Full Title: An American Clean Revolution: Why the US Should Play to Win on the Clean Economy
Author(s): Bill Moomaw, Steve Westly, Paul Dolan
Publisher(s): The Climate Group
Publication Date: September 1, 2012
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Two divergent paths. In the closing months of 2012, the US sits at a fork in the road in its quest to reverse the economic downturn and maintain its global leadership. There is broad consensus around the challenges to be solved: America needs more home-grown jobs, it needs to wean itself off foreign oil, it needs to re-establish its competitiveness with rapidly emerging economies like China, and it needs to ensure economic growth is sustainable in the face of the realities of dwindling resources and a growing world population. But the debate around solving these challenges is increasingly disconnected from both the urgent threat of climate change and the major opportunity that comes from addressing these challenges in an integrated way.
The two paths we can choose from look very different. The first is based on ‘business as usual’, where we continue to use domestic fossil energy to drive growth, betting that the path that made America great will continue to lead us in the right direction. The second path is based on utilizing renewable energy resources and low carbon innovation to transform the economy: a ‘clean revolution’. Both paths present economic opportunities for the next four to eight years. But, as we will argue in this report, if the US wants to play to win in the longer term, only the second path – a clean revolution – works.