Can Obama Become the Green Leader We Need?
Shapiro
In his first 100 days, President Barack Obama has taken bold steps to change America’s direction on energy and the environment. He has committed billions of dollars to new spending on clean energy. He’s reversed unwise positions and adopted smart ones on efficiency, renewables, and climate change. And he’s assembled a green “dream team” that includes not just the heads of the DOE and EPA, but less-known, yet critical, appointments including climate expert John Holdren as science advisor and activist Van Jones as “green jobs guru.” For all this, our president should be applauded — as he has been.
“Obama is the first president in history to articulate both the why and how of the sustainable vision — and to actively, indeed aggressively, pursue its enactment,” says Joe Romm, a leading commentator on energy and climate. “And that is why he is likely to be remembered as ‘the green FDR.’”
The green FDR! It’s a compelling prediction, yet one that raises tough questions.
Citing Franklin Roosevelt rightly suggests the need for a leader who can inspire the nation and transform it toward greatness even during times of grave difficulty. Has Obama shown his ability to rise to this challenge in the green arena? Can he inspire a real mainstream movement on energy and climate?
No matter how admirable his achievements on green spending, policy and personnel, success in this area will require inspirational leadership that drives bottom-up change. As we have learned throughout American history, without a real shift in grassroots values and worldview, regulations and other top-down actions will often be delayed, ignored or rejected. Only after we instigate change can we legislate it. And unfortunately, we have a long way to go to build public support for sweeping change when it comes to global warming.
On Earth Day, April 22, Obama gave a speech that moved in the right direction. The president emphasized American ingenuity and our can-do tradition of using technology to overcome hardships, particularly in the energy area. He talked about green innovation as a source of prosperity and job creation. And he said, “I think the American people are ready to be part of a mission,” while acknowledging that it would be not be easy.
On this occasion, as on so many before, Obama advocated many of the right positions and used nearly all the right words. Yet something was still missing.
In my view, the president has yet to find his true voice on these issues — the voice to inspire others, including some who don’t agree with his green agenda. To connect effectively, he needs to make green issues more personal, for himself and the American people. An interesting example is Michelle Obama’s passion for sustainable food, which has been captured simply and powerfully in scores of news stories and photos of her planting an organic garden at the White House with local children. Maybe the president similarly needs a personal, symbolic experience to build upon (your suggestions are welcome in the comments section).
The need for a clear and compelling narrative is particularly acute around climate change, which remains a remote and abstract issue for most citizens, not to mention leaders in business and government. The president needs to lay out a simple rationale for why the U.S. must act now, as well as a positive vision of the future once we take action — a future in which we are more prosperous, healthy and secure. This is not an abstract exercise. To win passage of cap-and-trade legislation in Congress, the president must give coal-state Democrats and moderate Republicans a reason to support the cause.
Rather than a technical or political fix, Obama needs a values-based approach to humanize the issues. This doesn’t mean preaching sacrifice like Jimmy Carter in his cardigan. It means Obama should address these issues in a way that’s as passionate as his race speech and as urgent as his exhortations on the economy.
To persuade and inspire, he might try addressing climate as an issue of “justice between generations” — i.e., between all of us today and our children and grandchildren, who will pay for our mistakes. As Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman notes, we don’t want our kids to see us as “the Greediest Generation.”
Obama could say: “Don’t do this to punish coal-burning power plants or even to stop the glaciers from melting. Do it to make sure our grandkids are proud of us, not enraged and ashamed. Do it to ensure that the planet will be able to sustain their lives and livelihoods just as it has sustained ours. After all, it’s our only home — and they are our only future.”
To be sure, the green achievements of Obama’s first 100 days are impressive. But to go the distance, our president must not only change laws and regulations. He must also change minds … and hearts.
*This story originally appeared on Harvard Business Publishing’s Leading Green blog.
Last 5 posts by Andrew Shapiro
• Business Can Ignore Climate Deniers - December 21st, 2009
• Copenhagen, Meet Columbus - December 12th, 2009
• Make Every Job a Green Job - August 24th, 2009
• Take Eco-Efficiency to a Higher Level - April 9th, 2009
• How Detroit's Fate Is Linked With Ours - November 27th, 2008
