Kevin Doyle: Educating Environmental Professionals in the Sustainability Era
It’s been just over 21 years since the United Nations released Our Common Future and introduced the term “sustainable development” to the popular culture. I was thirty years old when I read it, and I remember highlighting whole sections and inserting exclamation points, and adding notes in the margins like “Exactly!” Many environmental professionals (me included) eagerly embraced the notion that humanity’s hopes for ecological health, social justice, and economic security were inextricably interwoven and might be addressed together through coordinated policies and actions.
One of the consequences of the “sustainability” idea was a reconsideration of what it means to be an environmental professional. Recognizing that the protection of ecological systems was wrapped up in the economic and social justice conditions of people, we began to imagine a new kind of “sustainability” professional who could develop environmental solutions that simultaneously advanced social and economic goals. Or, I suppose, social justice solutions that promoted ecosystem health.
Over time, a conversation developed about how best to educate and train “sustainability” professionals. Broadly speaking, I’ve observed three arguments in this conversation.
One approach calls for interdisciplinary education of what might be called “sustainable solutions” professionals. The idea here is that mega-issues like climate change, poverty, species extinction, unemployment, income inequality, and water quality concerns can be studied and understood as an interlocking set of ecological, economic, technological, cultural, political, financial, administrative, and social justice issues so that workable solutions can be created.
With this in mind, educational institutions have created some innovative programs – especially at the Master’s level – which are designed to help future professionals grapple with the complex intersections of different professional worlds and invent creative solutions. Thus, instead of an engineer, economist, biologist, or accountant who “works on climate change,” we have a climate change solutions professional who tries to embody many different understandings in one, multi-disciplinary person.
A second approach to “education for sustainability” assumes that good solutions to complex problems are best arrived at when specialists bring their unique knowledge, skill, and experience into a conversation with other specialists. Earth scientists remain earth scientists. Social justice activists remain activists. Engineers are not required to read up on creative government financing schemes. Lawyers do their lawyerly thing. MBAs keep MBA’ing.
Under the sustainability paradigm, however, it is essential that professionals from different skill sets and perspectives be able to talk to one another respectfully and to incorporate what they are hearing into their own thinking and problem-solving. Understanding this, professional education for sustainability turns on learning how to work together with professionals from other disciplines in a team setting. This is not nearly as easy as it sounds on paper.
The third approach to the professional education question challenges the entire sustainability idea, with its assumption that ecological health, social justice, and economic security are interlocking goals instead of competing interests. People who take this view argue that the real world is about competing interests, and that it’s not realistic to expect that human beings will invent solutions that strengthen the economy, lift poor people out of poverty, assure greater equality of income, and protect and restore damaged and threatened ecosystems at the same time.
In this view, it’s both realistic and appropriate for people to set up institutions that are specifically designed to protect the natural world with the full expectation that the needs of ecosystems will often clash with the desires of people – rich and poor. These institutions need educated professionals with deep knowledge, skill, and experience in fields like wetlands ecology, forestry, fisheries and wildlife biology, hydrology, marine science and so forth. They need environmental professionals to work at our environmental agencies, companies, advocacy groups, and consulting firms.
Of course, all three of these general approaches to professional education in the era of sustainability are simplified and the distinctions get blurred once we launch into our actual careers and try to get things done. It’s been my experience, however, that the assumptions behind the models are real and often deeply ingrained.
Since I’m often asked to provide career advice to college students with an interest in growing a more sustainable world, this issue is of more than passing interest, and I frankly don’t have an easy answer. For now, I take the easy way out. We need all three approaches to educating the next generation of “sustainability” professionals.
And, employers seem to agree with me. As I travel about and ask companies and agencies about their workforce needs, I hear calls for interdisciplinary “solutions” people, requests for “team” focused people with a major specialty, and demand for disciplinary specialists who are narrowly focused and really good in their chosen area.
So, for now anyway, talented people don’t need to be too worried about which path they take to their sustainability career. Or, at least that’s the way I see it. I’d enjoy hearing from other Island Press authors and readers.
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Kevin Doyle is the president of Green Economy, an independent consulting, research, facilitation and training firm serving the public and private institutions who are growing a more sustainable global economy. He is the co-author of three books about environmental careers (including The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World) and writes the monthly green careers column for Grist Magazine (www.grist.org). He delivers presentations and workshops about green careers on college campuses through “Grist U” and he welcomes your questions. Write to Kevin at kevinldoyle@gmail.com.
