I just got a peak at William Becker’s new book, ‘The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet - A Climate Crisis Solution for the 44th President‘.
William Becker is the Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a non-partisan initiative, based out of the University of Colorado School of Public Affairs. The Climate Action Project plans to deliver the plan to the next President right after the election. Here are the key parts of the plan:
- Take early action by using the powers Congress already has delegated to the executive branch
- Move rapidly away from investments that lock the nation into more long-term carbon emissions
- Rebuild the federal government’s leadership capacity by restoring respect for science and bringing America’s best experts on energy and climate security into public service
- Mobilize the marketplace to build a new twenty-first century economy
- Launch and economy wide “clean energy surge”
- Ensure that climate action is equitable and fair
- Create an agenda for natural resource stewardship that responds to climate change
- Help the nation adapt to the climate changes already underway
- Redefine national security to include climate and energy security
- Work with leading governors and mayors to create an intergovernmental action plan
- Reengage the community of nations to find solutions to the climate and energy crises
- Work closely with Congress to create additional laws and to fund the programs we need to effectively address energy and climate security
Broad strokes, that get broken down into hundreds of specific steps, in the book. This is serious stuff, and exactly the kind of thinking we need for the next four years. As pointed by William Becker in his introduction, we are running out of time, and action at all levels, starting at the top, is needed now. In that respect, I find Barack Obama’s recent answer to Time reporter Joe Klein, quite encouraging:
Finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy … That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office, assuming obviously that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation. We’ve got a boat with a lot of leaks, and we need to get it into port. That’s what the financial rescue package is about. But once we get it into port, once the credit markets are functioning effectively, then it’s time for us to go back to the fundamentals of this economy.
The big question of course is, how long before we get ‘it’ into port? Nature has been patient enough, and it cannot wait much longer, for us to take remedial actions.
Last, kudos to Martin’s Press for deciding to publish William Becker’s book, electronically. That’s what I call walking the writing! You can order the book here.
I’m currently reading The Green Collar Economy, and it has many of the same ideas. It takes it a step further and talks about racial equality as well. Generally the environmental movement is seen as an elite, mostly white class of members, but this book argues that this creates the opportunity for the polluters to exploit the poor. Taking away the gov’t subsidies for coal and oil is a major step that has to be taken to make the playing field level for new energy technology. I lean towards Obama on this issue, which I think is the most important one currently, but I am not sure he is 100% comitted. I’d like to hear him speak about the subsidies, and about specific steps to weaning us off of coal and oil. Our environment, clean energy, green jobs, and the economy are all intertwined, and will bail us out if done correctly. Hopefully the people we elect to the legislative and executive branches will speak for us, and work for the people who put them there.