A Cautionary Note About Using Trump to Argue for 100% Renewables Use

By using Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord as a justification for setting a target of 100% renewable energy, our political leaders are in reaction mode. It's like having an alcoholic in the family, something I have personal experience with.  If we use the alcoholic’s actions as the reason for our choice, we don’t change our narrative.  It's incumbent on us to act with the gravity and wisdom that changing the narrative on climate change will require.  One of the more important ways we can begin is to resist the temptation to engage in sloganeering.  It’s not “Big Oil versus Humanity."  We don’t wear the White Hats while “They” wear the Black Hats.  To be sure, sloganeering seems to be part and parcel of marketing and politics.  Even so, politics and governance are different specialties that require different skill sets.

Here are three steps we can take to be smarter about climate change.

First, stop drawing boxes around people and groups.  Senator Sanders’ engages in simplistic framing when he uses “Big Oil” in the same way that Ronald Regan made conservationists the problem by quipping “conservation is being too cold in the winter and too warm in the summer.”  While such simplistic slogans garner headlines, they don’t help us develop and implement effective policy.  Like it or not, Big Oil as well environmental groups must be part of any effective solution.

Second, we need public discussion and debate on policies, such as committing our community to using only renewables to generate electricity, power vehicles, making cement and steel, and the plastic bins used to store bulk foods at the local market.  When we have no public forum, or simply devolve into an us vs. them monologue, we limit our capacity to effectively work collectively to find policies that are grounded in facts.

Third, we need to be open to hearing truths we find inconvenient.  By not doing so, we increase the risk that our efforts will amount to little more than squandering precious time and the public treasury on approaches that have little real hope of success any time in the foreseeable future, and that includes the year 2050.  W have data and knowledge on the challenges we face trying to rely solely on intermittent renewable sources to generate our electricity.  We have information on less costly and more effective approaches to cutting carbon emissions.  We have information on how our local electric utility is connected to all other utilities throughout the Western United States and what that means for our ability to avoid using electricity generated from fossil fuels.  Ignoring these facts, and the science behind them, is no different than the Trump Administration’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord.