Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Those fighting against achieving a prosperous, climate-friendly society go through stages of trying to confuse the discussion and inhibit necessary action:

• Global Warming isn’t real
• It is all natural
• We can’t do anything about it
• Doing anything will cost too much

These four have one simple thing in common. Very simply: LIE! LIE! LIE! LIE!

This last, truly, becomes the most dangerous.

The discussion we are hearing, that we will be hearing, is “environment versus the economy”. That we can’t afford this seeming luxury of “taxing” energy, dragging down the economy, all in the vain hope of doing something about Global Warming. These are all untruths.

The draft budget has an assumption that the country will put in place some form of “Cap & Trade” or some other pricing mechanism on carbon (and other greenhouse gas) emissions, helping to create the revenue streams necessary to foster a cleaner energy system.

Those fighting meaningful action on climate change follow the Republican messaging strategy: they want to scare US, not inspire.

Newt Gingrich is a text-book example of the fear strategy. Let’s recall that Newt isn’t a denier. As a matter of fact, Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection showcased Newt in their first ad last year. (Mistakenly, as many of us wrote last year …)

Well, Newt is working hard to scare Americans out of action to confront the threats (and opportunities) of climate change.

If the country’s No. 1 priority is to create jobs, then a hidden $1,300-per-family energy-tax increase in the guise of a cap-and-trade system is absolutely destructive. Herbert Hoover raised taxes in 1932, and it further crippled the economy.

Let us be clear. This scream of “TAX” is, at best, a scam.

Whether Newt or Washington Times editorials or the US Chamber of Commerce or any number of others, outright and implicit deceit stands at the center of the approach.

It will COST too much. COST too much. COST … COST … COST …

Note that they will not talk about benefits.

There will not be a word about job creation, about how $1 invested in clean energy creates more than twice as many jobs as a $1 invested in fossil fuels.

There will not be a word about health implications from reducing particulates (reducing asthma), improved IQs (the impact of mercury and other pollutants), reduced cancer rates, …

There will not be a word about the value of produced energy from renewable sources or the saved energy through energy efficiency.

There will not be a word about the investments in our communities, improved public transit, better educational performance due to greening schools, better parks, …

There will not be a word about the ‘insurance’ value of mitigating climate change.

THERE WILL NOT BE A WORD …

We cannot have a meaningful conversation about serious policy if the only item on the table is “cost”, without any discussion of benefit.

And, most seriously, while those fighting action will talk about ‘cost’, they won’t talk about the most significant and most terrifying cost: the cost of unchecked catastrophic climate change.

We hae have a responsibility: to ensure that our national discussion (from your household to the ‘water cooler’ to the political interaction), when it comes to action on climate change, is a balanced and thoughtful discussion of costs and benefits.

Newt and his truthiness cohorts are terrified of a true discussion as they know that that discussion will lead to much greater support for action.