I talked with lots of people inside and outside the green movement at Netroots Nation, and one theme arose again and again. Everyone agrees that the energy issue is more salient every day, in virtually every area of politics (economy, foreign policy, etc.). Lots of people are now being pushed to address it. They're looking around for a pre-existing coalition to hook into, and since energy thinking has been outsourced to the green movement for decades now, that's the obvious place to look.
But there is no such coalition.
There is no progressive climate/energy community with a set of shared assumptions, shared messages, and shared goals. There are lots and lots of groups pursuing their own initiatives, coming up with their own language and framing, building their own email lists, and doing their own development and fundraising. To the extent they interact it takes the form of squabbling over details and messaging. There's plenty of infighting but very little leadership and coordination.
So what is the foreign policy community supposed to do? What are progressive economists supposed to do?
What they inevitably do is come up with their own goals and their own messages, thus adding to the background white noise that's already impenetrable to the public. What cuts through that white noise is "drill here drill now pay less." It's simple, it's being echoed in 100 different places, and it looks like leadership.
The green movement's time has come. This is the moment, the historical fork in the road. And the movement is totally, woefully disorganized and unprepared. It's a bitter irony: All the things it has worked for and dreamed about for 30 years are going to happen, and it is going to be all but irrelevant to them.
Pretty disheartening.
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if you want a "progressive" movement, you need to think beyond carbon and take in the larger picture about how Big Energy is no longer needed and how they repeatedly hijack ratepayers, destroy property values, defeat conservation efforts and obliterate our environment. Sorry, I don't want to "partner" with them, even if their latest fuel is wind or sun - fuel is only about 20% of the conversation. It is wrong to destroy intact ecosystems and it is REALLY wrong to pretend we are not at a critical crossroads where we can decentralize, own, and sell power generated at point of use, even if it's only 5, 10, 100 kW.
if you want to build a coalition that believes INDIVIDUALS should be central to the process, and R & D should be dedicated to storage, load balancing, conservation, efficiency and mindful, sustainable energy and environmental policy, i will be the first to sign up, but i will not sell out everyone and everything with some delusion that Big Energy will "do the right thing" by us and the planet. Never have, never will.