A Declaration of Energy Independence

Two ambitious clean-energy coalitions made headlines this month, sweeping out from under the rug vital and far-reaching environmental issues that the Bush administration has steadfastly ignored. The Energy Future Coalition, boasting endorsements from heavies on both sides of the party line as well as from high-profile industry and environmental interests, called for a one-third reduction in U.S. oil consumption and a one-third reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over the next 25 years.

At the same time (though in a completely unrelated effort), the Apollo Alliance, a labor-environmental coalition endorsed by a dozen influential unions, called for a 10-year, $300 billion federal investment in clean-energy technologies and green building, which would lead to the creation of more than 1 million new manufacturing jobs designed to help usher in a sustainable economy.

Both the Energy Future Coalition and the Apollo Alliance presented useful energy-policy recommendations to achieve their goals, but a larger, more valuable lesson lies in the strategy these groups deployed to get their messages out to the public. At a time when environmental issues are barely registering as a tremor on the Richter scale of public concerns -- compared, say, to the seismic quakes of war, recession, and the general Mad Cowboy Disease reverberating throughout America's domestic and foreign policy -- green crusaders are faced with the challenge of how to make environmental concerns matter to both voters and candidates in the 2004 election. The Energy Future Coalition and the Apollo Alliance have hit on an effective approach that the movement as a whole would do well to adopt: wrap an environmental agenda in the mantle of today's more emotionally immediate issues of national security and new jobs.

Take, for instance, the motto that the Apollo Alliance uses in its promotional material: "Let's switch our energy dependence from the Middle East to the Midwest: Freedom from Mid-east oil. One million new energy jobs." Not a word is mentioned about the environment, even though the alliance calls for aggressive federal incentives for hybrid-electric cars, green buildings, solar panels, wind turbines, energy-efficient appliances, carbon-scrubbers on power plants, improved public transportation, a high-efficiency magnetic-levitation rail system, smart urban growth, and other cutting-edge green innovations that, if encouraged on a federal level, would create huge opportunities for job growth and be a major boon to the environment.

The failure to express this initiative in green terms was hardly an oversight, according to Apollo Alliance President Bracken Hendricks, who has been gathering support for the Alliance over the past year and first publicly announced its existence on June 5. "Though we are trying to achieve objectives that will bring enormous gains to the environment, they will also bring major security and economic-development benefits, and that's what concerns people today and that's what catches their attention," he said.

When defining its strategy and mission, the Apollo Alliance conducted a poll in Pennsylvania, a key industrial swing state, where it asked voters, "What's the most important issue right now?" Seventy-two percent of respondents cited economic distress and loss of manufacturing jobs, while 2 percent cited the environment. But when the same voters were asked whether they would support a plan that would aggressively develop a green economy and be an engine for 1 to 3 million new manufacturing jobs, 72 percent said they would strongly support it.

"The environmental movement needs to recognize a unique moment right now in the political climate when there are pressing challenges for progressives: the hollowing out of the manufacturing job space and the national security imperatives around imported oil," says Hendricks who as a Special Assistant in the Clinton Administration worked on sustainable development issues for Vice President Gore. "We can answer these challenges directly while channeling our solutions toward green outcomes."