Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The bottom line is that putting partisan politics before American competitiveness in
clean energy will cost more American jobs and lives in the years to come. That's the real
problem with all this politicization around Solyndra's downfall. Americans are pioneers,
whichentailstakingsomerisks.Wemakegreatentrepreneurs,andweshouldnotdelimit
the arenas we work in to exclude the fastest-growing industry in the world. Investing in
the energy technology that will power the world is a good risk to take (all entrepreneurs
in every new field take these risks), but do note: in Solyndra's case, its loan-guarantee
program was set by the Bush administration, so the investment in the company (and by
extension the industry) wasn't an Obama or liberal interest, as some in the media would
haveyoubelieve.Overalltheclean-energyloan-guaranteeprogramhashadahigherthan
90 percent success rate. That's something of which both parties should be proud and
should be doing more.
The Madness Goes Global
All the world's a stage, and this political farce around energy has been playing out for
decades. I've personally had many supporting roles in this theater. In 1992, for example,
I was at the United Nations (UN) meeting in New York where, after much deliberation
andmanymonthsoflate-nightsessions,worldleadersdraftedtheUnitedNationsFrame-
work Convention on Climate Change, a global effort to slow global warming. But young
attendees,includingyourstruly(Iwasthereasajournalistandayouthactivist),beganto
smellaratintheframeworkwhenGeorgeH.W.BushsentamessagetotheUNthat“the
Americanwayoflifewasnotupfornegotiation”—meaningthatAmericanswereneither
going to stop using fossil fuels to create electricity nor give up driving their SUVs.
To protest Bush's statement and the abdication of responsibility by other world lead-
ers, some of us printed posters and stuck them on the toilet doors of the UN building on
First Avenue. The signs read: “Bathrooms closed—toilets flooded due to global warm-
ing; contact US delegation for more information.” We were hauled over the coals (pun
intended) for this act by then-Undersecretary General Maurice Strong, but we pointed
out that this is what young people do when they're not heard by their elders (and sup-
posedly betters): we resort to daubing slogans on toilet walls in protest.
I'm all for a clever, well-intended wall scrawl, but now that I'm older I realize that
it's much too easy to use these methods to rail against our wishy-washy leaders and in-
effective legislatures. Doing so is fun and effective in its own way, but I wonder now
whether we could get real solutions from this kind of action at the UN. Getting behind
an encouraging example of political leadership could. Take the former president of the
Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, who could very well have become the mouse that roared