Elizabeth Grossman: What’s for Dinner
Yesterday, the front page of The New York Times business section ran an article headlined: “Dow Chemical Raises Prices For Second Time in a Month.” Citing energy and feedstock costs, Dow raised prices for its products some 25 percent, following an increase last month of 20 percent, the largest such raises in the company’s history. A spokesman said this could affect the price of products ranging from fabric, cushions, and CD cases to car parts. The story goes on to mention similar price hikes by other chemical manufacturers and per shipment fuel surcharges. It discusses rising costs of raw materials for steel manufacturers, and mentions plastic wrap and pesticides. But nowhere does it talk about convenience. Or the string on the chicken I bought for dinner.
First the string: It was nearly 7PM by the time I got to thinking about dinner so I walked to the local market for inspiration. Although it induces guilt prompted by having learned to cook from a mother who, as far as I know, has never gotten take-out food in over fifty years of making family dinners, I bought a store-cooked chicken. They’re the same chickens raised and processed without antibiotics on all vegetarian feed within a day’s drive of my kitchen that I buy to roast myself, and less per pound than the quick-to-cook chicken breasts. When I unwrapped it I noticed the string. Birds are often trussed for roasting with string, but what disturbed me about this string was that it was stretchy. Stretchy means elastic, which means plastic, which means petrochemicals. And broiled petrochemicals are not what I want spicing up my dinner.
Being that sort of consumer – and knowing that this market encourages customer interaction – I called and spoke to the fellow in the cooked chicken department who told me the strings were made specially to be convenient. So I thought about the day’s headlines and the petrochemical mess we’re in. For in part it’s the quest for convenience that’s encouraged our endless messing about with the by-products of petroleum processing. Non-stick pans, no-iron shirts, stain-repellant upholstery, toys that float and are flexible enough for toddlers to chew, food packaging that goes right in the oven. These conveniences create markets for petrochemical-based persistent pollutants with adverse health impacts while buoying the profitability of burning greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels.
I’m not advocating doing away with all synthetics or suggesting we give up lightweight, durable, aerodynamic materials, but we have some serious choices to make. An easy one I’ll make is to cook my own chicken and if I need to, reach for the cotton kitchen twine and scissors. It will be worth the wait.
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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.
Terry Tamminen: When Water is Clear, So Are the Profits
It’s ironic that the images of flooding in the mid-west are accompanied by stories about government agencies pleading with people in those hard-hit areas to conserve water, because the floods have contaminated drinking water supplies. The recent salmonella poisoning of over 300 people in the US from tainted tomatoes can also be traced to polluted water used for irrigation (add to that the e-coli outbreaks from tainted irrigation water used on spinach and other row crops in the past 2 years).
OK, so I’m a broken drum, constantly beating everyone with “what’s good for the environment is good for the economy.” But it’s a hard theme to ignore when the examples are so abundant—and when we are in such desperate need of improvements in both these days.
Click here to read this article by James Flanagan about how clean water is a rapidly growing and profitable business. Most people think of clean water in terms of drinking and irrigation water supplies, but clean water is also necessary for many of the high-tech industrial processes that deliver hydrogen to fuel cells and process water for making solar panels, to name a few applications. Clean water will be a growth industry for some time to come, but shrewd cleantech investors are looking into it as a boom sector of the near term too.
Of course pollution prevention is an even better investment for both the environment and the economy, especially when it comes to water. I saw a demo last week of an amazing technology by a company called AbTech Industries where heavily polluted water was pumped into a stormwater treatment system and the clean water emerged from the other side – - 99% of the bacteria removed, along with the oils and sediments. Now that’s cleantech!
The poet said “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…”. Smart cleantech companies are changing that adage in a hurry, making both clear water and clear profits!
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Terry Tamminen is author of Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction. You can visit him at www.terrytamminen.com.
