environmental impact? What if you could fast-track the permitting process due to mixed use of public land?
Finally, what if this land is already available in huge quantities in every area of the United States?
The incoming Obama Administration has targeted developing renewable energy and the rebuilding of our nation's infrastructure as two of its main economic themes. There is a way that we can knit these themes together. Our national network of highways already offers prime land for the siting of wind and solar farms.
Vast stretches of our highways contain wide natural divides between opposing lanes of traffic. This land is already publicly owned and maintained. Its accessibility for both repairs and proximity to our electrical grid cannot be matched. It also has a natural security buffer, with streams of traffic both ways, and with the normal complement of state police on patrol. I many areas, there is open space for wind to flow and for the sun to shine.
Environmental and permitting process issues are muted due to the land's primary use a public highway. In addition, public resistance over acoustic and aesthetic issues is neutralized. Highway traffic is far louder than an operating windmill, and, well, highways are already unsightly.
We could double our results. We could renew our transportation infrastructure at the same time as deploy a new energy delivery system.
Luke Bess — Nov 25 2008 12:39 PM
I think if we really want to bring all sides together and fix our problems, Our first step needs to be forget the past. Stop blaming everyone else for the problems in government and the enviorment. They are all politicians and have all failed us. When we get people to work together and not for their "party", we will overcome all.
Jim Bullis — Nov 25 2008 07:39 PM
It is very reasonable to impose cap and trade rules or a direct CO2 tax. Another government action that would work effectively to reduce CO2 would be elimination of the oil depletion allowance. This is a subsidy to the oil industry and, indirectly, to the auto industry. We can also consider rebates and tax credits to projects like wind and solar energy producing systems.
However, all these possibilities come around quickly to a cost to the public, whether it is a tax, a budget shortfall requiring a tax increase, rate increase for power, or simply increased price of gasoline.
Even before the economic crisis there was a real need to find ways to make such added costs manageable for the public.
On a long term basis there are clear potential benefits from improving building insulation or not so clear possible benefits from having solar panels on houses that reduce energy costs. Making changes to existing housing is often more of a cost benefit challenge, and sometimes the decisions hinges on a subsidy or tax credit. The fallacy of such stimulants is that they fail if widespread action occurs such that everyone is taking subsidies from everyone. These are then no longer meaningful. So planning needs to be based on cost analyses without subsidies. The cost analysis must also be realistic with full recognition of the cost of money needed to finance such improvements. There is a particular problem with residential systems, since the cost of retrofitting improvements on existing structures can be especially a problem, and the existing structures tend to be not due for replacement for many years.
Comparatively, the automobile is a more frequently turned over asset. Thus, changes to cars can be much more near term solutions. Even cars are not turned in at a high rate so it important to get some real improvements in the pipeline right now.
Miastrada Company is developing a car that could be make a dramatic improvement in the world rate of CO2 emissions. In contrast, the emerging automobile products seem to be oriented toward making large energy consuming vehicles that purport to be efficient due to inclusion of plug-in electric propulsion capabilities. Since there seem to be not significant efforts to reduce energy requirements that such propulsion must provide, the benefits will be to simply shift from oil to coal as the basic fuel source for these cars, and if coal is the resulting fuel, the CO2 emissions could actually increase over status quo cars. A Draconian degree of "cap and trade" or other tax or mandate will be needed to prevent coal from being the source of the incremental load of these emerging vehicles. And even if the use of coal is suppressed, to power large inefficient cars on natural gas sourced electricity does not result in a major reduction in CO2 emissions.
Miastrada Company is working to get general recognition that it is possible to build a very different kind of car which requires about 80% less energy even at full highway speeds. Even though the Miastrada design has emphasized superior safety and comfort, the problem remains that the Miastrada car requires significant adjustment in public expectations for how cars should look. It is particularly important that foolish and false solutions not be subsidized such that the needed process of adjustment will seem unnecessary. Miastrada is expected to cost around $12,000 in large volume production and its use of fuel will be so low that the its operators will be greatly compensated for making the adjustment.
The most extreme example of a serious misstep in development of a climate solution is the "Karma" by Fisker. This is undoubtedly a muscle car requiring a 260 hp gasoline engine except for when it runs on electricity, when it will probably still require up to 260 hp in the form of electrical energy from coal. And they expect this consuming monster to sell for $80,000. Of course, at this price it should not be much of an issue.