Carbon-Free Energy, Cutting Poverty in Half: Mr. Gore, Meet Mr. Edwards

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In recent weeks, former vice president Al Gore challenged Americans to commit to producing 100 percent of electricity from "renewable energy and clean carbon-free sources" within 10 years. And former senator John Edwards launched a Half in Ten campaign "to reduce poverty in the United States by 50 percent within 10 years." Two bold, audacious goals. Same starting dates. Same decade-long trajectory.

So, is there any chance that Messrs. Gore and Edwards might possibly join forces?

Not likely, based on what I've seen and heard to date. That their respective laudable and ambitious goals could possibly be synergistic seems beyond the grasp of these two leaders and their acolytes.

I've covered this topic — the job-creation potential of clean technology and renewable energy — repeatedly over the years (see posts in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008). While the job-growth trajectories may not have been as rapid or steep as anticipated, there's no doubting the rich potential opportunities, especially at the local level. All solar is local, to paraphrase Tip O'Neill, as is all wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, and biomass energy. That is to say, renewable energy has the potential to create jobs in every metropolis, town, and village — and every congressional district.

Why are two campaigns with identical 10-year horizons proposed by two former presidential candidates of the same age and political party (and from adjacent states) being treated as unconnected, separate efforts? Why aren't the initiatives to bolster our environmental, energy, and economic security joined at the proverbial hip? I don't have an answer; let me know if you do.

This is a problem on many fronts. First and foremost, it is a lost opportunity to connect the dots between growing markets for clean renewable energy and the need to create American jobs for the underclass sufficient to raise their standard of living above the poverty line. Beyond that, it evokes the criticism of the "environmental movement" levied in The Death of Environmentalism, the 2004 paper (Download - PDF) issued on the eve of the last presidential election. Adam Werbach, in his a speech on the topic that fall at the Commonwealth Club of California, charged that environmentalism, "an ideology focused on the inter-relationship of all things, came to be an ideology of things" such as seal pups, redwoods, clean air, Yosemite, clean water, and toxic waste. He continued his indictment of environmentalists:

Some of the things they have been taught not to think of when they think of the environment are AIDS in Africa, the tax code, highways, homeless people, asthma, good jobs and the war in Iraq. Each of those things — "environmental" or not — are stripped by American environmentalism and its sister ideology, liberalism, of their native habitat, their context, and their web of connections. They are single "issues," each requiring its own movement and experts.

Four years later, not much has changed. We're still not connecting the dots.

It's not for lack of dots. There are countless competent, influential organizations working in these arenas: Green for All and the Apollo Alliance, on creating green jobs for the underclass; the American Council on Renewable Energy, on rational, national energy policy that gives renewables their due; Gore's own Alliance for Climate Protection; Edwards' Half in Ten, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the Coalition on Human Needs, and scores of other groups working on poverty issues; and literally hundreds of other organizations. I've checked the websites of all of the above-named groups. None of them mentioned both the Gore and Edwards challenges.

Even Edwards himself doesn't seem to have connected the dots. I encountered the former senator at a reception in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, following an on-stage interview in which he had talked up his anti-poverty crusade. I asked him whether he'd considered joining forces with Gore's campaign to jointly accomplish their respective goals. He listened intently and responded, in effect, that it sounded like a good idea.

It is. Why doesn't anyone seem to get that? Sen. Obama? Sen. McCain? Isn't this year's presidential allegedly dominated by energy prices and the stumbling economy?

Anyone else? Opportunity is knocking, and the time is short.

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