With the contestants in November’s presidential election now apparently set, voters are beginning to think about what will be important to them in choosing a commander in chief. A new poll out this week from the Pew Research Center found that 61% of respondents ranked energy as “very important” to their decision.
As the NRDC Action Fund’s Running Clean report showed, clean energy presents candidates with a positive, solutions-based narrative to talk about issues that matter most to Americans: jobs, the economy, gas prices, and the health of their families.
With President Obama and Governor Romney running neck in neck according to the same poll, clean energy provides an opportunity for the President to distinguish himself and win over voters who care about reducing our dependence on oil, improving our national security and building a new economy based on the American spirit of innovation.
As the campaign heats up, we’ll continue to follow the way these “very important” energy issues are playing here on the stump and on the airwaves here on the blog and on our Facebook page. We hope you’ll join us.
Super Tuesday turned out to be Groundhog Day: Three candidates saw their shadows and winter could last for six more months. The presidential nomination process may be grinding on, but Congressional races are starting to heat up.
Candidates are zeroing on their messages, and at a time when jobs are scarce and gas prices are high, smart candidates are discovering the power of running on clean energy.
Even some Republican candidates are promising to deliver clean energy to their constituents.
Nevada Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, for instance, is a Tea Party darling who has followed the GOP leadership’s attack on environmental safeguards. Yet he has also been a staunch supporter of clean energy development in his state.
Why the apparent contradiction? Location, location, location.
Nevada is home to both record unemployment and enormous clean energy reserves. The state suffered some of the worst fallout of the housing bust, and anyone running for office since the financial meltdown has needed a laser-like focus on jobs in order to win.
Green jobs are the low-hanging fruit. Nevada currently has over 16,500 jobs in the clean economy — 33 percent more than the oil and gas sector in the state. Between 2003 and 2010, Nevada added 5,411 clean jobs, meaning that the sector grew nearly 6 percent annually even through one of the toughest economic periods in decades.
This growth won’t be slowing down anytime soon. According to a recent Ernst and Young study, Nevada is the fifth most promising state for geothermal and solar power. And a recent SNL energy project database found that construction has begun on 10 solar, geothermal and wind projects, creating jobs, cutting pollution and reducing our dependence on foreign energy.
Yet in 2010, Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle made the mistake of disparaging clean energy and calling green jobs a “scam“. She lost her race to Harry Reid.
Harry Reid, meanwhile, put clean energy jobs at the heart of his campaign. “We highlighted it in everything we did whether it was through our mail program, TV program, Internet program,” said Reid’s campaign manager Brandon Hall. “It was always the message that we led with.”
Reid’s campaign research found that voters were basing vote on how much Reid had done for the state. Clean energy, Hall explained, “was one of the top issues he was able to leverage his leadership position to benefit Nevada. There was investment coming into Nevada in clean energy. And jobs were being created. For us, it was our top-testing issue.”
NRDC’s Action Fund’s analysis confirms that supporting clean energy gives candidates an advantage. It offers a positive, solutions-based narrative to talk about issues that matter most to Americans: jobs, the economy, gas prices, and the health of their families.
Heller seems to agree. One of his campaign emails trumpets the fact that Heller “has long fought to bring a variety of sources of renewable energy to Nevada.”
At the same time, Heller voted with GOP leadership on a raft of bills that would strip away clean air safeguards and make life easier for dirty coal-fired power plants. He also voted in favor of taxpayer subsidies for oil companies.
Some of the measures Heller opposed would have helped level the playing field between dirty fossil fuels and clean energy resources. It would benefit Nevada if Heller cast more votes on the clean side.
He wouldn’t be the only Republican to do so. Last month, 21 Republican representatives voted against a GOP-sanctioned transportation bill that would have allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and up and down the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts.
These Republican lawmakers seem to realize voters are looking for more than the same-old drill-happy approach to energy development. Instead, voters want innovation, new investment, and job opportunities.
I don’t agree with a lot of Heller’s votes on the environment, but I respect his commitment to clean energy. His track record shows that even Tea Party favorites can deliver clean energy jobs for their constituents.
On Sunday, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich released a video of himself talking about energy policy. Clocking in at 28 minutes and 59 seconds, I can tell you that the video lasts about 28 minutes and 56 seconds too long. That’s because the entire message can be summed up in just three words:
“Drill, baby, drill.”
I suppose Newt’s not known for being concise. Instead, Newt spent nearly 30 minutes detailing why America needs ever more oil, ever more gas, and ever more drilling. But, Newt willfully ignores the most important piece of the energy puzzle: climate change.
As one of my friends put it, “Newt sounds like a drunken sailor who cannot pass up one more slug after last call. Drilling-here and drilling-there will only perpetuate our oil addiction and delay our transition to a green and prosperous economy fueled by renewable sources of energy. And no café standards? What does he drive -– a model T? America has seen his backward vision for America and we rejected it two decades ago.”
Newt wraps up his pro-drilling lecture by saying, “And I think with that energy future, we’re going to have a better quality of life, a better economy, better national security, and take a big step toward balancing the federal budget.”
I share those goals. But, climate change threatens those objectives. Quality of life will be threatened by risk of illness and death from extreme heat. By 2100, just a handful of global warming impacts could cost the U.S. economy $1.9 trillion annually. The Pentagon knows that climate change is a threat multiplier that will harm our national security and contribute to instability across the globe.
We can aim to have it all, but not without addressing climate change.
Newt and I do agree on another thing. Throughout his feature film, Newt alludes to American innovation, science and technology as the tools to get to a dramatically different energy future. He’s right. But we need to apply that innovation and entrepreneurship to developing and scaling new clean energy technologies, not just to digging deeper for dead dinosaurs.
