Clean Energy for Conservatives – for Liberals – for Americans

I ran across an interesting article on csmonitor.com about Clear Path, a conservative organization advocating for clean energy.

“Curbing the impacts of climate change isn’t the only positive of switching to lower-carbon energy. Innovating and deploying cleaner fuels helps create jobs while reducing US dependence on foreign oil. That’s a plus for the economy and national security, not just the climate… even if climate change weren’t a risk – which we think it is – these policies would still make sense…”

It’s not just conservatives looking at clean energy with a fresh perspective. There’s a shift in thinking on the left, too.

Clean Energy’s principles offer everyone something: Smaller government, innovation, energy security, lower air pollution risk, free market choices, all based on actual cost/benefit analyses.

In the 2008 election cycle, candidates on both sides of the aisle agreed climate change posed a risk and that cleaner energy sources offered a solution. Since then, partisan rancor has overwhelmed the debate.

It’s time to get off the Blue Team and the Red Team. Save your tribalism for your favorite sports team. Real life must depend on real data and realistic policies – if only because reality has a habit of winning over human wishes. To obstruct every idea because of distrust is deeply pessimistic and ultimately self-defeating. We’ll never all agree – after all, there’s 300 million of us Americans – but I like Clean Path’s belief that we can do this together.