Al Gore’s work to protect and preserve not only this country’s but the world’s natural environment has found a great many useful expressions. He is, in fact, the best-known spokesman in this realm.
Yet, for reasons that seem incomprehensible to me, he still seems to be missing the key point that could advance this end far more effectively—the fact that environmentally sound behavior is almost always now also economically sound behavior. That making “the hard choices between the environment and the economy” is a basically a 19th century view that should no longer has a place in the thinking of 21st century planners.
This strange failing was again heard in Gore’s recent comments about freeing the U.S. from dependence on petroleum by 2020. He said this “would cost trillions of dollars,” the kind of statement that makes it sound as if this money would take away from something else, lower living standards, be a kind of pot-latching to Mother Gaia.
No, Al. That kind of statement is just plain misleading. The trillions of dollars going toward this hoped for objective isn’t destroyed. It is invested in new infrastructure. It will not “cost the economy” anything, any more than money that went toward converting from a horse-drawn economy to a car-based economy “cost” our economy anything when it occurred in the early part of the last century.
Words are important in winning arguments. “Costs” is a bad word in the energy context. “Investment,” “new jobs in new industries with great export potential,” “savings on fossil fuel achieved through the use of renewable resources,” those are the good words and phrases that should always be employed.
We have been using the wrong words about the environment-economic interface far, far too long. Use the right wording and desirable policy shifts will occur much, much sooner.
[P.S. I was an environmental adviser to the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, and was saying this back then. And frankly, I feel it’s really about time that folks in Washington finally got this stuff right!]