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Energy Policy Forum > 2003
Articles
A Declaration of Energy Independence
Amanda Griscom
Grist Magazine
June 30, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=16295
Two ambitious clean-energy coalitions made headlines this
month, sweeping out from under the rug vital and far-reaching
environmental issues that the Bush administration has steadfastly
ignored. The Energy Future Coalition, boasting endorsements
from heavies on both sides of the party line as well as from
high-profile industry and environmental interests,
called for a one-third reduction in U.S. oil consumption
and a one-third reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over
the next 25 years.
At the same time (though in a completely
unrelated effort), the Apollo Alliance, a labor-environmental
coalition endorsed
by a dozen influential unions, called for a 10-year, $300
billion federal investment in clean-energy technologies and
green building, which would lead to the creation of more
than 1 million new manufacturing jobs designed to help usher
in a sustainable economy.
Both the Energy Future Coalition
and the Apollo Alliance presented useful energy-policy recommendations
to achieve
their goals, but a larger, more valuable lesson lies in the
strategy these groups deployed to get their messages out
to the public. At a time when environmental issues are barely
registering as a tremor on the Richter scale of public concerns
-- compared, say, to the seismic quakes of war, recession,
and the general Mad Cowboy Disease reverberating throughout
America's domestic and foreign policy -- green crusaders
are faced with the challenge of how to make environmental
concerns matter to both voters and candidates in the 2004
election. The Energy Future Coalition and the Apollo Alliance
have hit on an effective approach that the movement as a
whole would do well to adopt: wrap an environmental agenda
in the mantle of today's more emotionally immediate issues
of national security and new jobs.
Take, for instance, the
motto that the Apollo Alliance uses in its promotional material: "Let's
switch our energy dependence from the Middle East to the
Midwest: Freedom from
Mid-east oil. One million new energy jobs." Not a word
is mentioned about the environment, even though the alliance
calls for aggressive federal incentives for hybrid-electric
cars, green buildings, solar panels, wind turbines, energy-efficient
appliances, carbon-scrubbers on power plants, improved public
transportation, a high-efficiency magnetic-levitation rail
system, smart urban growth, and other cutting-edge green
innovations that, if encouraged on a federal level, would
create huge opportunities for job growth and be a major boon
to the environment.
The failure to express this initiative in green terms was
hardly an oversight, according to Apollo Alliance President
Bracken Hendricks, who has been gathering support for the
Alliance over the past year and first publicly announced
its existence on June 5. "Though we are trying to achieve
objectives that will bring enormous gains to the environment,
they will also bring major security and economic-development
benefits, and that's what concerns people today and that's
what catches their attention," he said.
When defining
its strategy and mission, the Apollo Alliance conducted a
poll in Pennsylvania, a key industrial swing
state, where it asked voters, "What's the most important
issue right now?" Seventy-two percent of respondents
cited economic distress and loss of manufacturing jobs, while
2 percent cited the environment. But when the same voters
were asked whether they would support a plan that would aggressively
develop a green economy and be an engine for 1 to 3 million
new manufacturing jobs, 72 percent said they would strongly
support it.
"
The environmental movement needs to recognize a unique moment
right now in the political climate when there are pressing
challenges for progressives: the hollowing out of the manufacturing
job space and the national security imperatives around imported
oil," says Hendricks who as a Special Assistant in the
Clinton Administration worked on sustainable development
issues for Vice President Gore. "We can answer these
challenges directly while channeling our solutions toward
green outcomes."
The power of Hendricks' argument is
evident in the growing roster of unions that have signed
on to the Apollo Alliance
-- the United Steelworkers of America, the International
Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the United
Mine Workers of America, and the International Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers among them. That power is particularly
potent when you consider that most of these unions each have
well over half a million members and represent a critical
segment of America's voter base.
Futurama
Like the Apollo Alliance, the Energy Future Coalition deftly
couched its proposals in the hot-button issues of today's
political climate. The idea for the Energy Future Coalition
was hatched soon after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, by Timothy
Wirth, former Democratic senator from Colorado and president
of the United Nations Foundation, and some
colleagues over a dinner discussion about the vast implications
of the tragedy and the related energy issues. They
gathered support from a long list of notables; members of
their advisory board and steering committee include R. James
Woolsey, former CIA director, Roxanne J. Decyk, senior vice
president of Shell Oil, Chansoo Joung, managing director
of Goldman Sachs, Howard (Bud) Ris, president of the Union
of Concerned Scientists, and Maggie Fox, deputy executive
director
of the Sierra Club.