Ann Vileisis: Eat Less Freight
With gas prices rising to over $4.00 per gallon, long-hidden costs of the fuel embedded within our food system are beginning to show with higher prices at the supermarket checkout. The legacy of once-cheap oil, petroleum now pervades every phase of America’s food production. It’s used to make fertilizer and pesticides, to pump water for irrigation, to power tractors and other farm equipment, for ripening fresh fruits, for processing into cans and boxes, and, of course, for shipping foods from distant farms to our market shelves. Anticipating scarcity, critics long have warned about the amount of oil in our diets—that foods travel more than 1,500 miles from farm to plate—that it takes more than 10 calories of fuel to make just one calorie of food.
But criticism of such inefficiency in our modern food system goes back farther than you might expect.
Consider an article by James Collins that ran 91 years ago in the Saturday Evening Post—about our “costly national habitat of useless hauling.” At a time when the national food system was still just emerging and its promise remained ambiguous, Collins admonished that the average American family spent 20 cents per dollar on freight costs alone.
“There is certainly not a word to be said in defense of our national habit of wiring the West to send us certain food products that we could raise in our own neighborhoods,” Collins wrote. “…And when this habit is followed up in its various ramifications it reveals downright waste and collective boneheadedness.”
History is especially fascinating when it reveals how conventional wisdom can turn entirely upside down. And now, it’s cartwheeling head over heels once again as more and more people are becoming interested in the merits of eating local poultry and produce and rebuilding regional food systems.
It’s a good time to look again at the “collective boneheadedness” that Collins identified so clearly back in 1919—just as America’s food system launched into its petroleum addiction. As price pressures for hauling increase, adding more local foods to our diets may become not only the best tasting option but the most economical as well. As Collins advised, “eat less freight.”
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Ann Vileisis, author of Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get it Back, loves to share history that offers perspective on modern-day concerns.
Robert Engelman: Less Mentioned in “More”
Keeping a book short is no easy task, especially on a set of topics as complex and controversial as population and the reproductive intentions of women. Now that I’m discussing my latest book, More, widely, and the publication is gaining some reviews (such as this one in The Washington Post), I’m developing a list of topics I hope to develop further if I ever write the sequel. The title could be More More, or maybe even More, Longer More.
Many points that some readers feel I’ve missed are actually in the book, though perhaps not highlighted or explored in depth as much as people would like. That’s the case with the topic of individual consumption of natural resources, which I discussed in an earlier blog (“All Consuming Question,” June 6). And I do make the point clearly (as have some reviewers and questioners) that many women aren’t able to use contraception at all because of social pressure from their partners and others in their lives.
By contrast, some topics could use more attention in a future treatment of this linkage. Among those I’m making notes on are:
- The desire of many women to have large families, and the need some have felt throughout history to enhance their fertility, not suppress it. I acknowledge in More the diversity of childbearing intentions among women, and point out that what matters to overall population outcomes is average fertility, not that of any particular woman or group. But the persistence of reported high desired fertility among many women is worth exploring in more detail. I’d like to try to tease out what is personal and what is social (and possibly socially pressured) in women’s frequently expressed hopes for having many children in some societies.
- The related issue of infecundity—the inability to bear or father a child that is (commonly called infertility, though technically this term means simply having no children.) Should couples or individual women who would like to conceive and bear a child, but who have had difficulty in doing so get help from societies and governments (a measure that I support for women who want to postpone and prevent pregnancy?).
- The ways that men often support rather than undermine women’s reproductive intentions and strategies. An earlier draft of More had a longer section on contemporary male involvement in reproduction and its importance, and I’d like to dig further into that topic.
- The importance of sexuality education. This is a critical component of healthy and intentional reproduction that deserves much more attention. The recent news story about a spate of teen pregnancies in Gloucester, Mass., serves as a sad reminder of the high cost of blindness to young people’s need for sound information about sex and reproduction as well as access to safe and effective contraceptive options.
I may deal with some of these points in future blog posts. It’s hard to say, after all, whether or when More More will ever see the light of day.
Chris Leinberger: The American Dream has Changed in the Past and is Changing Again
In the agricultural age, the 18th and 19th century, the American Dream could have been summarized as “40 acres and a mule.” An independent Jeffersonian “yeoman farmer” was an ideal that attracted many immigrants here. In the industrial age, the early and mid-20th century, the American Dream could have been summarized as “a single family house in the suburbs with a white picket fence around it,” what I call drivable sub-urban. That industrial age was predicated upon steel manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, marketing and maintenance, auto finance and insurance, road-building, tire manufacturing and marketing, finding, processing and distributing petroleum and all the great drive-in possibilities that unfolded. As you “saw the USA in your Chevrolet,” you were making yourself wealthier.
