• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

These new interests know that if they can meet California’s standards, they can compete against anyone globally. This, in turn, gives both government and business the incentives to invest more in research and development. The pipeline of new products steadily drives more efficiency, making it easier and cheaper for consumers to adjust to a price signal. “The price signal becomes a transformation device, not a punishment device,” said Harvey. “If I make gasoline more expensive but I have access to great electric car batteries at falling prices, it doesn’t matter.” The consumer ends up saving money.

Putting all three together—efficiency standards, carbon prices, and innovation—creates a powerful engine for driving down the price for clean power and driving up demand for their production. (See Harvey’s graphic above.) “And then your innovation radically increases,” said Harvey, “because the venture capital guys see a market and the finance guys see an income stream and that really starts to change the world.” Harvey added that this is precisely the ecosystem that China is trying to put in place. “They want to have the highest-performing globally competitive businesses in the clean-energy space, and that is exactly where they are going.”

We wish we could say the same for America. But we can’t. America’s choices are clear: We can opt for living with the vicious energy-climate cycles set off in 1979 and 2010 that are making us less secure, less healthy, less wealthy, and more exposed than ever to the whims of the two most brutal forces on the planet—the market and Mother Nature. Or we can set in motion our own virtuous cycle that makes us healthier, more prosperous, more secure, and more resilient in today’s hyper-connected world.

Given the dangers and disruptions posed by the first choice and the economic and strategic benefits offered by the second, we consider the proper alternative to be obvious. We hope that a majority of Americans will soon see it that way as well. It is not at all an exaggeration to say that our future and the planet’s future are riding on it.

PART IV

POLITICAL FAILURE

ELEVEN

The Terrible Twos

MAN LEAPS FROM WINDOW, SAVED BY UNCOLLECTED TRASH, January 3, 2011, 12:07 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters)—A man who jumped out of a ninth-floor window in New York was alive on Monday after he landed in a giant heap of trash uncollected since the city’s huge snowstorm a week ago.

Two scenes from Capitol Hill—five years apart—pretty well sum up America’s reckless behavior in the last decade. The first took place on March 18, 2005, when a group of America’s greatest baseball players testified before Congress. It wasn’t pretty. Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and José Canseco appeared together at one table—sitting “biceps-to-biceps”—before the House Committee on Oversight Government Reform for a hearing on steroids in baseball. They had come in response to repeated threats by Congress to pass legislation that would govern drug testing in baseball and other sports. ESPN.com described McGwire’s testimony:

In a room filled with humbled heroes, Mark McGwire hemmed and hawed the most. His voice choked with emotion, his eyes nearly filled with tears, time after time he refused to answer the question everyone wanted to know: Did he take illegal steroids when he hit a then-record 70 home runs in 1998—or at any other time? Asked by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., whether he was asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, McGwire said: “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to be positive about this subject.” Asked whether use of steroids was cheating, McGwire said: “That’s not for me to determine.”

José Canseco, whose best-selling book, Juiced, drew lawmakers’ attention, said anew that he used performanceenhancing drugs as a player. Baltimore Orioles teammates Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro said they haven’t … “Steroids were part of the game, and I don’t think anybody really wanted to take a stance on it,” Canseco