Over the last 18 months, the coalition
convened six working groups in the areas of transportation,
biofuels and agriculture,
energy efficiency, international energy issues, the future
of coal, and a "smart" electricity grid (one designed
for efficiency and compatible with all forms of distributed
generation). In each area, representatives
from business, labor, and environmental groups weighed in
on how they proposed to achieve dramatic reductions in oil
use and carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, and the results
have been published in a 129-page report. Though the report
does cite global warming as one of its central concerns,
the language of the report focuses heavily on the economic
opportunity of innovation, national security, and America's
leadership role and reputation after invading Iraq.
"
The world is watching to see what next step we take and whether
America's can-do attitude will chart a new course for everyone.
This is a time of opportunity -- a major technological revolution
is beginning in energy, with great potential markets. And
the reality is that where America goes, others will likely
follow," says the report's introduction. "America's
example sets the tempo and the direction of action far beyond
its borders and far into the future."
This apparent opportunism might be somewhat disturbing for
those of us who had objections to the war on Iraq, but it
may also be a sound strategy, given the daunting challenge
in today's climate of making radically eco-friendly proposals
sound not only feasible but appealing to corporate titans
and Beltway decision-makers. "We went to great lengths
to make the tone of our proposal positive and optimistic," said
Reid Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition,
who pointed out that the energy debate has historically been
defined by warring special interests -- that is, by an intractable
stalemate between environmentalists and industry. "This
conflict, along with overwhelming issues like global warming
and energy independence, inspires a feeling of hopelessness
and futility, and then gets tossed into the too-hard category,
which is why it's so critical [for clean-energy advocates]
to maintain a tone of optimism," he said.
One of the
key conservative leaders of the coalition, C. Boyden Gray,
who was former legal counsel to President Bush
and is an unapologetic skeptic of climate science, exhibited
a bit more gravitas when describing his involvement during
the press conference: "Our economy and living standards
are still hostage to forces beyond our control. Every recession
in the last 40 years was preceded by a significant increase
in oil prices. And as we all know too well, supply disruptions
and price shocks are not the only risks of our oil dependence.
I am heartened that leaders from the automobile industry,
labor, and environmental groups all agree on the need to
promote advanced vehicles and cleaner, alternative fuels."
It was clear that Gray and the other coalition leaders --
Timothy Wirth and John Podesta, formerly President Clinton's
chief of staff -- agreed that their common interest lay in
signaling to Washington not only that all these hot-button
issues are interconnected, but that the environment-industry
impasse is not intractable. "If the political establishment
looks up and says, 'We can move beyond the current inertia
in the
system,' they'd find a very broad coalition," said Podesta.
To
date, though, the Bush administration has summarily dismissed
any attempts at bridging the differences among business,
labor, and environmental groups. "The administration
made a decision in early 2001 that they were not going to
waste any time with all this silly dialogue stuff that has
for decades led to stalemate; they were just going to talk
to their friends in business and just go ahead and get the
job done [without any bickering]," said David Hawkins,
director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the cochair of the EFC's carbon working group.
The current conversation sparked by these two coalitions – a
conversation taking place on such a grand scale and with
so many notable public figures from different sides of the
debate -- makes the administration's attitude seem all the
more myopic.
Winners and ... Winners?
As it turns out, the strategy of cooperation was in itself
enough to get the message out. In the Wall Street Journal,
the New York Times, the Washington Post -- everywhere, the
coverage of the Energy Future Coalition and the Apollo Alliance
played up the "adversaries unite!" angle. But exactly
how extensive is the agreement between these historically
conflicting interests? Are we really talking about that proverbial
win-win-win situation here? How much does the
environmental movement stand to gain by hitching its wagon
to the stars of these other, more emotionally immediate issues?
There's
no question that the call for energy independence on the
heels of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
has brought tremendously valuable attention to energy issues,
including alternative and renewable energy and global climate
change. "If you play a word-association game with the
average person with terms like 'energy independence, oil,
and global warming,' it wouldn't take long for all these
topics to get listed," said NRDC's Hawkins. "So
from a public-education standpoint, it's very effective to
connect the dots between these topics."
There's also
no question that linking the environment to the debate over
economic growth is very effective. "Smart
industry understands that environmental strategies are beneficial,
long-term, for their bottom line. The corporate world responds
when environmentalists point out that America's failure to
develop efficient, high-performance technologies [such as
hybrid cars and renewables] will undermine its competitive
advantage in the global marketplace,"
said Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center
for Science, Economics, and the Environment and a member
of the EFC steering committee.
There is, however, one critical
issue to which the corporate world does not respond positively:
regulation. Neither the
Apollo Alliance nor the Energy Future Coalition could get
their corporate and union members to agree on the need for
regulations such as mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions
or fuel-efficiency standards. "Both sides were in favor
of increased federal-level subsidies and tax incentives for
everything from biomass and fuel cells to carbon sequestration
technologies," said Hawkins. "But, as you might
expect, most industry interests were simply not ready to
endorse policies to limit carbon emissions, even after nine
months of negotiations."
