Going Green – America in the 21st Century (Berlin, Free University, June 9, 2010)

Going Green – America in the 21st Century
Berlin, June 9, 2010
Ambassador Philip D. Murphy

Professor Wenzel,
meine Damen und Herren,

Das Thema unseres heutigen Gesprächs könnte nicht relevanter sein.  Seit die Ölplattform Deepwater Horizon von BP am 20. April explodiert ist, sind laut einigen Schätzungen möglicherweise bis zu 190 Millionen Liter Rohöl in den Golf von Mexiko geströmt.  BP hat berichtet, dass es Fortschritte beim Auffangen des Öls gäbe. Aber wenn Malia Obama ihren Vater fragt: „Habt ihr das Loch schon geschlossen, Daddy?", lautet die Antwort: Nein.  Das Loch am Meeresgrund ist noch da.  Es ist noch immer eine Bedrohung für die Golfküste und die Menschen, die dort leben.  Das Wichtigste ist jetzt, das Ausströmen des Öls aufzuhalten und den Schaden zu begrenzen. Aber diese Katastrophe hat auch ganz klar gezeigt, dass sich Amerika nicht nur auf fossile Brennstoffe stützen kann. Das ist nicht das, was wir uns für unsere Kinder und Enkelkinder wünschen.

This oil spill is an unprecedented disaster — an environmental and economic tragedy — that underscores the urgent need to develop clean, renewable sources of energy.  For many, this is a moment of environmental awakening — a 21st century equivalent of the Rachel Carson's A Silent Spring. Carson’s bestseller led to the banning of the chemical DDT, the creation of the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the birth of the organic food movement. As Al Gore wrote in his forward to the thirtieth anniversary edition of A Silent Spring last year, “Without this book, the environmental movement may never have developed at all.”

Today, we are also reminded of Rachel Carson’s words. Carson was a marine biologist. In 1955, in her book The Edge of the Sea she described the Florida Keys: "I doubt that anyone” she wrote, “can travel the length of the Florida Keys without having communicated to his mind a sense of the uniqueness of this land of sky and water and scattered mangrove-covered islands. The atmosphere of the Keys is strongly and peculiarly their own. This world of the Keys has no counterpart elsewhere in the United States, and indeed few coasts of the Earth are like it."  We are learning firsthand how fragile our ecosystems are and how quickly a treasured landscape can become endangered. Protecting the earth’s biodiversity, be it in the Gulf of Mexico or elsewhere, is a responsibility we all share.  

The oil spill is making America and the world once again think very seriously about energy and the environment.  Between March and today, Americans' priorities between environmental protection and energy production have shifted from a somewhat pro-energy stance to stronger pro-environment stance.  One of the priorities of the Obama administration is a transition to a clean energy economy.  We now have the momentum to aggressively accelerate that transition.  The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive energy and climate bill.  There is currently a plan in the Senate — a plan that was developed with ideas from Democrats and Republicans — that would achieve the same goals.  Congressional Democrats plan an aggressive legislative response to the oil disaster bringing much stricter regulations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wants a "comprehensive clean-energy bill" on the Senate floor by July, aimed at pushing the economy to "kick the oil habit."  One of the most important elements of new climate change legislation will be the incentives that are put in place for America's inventors, entrepreneurs, and industries to transform how we use and produce energy.

As Energy Secretary Chu, a Nobel Prize winning scientist by the way, says, in order to meet the energy and environmental challenges we face, “we will need nothing less than a second industrial revolution.” And that revolution, that transition to clean energy, can only succeed if the private sector is fully invested in this future.  We need to unleash the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs.  Capital needs to come off the sidelines and on to the table.  The first industrial revolution supplanted human and animal power with machines powered by fossil fuel. Today, we use the power of two horses to dry our hair. We go to the local market under the pull of hundreds of horses, and fly across our continent with a hundred thousand horses.  A second industrial revolution is needed to provide the world's energy needs in an environmentally sustainable way.

