Barack Obama’s decisive victory on Tuesday was some much-belated consolation for Al Gore winning the vote but losing the election in 2000. I signed on to WorldChanging’s letter to President Elect Obama and the similar but much less specific Repower America petition urging him to adopt the kind of comprehensive response to the brewing climate crisis that has been advanced by Gore. I added the following comment to the Repower America submission:
President-elect Obama, You rise to leadership at a time when the United States & the world face tremendous challenges, from our current financial crisis and gathering recession, to the long-term threats to our national prosperity posed by our faltering education system, to the enormous costs of the climate crisis likely if global warming goes unchecked, and the ever-present threat of global terrorism. These problems seem unrelated, but may all have common threads in an integrated solution. I look to you to lead this country in what Thomas Friedman has called an “energy moonshot” that would channel, through market incentives, massive investment in U.S. jobs in producing clean energy, while cataylzing the U.S. education system to produce the next generation of engineering & entrepreneurial talent needed to completely transition us away from fossil fuels and secure our long-term economic competitiveness while simultaneously reducing the flow of money to foreign oil regimes funding terrorism, and stemming, within the framework of CO2 taxes and/or cap & trade greenhouse gas emissions legislation, our contribution to global warming to avert a climate crisis. Thank you for giving America hope that we can move forward as a country. I look forward to supporting you as we find solutions to the significant challenges we face.