Maybe not in the primary, but in November, at least. We need renewable energy. Some of us don’t trust Hillary to make the effort (Sanders’ “World War Two”-level effort) to slam the brakes on fossil fuel use and climate change.
We’re Using Too Much Oil
At the moment, we use over TWICE what China (the second-biggest user) uses, and SEVERAL times what any other country on earth uses. It would take 4 million gwh to power the United States. 2.8 acres provides 1 gwh. Therefore, it would take about 11.2 million acres’ worth of solar panels to power the country. That could provide electricity to electric-vehicle charging stations, too, to use instead of oil in our cars.
This is a mammoth undertaking, and a mammoth amount of construction, and a mammoth amount of land purchasing. I don’t mean to downplay that.
However, it’s not THAT mammoth. Not for a World War Two-level effort. We began World War Two with… several hundred airplanes, and our plan to ramp up production to the tens of thousands seemed farcical. Well? Guess what? We did it.
But How?
Hillary Clinton has at her command the Clinton Foundation, which takes in BILLIONS of dollars in donations. This can buy a lot of land. And it can do that without consulting a single congressperson and begging for their vote.
But our congresspeople SHOULD vote on this. They should vote in legislation immediately that forbids our utility companies from preventing people from putting solar panels on their roofs; and they should undertake to provide this 11.2 million acres for renewable energy, and they should put solar on all 11.2 million acres of it. If Hillary does something like this, and announces her effort without further ado, I will not only be happy to vote for her in November if she’s the nominee; I’ll be positively electrified.
Madam Secretary, if you have no congressional majority, this will be hard. But if you do, then do some of that horse-trading they say you’re good at. If oil-industry billionaires will freak out about their billions? Well, then do some backroom trading to re-train oil-industry workers at production of renewable energy. Structure the deal so that their workers will be put to work in the new industry, and even so that oil billionaires will still get their millions of dollars in bonus and salary; but so that they must have a mandatory renewables percentage. Give rewards for meeting it, and penalties for not doing so. Our auto companies who sell in California get just such rewards for selling yea many electric cars, or yea many high-mileage-per-gallon cars. Apply that structure to the energy companies’ carrots and sticks.
You’ll Get Votes from It
Hillary and her voters have sought for a year to crack the code and energize the 10 or 12 million (? How many is it now?) voters who have gone to Bernie. Petulant public declarations and posts of “oh yeah? who needs you, anyways!” to the BernieOrBust folks aside, no intelligent Hillary partisan really wants the 1/3 of Bernie voters who aren’t sure they’ll vote Hillary (or are sure they won’t) to stay home. You want to draw them? (Mm… remove that question mark. Yes, you DO want to draw them.) Here’s how:
Take the “we need a World War Two-style effort against Climate Change” plank in Bernie’s platform seriously. You’ve taken a great deal of other things he’s said seriously. (Well, some Hillary voters haven’t admitted to Bernie ever having ONE idea that’s worthwhile, or that Hillary has taken ANY of his ideas, or that she’s put ANY of his statements at front of mind in the national conversation because he brought it up. But Hillary HERSELF has. Just a few days ago, after her Tuesday wins, she was happy to graciously credit Bernie with putting campaign finance reform, and the buying of politicians, front and center in the national conversation. So if you’re a Hillary voter thinking Bernie never added anything to the public conversation, you disagree with your own candidate.)
Madam Secretary, Make This Your Moon Shot
But Hillary, please: take THIS seriously. Put in such an effort. Be incremental about ANYTHING else. But about this issue, Hillary: be bold. We can’t live as we have. We can’t survive if climate change isn’t addressed, and addressed now. Have audacity. Adopt this idea. Go COMPLETELY renewable, announce this effort, heck, you can even provide federal funds to wean the oil billionaires off their money teat for all I care (it’d still be less than the cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program, or for a few other pork-barrel military projects). Announce this effort. Make it your moon shot. Make our energy COMPLETELY renewable within a completely unreasonably short amount of time. Then you can go incremental on any other thing you like. I promise, I won’t complain.
Do this. Make our energy completely renewable. Set a ridiculously short time frame for it, just as we did when we reached the moon. If we reached the moon with technology that hadn’t even been invented yet in Kennedy’s time, we can put together a few million solar panels. And I promise you, you’ll get some progressive votes from it. Let’s go!!