Today’s knowledge-based economy is “driving” yet another redefinition of the American Dream as it plays itself out on the ground. This new version is based upon choice; choice of living as either a rural gentleman farmer, in suburban splendor or in a vibrant walkable urban place… or all three depending upon time of life and financial resources. However, there is a severe supply shortage of the walkable urban version, which has driven up prices, gentrified urban neighborhoods and called upon the real estate development industry to build something they know very little about. And there is a supply glut of suburban single family homes. It will take a generation for the pent-up demand for walkable urban development to be satisfied and the drivable sub-urban glut to be worked out, converted to rentals or bulldozed.
Related: “Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?”: CNN.com
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Christopher B. Leinberger is a land use strategist, developer, teacher, consultant and author, helping to make progressive development profitable. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream from Island Press.
Kevin Doyle: In Praise of Environmental Careers
Recently, I received a review copy of a handbook for people seeking “green” careers. This has been beat for a long time now, and I’m always interested in other people’s wisdom and advice. I was vaguely troubled after reading it, but I couldn’t exactly say why. There was just something wrong.
The handbook was informed and up-to-date, so there was no problem there.
The authors emphasized the fact that sustainable economy careers were often in the business world and that one could promote greater ecological health from a job in traditional business professions like sales, marketing, finance, investment, human resources, facilities management and product design. I make those same points in my own presentations, so that wasn’t a cause for concern.
The global climate change crisis was front and center, as it should be, and a call for people to consider jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy careers and companies was loud and clear. The need for revolutionary advances in energy technology was covered. Check that.
There was a more than adequate description of the “green collar jobs” movement, which effectively carried the message that jobs on the manufacturing line and in the trades were an important part of the emerging green economy. Double check.
The 21st century of information technology was amply represented, with references to website designers and social marketing campaigns. Right on.
Finally, the handbook clearly explained that green careers were not limited to a focus on protecting, conserving and restoring the natural world, but also included social justice and economic security concerns. Amen, brother.
So, I started through the text a second time. And then, it hit me. The problem wasn’t with the careers and professions that were included. It was with the people that were left out. And who might they be?
There were no foresters. No fisheries, wildlife, wetland, soils, freshwater, marine or conservation biologists. No agricultural scientists. No air, water, hazardous waste, or solid waste professionals. No environmental, geological, chemical or any other kind of engineer. No Environment, Health and Safety managers. No land use planners or recycling coordinator. No environmental lawyers or activists. No park rangers or interpretive naturalists. No land trust managers and staff.
In this world of green careers, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, or Bureau of Land Management. In fact, there wasn’t much reference to government careers at all.
In the effort to demonstrate that green careers were not limited to traditional conservation and environmental protection professionals, this little handbook seemed to suggest that our brave new world of sustainability didn’t include them at all!
The real green careers, it seems, involve producing, marketing and selling high-end organic iced teas or coordinating “social responsibility” reports for global corporations and retail chains.
So, I Googled the words “green jobs” and “green careers” and began to re-read some of the more recent media stories. To greater and lesser degrees, I found the same thing. The definition of environmental careers hadn’t been expanded to include a wider circle of professions for sustainability. It was in the process of being redefined so that entire swaths of the environmental and conservation professions and institutions were somehow labeled as old school, irrelevant, or (worse) actively negative.
So, things are getting just a bit out of hand.
You can help! Next time you hear an expression like “I’m not one of those tree huggers,” or “I care about people, not polar bears,” “I’m not one of those bugs and bunnies environmentalists,” or any of the dozen other ways that we belittle traditional conservation and environmental protection people while still claiming to care about the health of the planet, push back a bit.
Stand up for the foresters! Stand up for the fisheries and wildlife biologists. Stand up for the air and water permit processors at the state DEP! Sure we need the cool renewable energy technology venture capitalists and the exploding number of innovative green businesses with their colorful marketing campaigns.
But, we need our park rangers and water quality technicians, too. We won’t get to the promised land without them. Don’t leave them out of the green career handbooks.
