As Americans go into today's election, we need to take an important vision with us into the voting booth. If we are to have a future -- as a country, as a species -- there cannot be a red America or a blue America. There must be a green America.
In some ways, this election cycle was actually a very good start. Energy independence and renewable resources were major topics addressed by both McCain and Obama. Our candidates discussed global warming and the urgent need to address the issue. Both candidates had platforms addressing environmental issues, and science was (to a certain extent) respected in ways it has not been for the past eight years. There are many environmental ballot initiatives across the country, including funding for public transportation in Washington, high speed rail in California, clean water in Minnesota and renewable energy in California, Missouri and Colorado.
In other ways, there were major disappointments. I was shocked that "drill, baby, drill" got any traction at all. The McCain/Palin call for additional carbon fuel use and potential environmental degradation was nothing more than short-sighted, election cycle pandering. We cannot drill our way out of the current dependence on fossil fuels, we must innovate our way out. Obama and McCain both support "clean coal" technology. There is no present clean coal technology available, and there is not likely to be cost effective clean coal in the foreseeable future. Sarah Palin's contempt for man-made causation of global warming, and her general disdain for science, left me deeply disturbed.
At the end of the day, we must all make choices regarding our future. In an earlier blog post, I compared the two candidates on their environmental platforms, and to my eyes at least, Obama wins that contest walking away. However, as Benjamin Franklin famously said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Our leaders must find a way to bring together red and blue America into a green American future.
Shari Shapiro, J.D., LEED AP, is an associate with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP in Philadelphia. She heads the company's green building initiative and writes about green building and the law on her blog at http://www.greenbuildinglawblog.com.