One of the most important differences between progressives and the modern Republican party is the degree of visible and audible unity. While this is starting to change as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party makes its presence increasingly felt, particularly as represented by Harry Reid and the dKos community among others, with an increasing emphasis on party solidarity, and cracks between the Neocons and Theocons beginning to appear on the other side of the aisle, Democrats are still perceived as being a party in chaos and opposed to the simplicity of classic Republican values. Part of this apparent disunity is the inevitable result of our willingness to see the complexities of the real world and the inevitably differing prioritization of our goals by individuals, but in the important world of public opinion it is largely the result of our failure to control and organize our message.
So with an eye to changing that last problem, please join me below the fold in considering a possible way of organizing our goals and policies.
Energy Policy
Energy is one of the most important constants of human existence, almost all of our individual lives as well as the lives of communities and whole civilizations are concerned with utilizing energy to provide the materials for survival and comfort and all of human needs and wants from food to clothes to cars and computers or even less material cultural products like opera and ideas. Since it is interwoven to one extent or another with all of our lives, how we deal with energy is both fundamentally important and a useful lense from which to view many seemingly unrelated matters. Because of this, energy policy has potential as a way of organizing and selling the vision of a more progressive world.
In my view a progressive energy policy needs to address three goals in particular, it should be sustainable, it should have as minimal an environmental impact as possible, and it should make it possible to maintain something that we would recognize as civilization (this last point is by far the most debatable, but if we propose something in which something recognizable as civilization is impossible, it will very difficult to sell to the public at large).
As a matter of politics we will need to provide government and private incentives toward the necessary changes. In the short term, I believe we will have to focus on moving toward sustainability by conservation as this is almost certainly the best understood aspect of the path forward (and naturally resources that are conserved may be necessary for some later part of the path). An incomplete list of regulatory goals follows:
1. Raise the CAFE standards drastically
2.Ensure as many motor vehicles as possible are plug-in hybrids.
3.Encourage public transportation, particularly rail systems as they can be very efficient and powered by a wide variety of technologies.
4.Discourage sprawl and suburbs and simultaneously encourage dense and sustainable living arrangments. This is a particularly important point, as it will probably take the most effort and time to make the necessary changes and getting rid of the suburbs can free up local farmland, promote vibrant communities, and make transportation much more efficient.
A variety of research will also be necessary, so I'll list a few of the important areas that we would need to fund research in:
1.Energy storage devices, batteries, fuel cells, hydrogen, and anything else that might be useful here.
2.Replacements for petrochemicals, particularly in the areas of plastics, agriculture, and industrial reagents.
3.Telecommunications, this is vital not only for reducing the energy demands of transportation via webconferencing and telecommuting, but also for maintaining civilization when travel becomes more expensive and difficult, and of course as it provides the virtual commons necessary to create communities like dKos.
4.Improving and localizing the technology for energy generation.
These lists are very incomplete and additional input is very welcomed. Also I should note that this is by no means the only lense for organizing a progressive vision of the world, human rights, environmental protection, and group and individual power relationships are among the other possibilities that spring immediately to mind.