Secretary Chu quotes hockey player Wayne Gretzky who when asked how he positioned himself on the ice, used to reply: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been."  Let me rephrase that comparison since, in a couple of days, we will all – or some of us – will all be focusing on the World Cup.  Germany’s “Torjägern” – Carau, Schweinsteiger, Podolski;  the American top scorers — Landon Donovan,  Clint Dempsey — will certainly  be focusing on where the ball is going to be over the next few weeks in South Africa.  By the same token, President Obama is committed to comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will position America where the ball is going to be.   Under his leadership, the United States has already taken dramatic steps to change the way we use energy. Sharp increases in automobile fuel efficiency have been mandated.  The economic stimulus package included more than $80 billion in clean energy investments designed not only to jump-start the economy, but also to build the clean energy jobs of tomorrow.

We can’t know for certain what the future will bring nor can we guess with 100 percent accuracy which industries and innovations will shape our world.  Last week, the international community celebrated World Environment Day.  World Environment Day is a United Nations event that promotes environmental awareness and public action.  It has been celebrated every June 5 since 1973 – which makes it almost as old as Earth Day.  This year, Pittsburgh was the North American Host City in recognition of its leadership in regional innovation and in its transformation to a greener economy.  There were times when Pittsburgh couldn’t imagine life without steel mills.   When the steel industry shrank, many jobs were lost.  Who could have guessed that Pittsburgh would reemerge as a center for technology and green jobs, health care, and education? 

Pittsburgh is no longer a blue collar city.  It is now one of the top 10 American cities when it comes to “green” or “green collar” jobs.  The city made famous by its steel mills and heavy industry now boasts acres of sunflowers throughout its urban center.  The flowers are a clue to Pittsburgh’s ongoing transformation from an industrial economy, with all the pollution associated with it, to an environmentally sustainable one.  The flowers pull lead and heavy metals out of the soil; and their seeds are used for biofuel.  Planting the flowers on vacant urban land improves the value of adjacent properties. The high school students who plant the crops learn about renewable energy and resource management.  A win-win situation.  The sunflower project highlights the challenge in developing a more energy-efficient and less-polluting economy.  In Pittsburgh, government leaders are working with several different stakeholders – labor, government, industry, academic science, consumers and nonprofit groups – to build booming clean-energy industries on a scale much larger than flower plots, from solar power to biodiesel to green building to green chemistry or nuclear energy.  One of the tasks is for educators to work closely with industry and employers to develop a work force that’s up-to-date on cutting-edge environmental science.  In the new energy economy, workers will need to know how to install solar panels, solar water heaters and low-water-flow plumbing fixtures.

Green jobs are making inroads in the U.S. economy.  Growth in these jobs was 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007 compared to 3.7 percent overall.  As part of the Recovery Act, tax credits for clean-energy manufacturing projects are projected to create tens of thousands of clean-energy jobs.  Meanwhile, the stimulus bill is pumping $80 billion into the clean-energy sector.  Aggressive smart grid deployment could create 270,000 U.S. jobs and a further 138,000 if our smart grid technologies are exported to a global market.

Some regions have become green jobs strongholds.  California leads the nation in clean-energy jobs. The Bay Area is the number one metro area for clean technology job activity.  San Francisco recently passed $100 million in revenue bonds to support renewable energy projects. With the highest concentration of colleges and universities of any metropolitan area in the world, it comes as no surprise that the Greater Boston area is also a leader in green technology.  Two big sources of green construction and engineering jobs in Boston are wind power.  Wind power is in fact Boston’s third-largest fuel source. There are also an increasing number of opportunities for green jobs in New York City.  Since 2001, organizations such as Sustainable South Bronx, have worked to move South Bronx residents from welfare to green-collar jobs through education and outreach.   In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg launched 127 greening initiatives, including $1 billion for retrofitting buildings to boost energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The New York program would also ensure that a park was within a 10-minute walk for all residents.  Meeting these 127 goals will create thousands of green-collar jobs in a variety of fields from urban forestry to renewable energy. 