Similarly, most unions immediately
shy away from discussions about Corporate Average Fuel Economy
standards. "Regulations
like CAFE can have the unintended consequence of resulting
in job loss. If regulations are poorly structured, they can
increase the amount of outsourcing companies do, increase
the amount of foreign transplants, and increase the overall
level of imports. Unions are very sensitive to that," said
Hendricks. "We focused our discussions on how policies
can be used to drive new investment domestically. Standards
can be part of the equation, but our commitment is to preserving
good jobs and the environment together."
Nice Work if
You Can Get It
Yielding on the issue of regulations is hardly a small concession
for environmentalists, however important it might be to piggyback
on economic growth and national security. And yet we should
not underestimate the promise of the economic-growth argument,
especially when looking at how to make environmental issues
matter in the next two years.
If you believe, as alternative-energy enthusiasts do, that
the clean-energy world is very much like the information-technology
world of a decade ago -- that is, if you believe that it
is poised for colossal growth -- then the job-creation promise
is no pipe dream. Unlike the dot-com "revolution," which
was based on dubious business models for unproven markets
and untried technologies, clean-energy proponents are talking
about established markets for life's essentials: lights,
refrigerators, cars, televisions, air conditioners. Meeting
those needs in the coming years means huge capital investments
in manufacturing, and that means job growth.
"
Increased investment in clean energy and green building means
turning over capital stock -- replacing things like fan motors,
lighting ballasts, heating and air conditioning systems,
boilers and chillers, the capital stock of the built environment
-- which means new construction jobs and new manufacturing
of durable goods," says Hendricks. The job-growth potential
is even more dramatic when you factor in wiring a massive "smart" electricity
grid; manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, and super-efficient
natural gas turbines; and eventually laying the pipes for
a nationwide hydrogen-distribution system.
Tom Buffenbarger,
president of the International Association of Machinists
and Aerospace Workers, a 730,000-member union
that is actively involved in the Apollo Alliance, heartily
agrees: "Our machinists are well aware that the clean-energy
movement spells the promise of new jobs. Top-level executives
might be wary of the front-end investments in this kind of
shift, but our union members have a much longer view about
their careers. Our goal is not a quarterly report; what we
worry about is raising our families and the long-term security
of our jobs and our nation."
Indeed, the job-creation
argument is so persuasive, and the response from the unions
has been so positive, that Democratic
presidential contenders are beginning to add the principles
behind the Apollo Alliance to their platforms.
While all the
leading Democratic candidates have expressed support for
innovations in clean and efficient energy technologies,
and see them as a source of economic stimulus, both Sen.
John Kerry (Mass.) and Rep. Dick Gephardt (Mo.) have released
the most definitive alternative-energy proposals, going so
far as to say that the power shift will be the single biggest
source of job creation in the next century.
But where, one
might ask, will we get all the federal funds to spur this
investment along? Hendricks has the answer: "If
you contrast the long-term job creation of tax cuts to federal
investments in infrastructure and industry, you see that
an investment-led strategy achieves at least five times the
number of jobs per dollar, based on what the Bush
administration thinks the economic stimulus will be from
their tax cut." According to the Apollo Alliance poll
conducted in Pennsylvania, 72 percent of all respondents
(Democrat and Republican alike) not only supported a $300
billion federal investment in the clean-energy sector, but
favored that plan over tax cuts.
"
We need to jam these poll results and the principles of the
Apollo Alliance down the throat of every presidential candidate," said
Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America,
a 670,000-member union. "The environmental movement
can't win on its own in the coming election, and the labor
movement can't win on its own, but if we band together we'll
have a fighting chance."
Indeed, in the effort to make
environmental issues matter -- to Washington decision-makers
and voters alike -- virtually
no signal is stronger than a powerful blue-green alliance.
Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition,
said that the involvement of labor unions was among the most
significant steps forward in their negotiations: "I
was particularly pleased by the willingness of labor unions
to participate, because until now they really haven't played
much of a part in energy debates. They bring a powerful voice
of pragmatism to the issues." In short, while unions
bring to the corporate argument a much-needed longer-term
perspective,
they bring to the environmental side just the opposite --
a more immediate awareness that this debate can't be only
about ideology, ideals, and abstract results, but must also
be about forging an economically realistic plan of action.
Amanda
Griscom is a freelance writer based in New
York City. Her articles on energy, technology,
and the environment have appeared in publications
ranging from Rolling Stone to the New York Times
Magazine.
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©
2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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