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Yesterday night, Barack Obama became the first African-American elected to the highest office in the most powerful nation on Earth. Two days earlier, I received my copy of The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones, the first environment-related book by an African-American to reach the New York Times bestseller list. These two things are more closely related than they appear.
Obama's victory was due in no small part to his highly effective campaign strategy, which improved on Howard Dean's idea of mobilizing the netroots with a message of "this election isn't about me, it's about you." (Thus we now have an obligation to hold him to that rhetoric, and make sure he keeps listening to the people he represents.) But the other major factor, of course, was how much worse things have gotten in this country under the last eight years of Republican leadership. As the Onion headline amusingly puts it, things had to get pretty bad before we would elect someone as committed to real change as Obama appears to be, while largely ignoring the color of his skin.
In the days leading up to the election, McCain supporters dug up an interview with Obama that the San Francisco Chronicle had run in January, in which he stated that his own energy policy would cause electricity rates to "skyrocket" (yes, I've verified this at the source). I found out about this here, and despite everything I know about the power of natural capitalism, I took Obama at his word and replied to the entry saying that Obama would have to dramatically revise his energy plan. In particular, I'm worried that he might cancel plans to auction off carbon credits, and instead simply give them away to existing polluters, then let them figure out a price based on the slowly declining supply. This "grandfathering" strategy hasn't worked out too well in the EU.
But then, on the way home from a returns-watching party last night, I cracked open The Green Collar Economy for the first time. From the excellent foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a shorter version of which is available here, I learned that two centuries ago, when Britain was about to outlaw another free commodity amid similar fears that such an action would destroy the economy, "Britain's economy [actually] accelerated. Slavery's abolition exposed the debilitating inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor; slavery had been a ball and chain not only for the slaves, but also for the British economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Creativity and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy launched the industrial revolution and inaugurated an era of the greatest wealth production in human history."
In the introduction, Kennedy also cites venture capitalist Stephan Dolezalek as saying that "With the right market drivers and an open-access marketplace, we can completely decarbon our electric system within years." Dolezalek draws an analogy to the rapid growth of Arpanet-sponsored Internet backbones between 1987 and 1996. These analogies may be flawed, but that doesn't make them non-instructive. And given the free-marketeer tenor of the preceding quotes, it should be no surprise that John McCain also supports a carbon cap-and-trade program.
Finally, in the first two pages of the book itself, Van Jones points out that the price of oil is basically doomed to rise over the next decades, given the rapidly rising global demand and limited production capacity, and this will push us into a stagflation economy regardless of what happens to electric rates in the short term. So what do we do about poor people who would find it hard to pay that bill when their local power plant just had to buy a bunch of carbon credits at an auction? Simple: train them up and offer them well-paid entry-level jobs in the new green economy, as Chicago and other towns across the nation are already starting to do. And if that isn't brought to scale fast enough, we institute rules to ensure that power companies take out the brunt of the price shock on those who can afford it most--people with incomes at least as high as mine.
So that would be back-door socialism, you say. Well, fine, maybe we can make it voluntary and guilt you into donating as follows: Yes, things will get worse before they get better. That's because we're basically at war with the global climate, and we're losing. Obama may not get too specific when he talks about a new spirit of service and sacrifice, but this is part of what he means. Our country needs us. Will you stand up and do your part?
Obama's victory was due in no small part to his highly effective campaign strategy, which improved on Howard Dean's idea of mobilizing the netroots with a message of "this election isn't about me, it's about you." (Thus we now have an obligation to hold him to that rhetoric, and make sure he keeps listening to the people he represents.) But the other major factor, of course, was how much worse things have gotten in this country under the last eight years of Republican leadership. As the Onion headline amusingly puts it, things had to get pretty bad before we would elect someone as committed to real change as Obama appears to be, while largely ignoring the color of his skin.
In the days leading up to the election, McCain supporters dug up an interview with Obama that the San Francisco Chronicle had run in January, in which he stated that his own energy policy would cause electricity rates to "skyrocket" (yes, I've verified this at the source). I found out about this here, and despite everything I know about the power of natural capitalism, I took Obama at his word and replied to the entry saying that Obama would have to dramatically revise his energy plan. In particular, I'm worried that he might cancel plans to auction off carbon credits, and instead simply give them away to existing polluters, then let them figure out a price based on the slowly declining supply. This "grandfathering" strategy hasn't worked out too well in the EU.
But then, on the way home from a returns-watching party last night, I cracked open The Green Collar Economy for the first time. From the excellent foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a shorter version of which is available here, I learned that two centuries ago, when Britain was about to outlaw another free commodity amid similar fears that such an action would destroy the economy, "Britain's economy [actually] accelerated. Slavery's abolition exposed the debilitating inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor; slavery had been a ball and chain not only for the slaves, but also for the British economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Creativity and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy launched the industrial revolution and inaugurated an era of the greatest wealth production in human history."
In the introduction, Kennedy also cites venture capitalist Stephan Dolezalek as saying that "With the right market drivers and an open-access marketplace, we can completely decarbon our electric system within years." Dolezalek draws an analogy to the rapid growth of Arpanet-sponsored Internet backbones between 1987 and 1996. These analogies may be flawed, but that doesn't make them non-instructive. And given the free-marketeer tenor of the preceding quotes, it should be no surprise that John McCain also supports a carbon cap-and-trade program.
Finally, in the first two pages of the book itself, Van Jones points out that the price of oil is basically doomed to rise over the next decades, given the rapidly rising global demand and limited production capacity, and this will push us into a stagflation economy regardless of what happens to electric rates in the short term. So what do we do about poor people who would find it hard to pay that bill when their local power plant just had to buy a bunch of carbon credits at an auction? Simple: train them up and offer them well-paid entry-level jobs in the new green economy, as Chicago and other towns across the nation are already starting to do. And if that isn't brought to scale fast enough, we institute rules to ensure that power companies take out the brunt of the price shock on those who can afford it most--people with incomes at least as high as mine.
So that would be back-door socialism, you say. Well, fine, maybe we can make it voluntary and guilt you into donating as follows: Yes, things will get worse before they get better. That's because we're basically at war with the global climate, and we're losing. Obama may not get too specific when he talks about a new spirit of service and sacrifice, but this is part of what he means. Our country needs us. Will you stand up and do your part?