Pittsburgh and San Francisco, Boston and New York are just a few examples.  Federal and state policies are important, but America's cities are seizing the opportunity afforded by the exploding "green" economic sector to rebuild communities, regional economies -- and people's lives.  I have focused on cities because of the role they play in changing lifestyles.  Concepts like “smart growth” and “new urbanism” both of which promote neighborhoods with a diverse range of housing, businesses and public spaces organized around central areas to avoid urban sprawl and, transit-oriented and walkable land use, are changing some fundamental elements of American society and perhaps even what has come to define the American Dream. 

Many studies indicate that American preferences are indeed shifting away from the suburbs to walkable urban environments.  The “Hör mal wer da hämmert” drivable suburban television of the American Dream is being supplemented by the “Sex and the City” vision. Two-thirds of Americans today live in counties that make up the nation’s largest metropolitan areas; and these urban-centered regions are continuing to grow.   A recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows that housing construction in urban neighborhoods has doubled in 15 large metropolitan regions in the last five years, despite a prolonged downturn in the country’s real estate market. At the same time, there’s been a push to develop dense suburban communities that mix housing with commercial districts and encourage residents and workers to use public transit.

The new urban and suburban lifestyles have helped boost public transportation and reversed a 40-year trend of declining transit ridership. While 76 percent of Americans still travel in their car to work, the share of commuters who take a bus or train is growing.  As more people move within reach of urban public transportation routes, they are choosing to leave the car at home.

The car culture is another element of society deeply ingrained in the American culture and the American Dream.  I don’t think that Americans – like Germans – will ever stop loving their cars – especially if the car industry comes up with clean, green, mean, great 21st century designs.  But something is changing.  American art and cultural critic Dave Hickey writes about his youth.  He was born in 1939 and he says that when he was growing up, and I quote: “Wherever I found myself, kids bought [cars], talked them, drew them, and dreamed them -- hopped them up and dropped them down -- cruised them on the drag and dragged them on the highway, and I did, too. Thus, of necessity, I learned car math and car engineering, car poli-sci and car economics, car anthropology and car beaux-arts.”  Is that the case today?  I think it might be more accurate that kids learn web 2.0 math, web 2.0 poli-sci and web 2.0 economics, web 2.0 anthropology and web 2.0 art.

There is a saying that all politics are local.  Some of the examples I have mentioned support that hypothesis but when it comes to the environment, it is also true that climate change and clean energy are global challenges.  In full knowledge that the United States has the largest historical emissions of greenhouse gases, we are prepared to assume our share of the responsibility.  This is what we bring to the table: an unprecedented level of effort and a commitment to act both domestically and internationally, in terms of financial and technological support as well as domestic emissions reductions.   But action by the United States or Germany or by the entire group of developed nations is clearly not enough.  Significant action will be required by the major developing countries.  Over the next twenty years, 97% of the growth in emissions will come from developing countries – fifty percent from China alone.  There is simply no way to preserve a safe and livable planet unless developing countries play a key role in the climate negotiations and join in taking collective action to meet this common challenge. 

At this very moment, representatives from 182 nations are meeting in Bonn for the second time in 2010 to grapple with the range of issues up for resolution before the next U.N. Climate Change Conference (or COP-16) convenes in Cancun, Mexico, in November.   The nonbinding Copenhagen Accord was produced at COP-15 in Denmark last December as a possible alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.  The climate talks in Bonn began as the U.S. State Department released its fifth Climate Action Report report since 1994. The report reads, “Throughout the United States, Americans are taking action to address the grave challenge of climate change and to promote a sustainable and prosperous clean energy future.  These efforts are occurring at all levels of government, in the private sector and through the everyday decisions of individual citizens.”  I have tried to give you a taste of some of those efforts and hopefully also left you with a sense of the innovation and technology that will be asked of all of us in the future.  As President Obama said last week to students like you at Carnegie Mellon University, “The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. We are not going to move backwards.  We are going to move forward.” 

Or to put it in the words of Rachel Carson:  “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.