Friday, Apr 29, 2016 · 8:40:40 PM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
My mention of the Clinton Foundation appears to have been confusing: I do NOT mean that the Clinton Foundation should drive this effort. My point in mentioning their billions was precisely the opposite: as I go on to say, the government has MULTIPLE times their billions, and it is our government who must spearhead this effort. I am sorry if I wasn’t clear.
Friday, Apr 29, 2016 · 9:11:17 PM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
Wow—well, on the one hand, only one rec for the diary. OTOH, at least only one person voted “no” on the poll.
To be honest, a lot of you folks fill me with fear. You truly do. Diary after diary on DKos, for YEARS now, has warned: “Climate change is here! Here are scientific studies! Here are scientific opinions! Here is evidence of the incredibly destructive effects! We have to do something! NOW!” It’s been shown that the Paris accords don’t go nearly far enough to do what must be done.
But you’re all really in agreement that the answer is “ehh, whatever”? Note that I haven’t seen anyone argue yet that what the candidates, Hillary OR Bernie, are proposing, will be enough (indeed, this diary goes WAY farther than what either candidate proposes).
Do you folks believe that we can be okay even if we ignore the need for drastic action? Or are you simply sure that Republican congressional obstruction will make this impossible before we start, (even if we do turn over Congress?)? Or do you believe that technological problems such as one poster’s mention of energy storage can’t be solved by our scientists, even though the moon shot solved MANY problems that seemed insoluble a decade before?
None of those stances makes sense to me. I do not understand the energetic opposition or apathy to doing what this diary suggests, and making the amount of national effort that I THINK we all agree is necessary to do.
I simply do not understand what you people intend, to deal with not only a life-threatening problem, but one that threatens our whole SPECIES’ survival.
Friday, Apr 29, 2016 · 11:53:31 PM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
Thanks to poster purplecones, for the information about CO2 capture from the environment:
www.virginearth.com
Poster Fogbelter’s ideas about fighting deforestation and creating climate change-resistant crops are also wonderful.
I’d be interested to see plans for all of these together, and see what the costs would be. I have a hunch that diverting some small fraction of our trillion-dollar military to it would pretty much do the trick for ALL of those.
I’m despairing, I’m afraid, at the voluble, angry opposition I’m seeing here to the idea of government initiatives to get us to complete reliance on renewables, and no reliance on fossil fuels.
We have one poster, Wisper, who apparently wants government to have NOTHING to do with promoting clean energy. S/he has been asked repeatedly to explain how s/he figures that having a private industry alone will actually be FASTER at accomplishing this than having private industry AND the government, which has trillions of dollars at its disposal, can.
Other posters seem simply to be angry at the idea that Hillary Clinton is being criticized. This is not a criticism of her; it’s an invitation. You’re better than Bernie? Prove it. Prove it with this. There is nothing more important.
But the slogan “No We Can’t” really seems to have permeated through to the idea of the government helping in the effort to save us from ourselves. I’m very worried. We’re going to vote “No We Can’t” in June, then again in November, and we’re going to shrug about doing anything about climate change, to get it mitigated in time.
I try not to despair. I try to think that we’re here for a reason, and that there’s some possibility of rallying our fellow Americans, and the world, to do something about this problem before our oceans and rivers are dead from fossil fuel pollution, and before climate change causes them to engulf our coastal cities. I try to be hopeful. But congratulations, Hillary voters: you’ve cured me right out of that.
At least for today, you’ve successfully beaten all the Hope right out of me.
Sunday, May 1, 2016 · 4:39:19 AM +00:00
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Whamadoodle
LOL. Well, I’m in a good mood again. Because I reflected on something. Those of you who said “Hillary’s already preparing to break ground on exactly the sort of initiative you’re proposing,” you’re okay—I still don’t think it goes far enough, but her environmental proposals are to make half a BILLION solar panels, and to create legislation, provide funding, AND doing cooperative initiatives with state and local governments. That’s great! And it’s EXACTLY what I said she should do (although I do say that she should go further).
But there were just one or two who thought “I’ll score points against the Bernie supporter by ripping that whole idea apart. I’ll make the diarist out to be an IDIOT for proposing ANY federal government involvement in initiatives, funding, or legislation regarding solar or other renewable energy!” (In between taking my words about von Braun being a pioneer in rocketry, and SOMEHOW claiming that I thought he INVENTED rocketry, which I never said anything like.)
Well, uh… when you made the latter argument against federal initiatives, funding, and legislation for renewables, you just ripped up your own candidate’s policy positions. Not that the person in question is honest enough to admit it, being that they’re on a “political soapbox,” and all. Nice job. You just ripped Hillary’s position to shreds.