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Kevin Doyle is the president of Green Economy, an independent consulting, research, facilitation and training firm serving the public and private institutions who are growing a more sustainable global economy. He is the co-author of three books about environmental careers (including The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World) and writes the monthly green careers column for Grist Magazine (www.grist.org). He delivers presentations and workshops about green careers on college campuses through “Grist U” and he welcomes your questions. Write to Kevin at kevinldoyle@gmail.com.
Elizabeth Grossman: What We Know Now
Unintended consequences. Do we wish we knew then what we know now? I encounter the phrases often while investigating environmental and health impacts of the materials that go into consumer products. News this week reminded me why it’s time to retire these crutches, take a close look at history and consider the big picture as we try to solve our biggest environmental problems.
On the campaign trail yesterday Senator John McCain called for more nuclear power, which he calls a “proven energy source that requires exactly zero emissions.” McCain’s goal: forty-five new reactors by 2030 on the way to his desired goal of one hundred new U.S. reactors. (Senator Barack Obama has said he’s not a proponent of nuclear energy, but that it should remain an option in the mix of national energy sources.) No new nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. in over thirty years. About two dozen U.S. plants are at some stage of shutdown and decommission. Most still have fuel on site. Current estimates for new nuclear plant construction average about $15 billion per plant. This doesn’t include financial and environmental costs of raw materials extraction, safety, and waste disposal.
On the same day as McCain’s proposal, clean-up of over 50 million gallons of nuclear waste stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state resumed for the first time since a spill there last July of about a hundred gallons of radioactive and other hazardous waste. About 80 square miles of groundwater are contaminated there, including a mile-plus long plume near the Columbia River containing carcinogenic hexavalent chromium at levels above federal safety standards for aquatic life. The Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River north of New York City has been leaking radioactive tritium and strontium 90 since at least 2005, and nuclear waste stored at the Idaho National Laboratory is seeping towards the Snake River.
Also this week, both McCain and President Bush called for an to end the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, and the President again advocated for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, data just posted by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center indicates that this year’s summer Arctic sea ice loss may be as great as last year’s, the greatest retreat of the Polar Ice Cap yet recorded. Throughout May, Arctic sea ice melted faster than it did during the same period last year, with thinner ice and more polynyas – leads of water – that will accelerate further melting. Melting permafrost on Alaska’s North Slope is already causing problems for drilling operations, pipelines and supporting infrastructure.
Everything we does has impacts and choices have to be made. But even in tough times, why make choices with known adverse consequences we’re already living with and that will be with us for decades to come?
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Elizabeth Grossman is the author of High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.
Terry Tamminen: And Then There Were Two
Yes, it finally happened. We’re down to two in the race. The others have dropped out, the final holdout brushed aside and the main event begins.
Of course I’m talking about the NBA finals. Great east-west rivalry with two teams that have very different DNA and game plans. Sounds a bit like the Presidential race, but whatever your “home team,” let me offer some advice to the next President no matter whose jersey he wears.
Score some quick points for the economy by tackling energy efficiency and an alternative to oil in your first week on the job. Lots of experience in California and a growing number of states that are taking up the climate change challenge have shown that energy efficiency measures are cheap and pay themselves back in 18-36 months.
Create a pool of capital so businesses can rapidly retrofit inefficient old lighting, HVAC, printers, copiers, and other energy hogs. Get paid back from the savings, after which the businesses will be saving up to 50% of their energy bills. It costs the country very little (I would make these interest-free loans, so there would be some cost to put the money into the market and manage the project, but at today’s low interest rates, even Uncle Sam can afford this!).
If the next President uses the fund to force every government installation – - including all military installations – - to become more energy efficient also, the program will pay for itself by the energy savings realized by the feds themselves. The bonus benefit here is the jobs created doing the retrofits and selling more efficient equipment and appliances.
Then ask Congress to suspend the $100 billion/year tax breaks given to oil companies for just 3 years. Who knows, maybe even the oil companies won’t squawk if they know it’s only 1% of their wealth (OK, they’ll squawk, but the public will love this). Put out a giant Request For Proposals for US companies to build a network of hydrogen fueling stations across America (the American Petroleum Institute said it would cost $140 billion, although the Rocky Mountain Institute quotes a much lower figure). More domestic jobs.
