Light Bulbs? Screw 'Em.
Like a lot of people, I've been reading obsessively through election postmortems, fascinated by the inside stories on the national campaigns. And for some reason, this tidbit at Newsweek on Obama's debate preparations stuck out at me:
When he was preparing for [the debates] during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “…I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."
Amen to that.
Of course, changing light bulbs is a great thing to do at the personal level. By some accounts, lighting accounts for a fifth of all electricity consumption in the US, and the simple step of screwing in a different kind of light bulb can help make a real dent in household consumption.
But to make the profound and fundamental progress we really need, our political discourse has to stop treating energy and climate issues as simply matters of lifestyle choice and personal responsibility. Instead, it has to start treating them as systemic problems with systemic (and largely political) solutions. The boring details of energy efficiency standards, carbon pricing, investments in R&D and renewable power: these are the things that will make or break our energy future. Greening consumer behavior -- however laudable -- is of secondary importance.
According to this account, Obama clearly gets that -- which is a very good thing.
[Photo credit: Flickr user Not Quite A Photographr.]
What Mike Said
Via Erica Barnett, here's Mike O'Brien, chair of the Sierra Club's Cascade chapter, discussing the overwhelming passage of Puget Sound's $18 billion trains-and-buses measure, just a year after voters rejected a plan that would have coupled similar transit spending with a massive road building program:
Last year, a $5 million campaign in good economic times to pass Roads and Transit failed. This year, a $750,000 campaign in bad economic times to finance more transit passed. The difference — no climate-changing roads. When the voters defeated Roads and Transit last year, they weren’t just saying bring back light rail, they were also saying bring us realistic transportation solutions that help solve global warming.
Well said, Mike.
That's precisely what we argued last year: it was climate change, and not just the cost, that doomed last year's Roads and Transit package. (Seattle P-I op-ed here; longer version here.) The fact that this year's measure came with a much smaller carbon footprint helped seal voters' support.
Clearly, when it comes to Puget Sound transportation, the politics of climate are now game changers. Want proof?
