Bill Becker's Climate Chronicles

Now that the 2008 election finally is over, let’s go to Disney World.

I’ll explain, but first some background. The dominant theme of the long presidential campaign was change. The vote on Nov. 4 was a clear mandate for President Obama to make it happen. But what kind of change? And once we begin to define it, will we all disagree?

We need a national conversation on the topic of change, on America’s future. The conversation is sufficiently important that it should be convened by President Obama himself. In fact, along with all of the other tasks that will occupy the transition team between now and January 20, a few members of the team should be assigned to focus on our national trip to Disney World.

Barack Obama has created a top-notch team to guide his transition into the White House. Next, he should create a team to guide America’s transition to a new energy economy.

I’m not talking about the prestigious group of economic advisers Obama already has assembled to help him identify solutions to the economic meltdown.

I’m talking about a team that includes experts in sustainable energy technologies, climate mitigation and adaptation, capital investment, state and local government, business, industry and labor.

To lead America into a post-carbon economy, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have to revolutionize the biggest and most heavily lobbied of the government’s programs. That means taking on the armies of the status quo, who have money and inertia on their side.

It’s a battle that must be fought and won. Today, our public policy is riddled with crisis-inducing, self-defeating contradictions. The next Congress will have to resolve some tough questions that past Congresses avoided. For example:

1.) What action will Congress take to prove to the world that the United States is serious about addressing climate action?

There is no lack of ideas for what President Obama and the 111th Congress should do to address three of the most pressing issues they will face when they take office in January -- global climate change, the energy crisis and economic transformation. It may be winter in Washington, D.C., but it’s springtime in national politics. Policy agendas are blooming like cherry blossoms.

For example, last week alone, Washington D.C. was introduced to three comprehensive plans to address economy, energy and climate. Two were issued by the Center for American Progress, headed by John Podesta, co-chair of President-elect Obama’s transition team, including an excellent strategy for green recovery by Bracken Hendricks and Benjamin Goldstein.

The other was the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP) released during a standing-room only briefing on Capitol Hill, after two years of gestation at the University of Colorado. PCAP contains more than 180 proposals for President Obama and the next Congress, across 18 topics, ranging from natural resource stewardship to public health and from farm policy to zero-carbon buildings and transportation systems.

Now that we know Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States, we can turn to the next critical question of national leadership: In this historic moment, how bold will President Obama be?

It was Candidate Obama who introduced the theme of change to the 2008 campaign, and it proved so powerful among voters that the other leading candidates quickly adopted it. It’s a cliché for candidates to run against the status quo in Washington, no matter how long they’ve been there. But in 2008, Obama seems to grasp that “change” has a much deeper meaning.

Here is an important rule of thumb when you see a television commercial sponsored by an oil company: Don’t believe a word it says.

Some time ago, I posted a piece about the oil industry’s shenanigans when California voted a couple of years ago on a ballot initiative to increase its gasoline tax. The measure was heavily supported by voters until the oil industry went on the air and warned that everyone’s gasoline prices would go up. The TV spots showed a distressed woman pumping gas as the price went ka-ching, ka-ching.

Which presidential candidate is best equipped to give America an effective and moral foreign policy and to ensure our economic security?

The truth is, oil, not presidents, control our foreign policy. That has been the case for a very long time. For all the good it has done, oil has perverted our relationship with other nations, tempted us into behaviors not worthy of our ideals, and cost us enormous loss of life and treasure.

We have come to a point in the election season where the courage of the candidates and the intelligence of the voters are being severely tested. So far, the candidates are flunking. The public’s grade is pending.

The test is about oil and national security.

An old friend of mine used to say that at a certain stage in political campaigns, dead cats start flying through the air.  I’ve never understood what he meant by that, but I think the cat-flinging has begun.

Both candidates are doing their share, but one exchange deserves special analysis: John McCain’s attack against Barack Obama’s comment about tire gauges. In one of his recent energy speeches, Obama made the point that acts of conservation by individual Americans can have an impact on rising oil prices. He used tire pressure maintenance as an example.

Hunter Lovins is one of the country’s premier prophets of the post-carbon economy and the vast new markets and investment opportunities that are opening worldwide for clean technologies. “Those who recognize this opportunity will be the first to the future and the billionaires of tomorrow,” Hunter says.

The good news: The race already has begun. It’s producing some new billionaires and attracting some old ones.

The first recorded solar billionaire was identified by the Wall Street Journal in October 2006. He is Shi Zhengrong, founder of Suntech Power Holdings Company in China. Since then, at least two other solar entrepreneurs have joined the club: Frank Asbeck, who founded Germany’s Solar World, and Xiao Peng, head of LDK Solar in China.

Joining them are two American tycoons who have decided that while their past was in oil, their future – and America’s – will be found in renewable energy. Everyone now knows about T. Boone Pickens’ commitment to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, and his commitment to spend $58 million of his own money on television commercials to persuade Americans that we can’t drill out way out of the energy crisis.

Pickens has been traveling around the Great Plains states lately to make the case for wind power and, judging by the photo, he’s committing so much of his disposable fortune to renewable energy that he can’t afford Powerpoint.