Use the other $160 billion to hire US companies to convert trucks, buses, trains, and even family cars to run on hydrogen. We already make 3 trillion cubic feet of hydrogen in this country every year, most of which is used to strip sulfur from oil to make gasoline – - instead of simply putting the hydrogen in our vehicles. It’s time to cut out the middle man.
So, Mr. President, you will turn around the economy in a hurry, end our hostage crisis (yes, we’re captive to the Middle East and other oil producers), clean up the air, and solve climate change all at once.
Not bad for a first week’s work or, as some might say, a “slam dunk”.
Terry Tamminen is author of Lives Per Gallon, The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction. Visit him at www.terrytamminen.com.
Jay Inslee: Liftoff
Rocket launches are always exciting. So are clean energy revolution launches. Although I have never attended the launch of an American space rocket, I have been there at the launch of a clean energy revolution, a more terrestrial but just as important effort – one that will surely be as big a leap for mankind as the one that took place on the Sea of Tranquility.
There is a difference between the starting points of these two types of endeavor, of course. The launch of a rocket has well defined and inarguable starting point – the electric moment when the dragon roars to life and spits incandescent clouds of flaming gas into the Florida sky. The countdown is precise, and the ignition point a thunderclap of promise.
The launch of clean energy revolution is, in contrast, a nuanced affair, and it’s starting point itself subject to interpretation. When would all the national signs signal an unalterable commitment to this journey? Could such a moment be so clear it could not be subject of debate?
Probably not. But if a national consensus about that moment is impossible, a personal recognition is not only possible, but actually happened to me on April 24, 2008. On that day, it all seemed to come together – the political, the personal, and the economic.
Politically, the day brought a long awaited cutting of a Gordian Knot that had stymied our efforts to pass an extension of the renewable energy tax credits for months before. Those tax credits were absolutely fundamental to the growth of the most promising clean energy technologies, and their imminent expiration was threatening the continued growth of the wind, solar, wave, and enhanced geothermal industries. On that day, the Ausra Solar Thermal Company was on the precipice of losing a major contract with PGE for one of the nation’s first solar thermal plants in 20 years. So I had been tearing my hair out for months as we sought a way to break the logjam that kept our extension from passing, a logjam that resulted from the Senate’s refusal to “pay for” these tax breaks with some other form of alternate federal revenue, a requirement of the House to abide new tax breaks.
But that afternoon, I talked to Dave Obey, Chair of the Appropriations Committee. After listening to Dave’s standard tongue-lashing of how doing such a radical thing would destroy his ability to move a bill at all, and would probably be the end of western civilization, he suggested it may be possible to put our measure in the imminent supplemental appropriation bill, if the Senate wouldn’t present a problem. This was golden because I already had assurances that Harry Reid would go along with the deal.
So that day, a major piece of the political puzzle came into place.
One hour later, as I strolled into National Airport (I refuse to call it Reagan), a glance at the shelves of the book store showed that three of the nation’s most mainstream magazines all had devoted virtually their entire issues to the clean energy revolution. That day, there was no escaping the issue by anyone wanting to read some light material in National Airport.
That day, a cultural piece of the puzzle came into place.
Just a few minutes later, I called Jim McDermott, the son of my colleague, but couldn’t reach him because he turned out to be in Saudi Arabia selling them his one-of-a-kind solar thermal system to which he holds the worldwide distribution rights – a system that has what may be the world’s most promising technology capable of storing energy generated by the solar thermal system. This system uses molten salt to store energy when the sun is not shining, a critical virtue that may be the final piece required to make solar energy a truly fundamental part of our electrical grid. Here was an American company selling an energy technology to the heart of the oil and gas beast, retrieving some of the billions we had sent to the Mideast. What a sweet turnabout!
That day, a piece of the technological puzzle fell into place.
So as I took seat in 15E on my Alaska flight, the fact that I was in an uncomfortable middle seat was assuaged by a new feeling, a feeling that the revolution had started, that the political, the cultural, and the technological pieces had come together, and that we were finally on our way. At that moment, as the plane took off, so did my sense of boundless optimism.
Houston, we have liftoff.
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Jay Inslee represents the First District of the State of Washington (Seattle area) in the United States House of Representatives. He is the co-author of Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy.