So, save yourself 30 minutes. Don’t watch the video. Instead, spend those 30 minutes soaking up the beautiful and unusually warm winter weather we’re experiencing. And contemplate the less fun consequences of the unchecked warming that “drill, baby, drill” will bring.
“The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity and our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out.” — President Obama
President Obama heads to Miami today where he will give a speech about rising gas prices. Some analysts say prices at the pump could top $4 per gallon this summer. What’s driving up the cost of gasoline is rising demand as the U.S. economy continues to improve, the growing thirst for fuel in other countries, and political instability in the Middle East.
Obviously, the president’s political opponents are clamoring to blame Obama for the pain at the pump — despite the fact his administration has dramatically increased domestic oil and gas drilling while doing more than other president to reduce our reliance on oil by raising automobile fuel-efficiency standards. But as usual, politics trumps policy — especially in an election year. And it’s a safe bet the GOP won’t let the facts about gas prices get in the way.
Coinciding wth the president’s trip to South Florida, the Miami Herald published a commentary by NRDC’s Executive Director Peter Lehner. The gist of Peter’s piece is that the solution to our nation’s energy crisis is not to “drill, baby, drill” but to give Americans more energy freedom. He writes:
“Contrary to what we’re hearing from some politicians and Big Oil lobbyists, more drilling doesn’t mean lower gas prices. The number of oil rigs in the United States has quadrupled in the past three years. The United States is already producing more oil than it has in nearly a decade.
Yet what has that done for gas prices? They’ve only increased of course — not because we need to even drill more, but because demand is increasing with the improving economy; because countries like China and India are expanding and because Iran is threatening to cut off its oil supply to the rest of the world.
Even if we were to drill every drop of oil known to exist in the United States, we wouldn’t have enough to meet our demand. The cold hard fact is that America consumes about 25 percent of the world’s oil, but has less than 3 percent of the world’s proven reserves. And besides, who wants to see oil wells off of South Beach or face the economic devastation that would follow a Deepwater Horizon-like spill off the coast of Fort Lauderdale?
Forget about getting more oil from our friendly neighbor to the north too. There’s a reason why Canadian companies want to run their Keystone XL pipeline all the way to the Gulf of Mexico: It’s so they can reach worldwide oil markets — not so they can deliver more oil to us here in the United States.
The simple truth is, we can’t drill our way out of our addiction to oil.”
Peter is spot on. We don’t have nearly enough oil supply on our own land or off our shores to be energy self-sufficent. Finding ways to use less oil is the only sure-fire way to shield ourselves from price shocks at the pump. With that in mind, here are 10 ways to reduce U.S. oil dependence (courtesy of the folks at the Clean Fleet Report) summarized as follows:
fuel efficiency
electric cars
eliminate fossil fuel subsidies
urban density
public transit
employer commute and flexwork programs
cash for clunkers
smart apps
smart growth
states’ rights
The blog’s main point is that, together, those strategies all add up to this:
“Making us more dependent on oil will not make us less dependent. We must end the subsidies and mandates that make us 96 percent dependent on oil and allow our individuals, cities, and states to keep moving us forward with better transit, fuel-efficient cars, and a brighter future.”
So, as the rhetoric over rising gas prices heats up please try to remember that the problem is our nation’s oil addiction and for that there is no simple solution. Attacking this issue purely from the supply side will get us nowhere; reducing our demand is the only realistic answer. That means investing in more transportation choices so Americans have the freedom to find other ways than driving to get us where we need to go.
Today the American Petroleum Institute launched its latest attack on our great nation with their “Vote 4 Energy” or “I vote” campaign.
At the campaigns unveiling, API President Jack Gerard explained, “We are doing this because an electorate that is educated on energy issues will demand of all candidates, for every office, a commitment to honest common-sense discussions of how we can achieve energy security…”
I look forward to engaging in that discussion with Gerard and candidates for office because the electorate has been pretty clear what they want:
A Pew poll done last year found that 71 percent of Americans believe “This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.” And 59% believe that “strongly.” The same poll found that 63 percent favored prioritizing clean energy, such as wind and solar. Only 29 percent favored expanding exploration and production of fossil fuels.
A more recent poll from November by the Washington Post and Pew Research Center found that 68 percent favor developing solar, wind, and hydrogen, only 26 percent oppose it. This compares to 58 percent who favor drilling offshore or on federal lands, and 35 percent who oppose it. Support for nuclear energy is supported by only 39 percent of Americans while 53 percent are still opposed.
Voter support is even stronger when it comes to cleaning up pollution caused by fossil fuels. A poll conducted by Ceres on behalf of a coalition of investors, environmental, and public interest organizations found that 75 percent of voters think the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), not Congress, should determine air pollution standards. 88 percent of Democrats, 85 percent of Independents, and 58 percent of Republicans oppose Congress stopping the EPA from enacting new limits on air pollution from coal-fired power plants.
Mr. Gerard implies that somehow Americans aren’t having an honest discussion about energy but I don’t think Mr. Gerard, with his $4.31 million salary and corporate perks, has any idea what normal people are talking about and how honest or dishonest the conversation is. In fact, API spent almost $6 million last year lobbying Members of Congress to continue their oily ways.
Despite API’s expenditures, voters are pretty clear what they want. I am sure that API will spend a lot of money spreading falsehoods in 2012 (like this one, this one, and this one) to further scare politicians beholden to corporate interests who don’t want to pay to clean up their messes. But if your audience is truly the public, Mr. Gerard, let’s have this debate.
I vote and my kid’s health and our country’s economic future matter way more to me then your bottom line. I am betting that there are millions of other voters just like me.
