The following guest post is by Gillian Caldwell, campaign director of 1 Sky. She originally posted this on 1Sky’s blog. Last night, I went to hear what President Obama had to say at a Gen44 event organized by the Democratic National Committee (note that I took time off from 1Sky to attend the event because 1Sky is a 501(c)(3) organization and we can’t — and don’t — do any electoral work). Anyway, I happened to catch President Obama on a rope line and decided on the fly to challenge him on the mythology of clean coal since our base has been so concerned about his repeated calls for clean coal (and nuclear and oil drilling) alongside real renewable energy solutions. My partner Louis captured the exchange on his iPhone. Here is what happened and a transcript as best as I can put it together since the audio isn’t great, especially on my voice — although Obama comes through loud and clear and we have our work cut out for us! We shake hands, I grab President Obama’s hands with both of mine and look him straight in the eye: Me: It’s got to be renewable energy. No more clean coal. [Inaudible: It’s a unicorn. It doesn’t exist.] Obama: I disagree with you. I disagree with you. We are not going to get all our energy from wind and solar in the next 20 years… Me: Let the market do it. Let the market do it. Can’t the market make the investment? [Inaudible: It’s hundreds of billions of dollars (we’d be investing in “clean coal” in the House version of the bill)] Obama: They can’t do it. The technology’s not there. I’ve got a nuclear physicist in my Department of Energy who cares more about climate change than anyone and he will tell you you can’t get it done just with that — so you’ve got to have a transition period to do all this other stuff. Don’t be stubborn about it! Me: It’s about getting the votes [inaudible: in Congress isn’t it?] Obama: This is not a votes matter, This is a technological matter. It really is. I have looked into it. Me: We’re running a national campaign and people are really upset about this – Obama: I know everybody’s….listen, if I could do it all with wind and solar I would! We can ramp it up. That’s what we’re working on. So what was really going on here in this brief exchange between me and President Obama with the noisy bugles in the background? We were talking past each other, for one thing. President Obama was making two points: * We can’t kick our dirty coal habit right away. It’s going to take some time — he has said at least 20 years. * Because we aren’t going to get rid of coal immediately, it’s worth it for the federal government to invest in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology , to make coal cleaner for now. Generally speaking, we agree with his first point. Some persuasive arguments have been made that we can get rid of coal in the next 10-20 years but right now almost half of our electricity comes from coal, and retiring those old dirty plants won’t happen overnight. That’s why we agree with the President that our clean energy transition must start immediately. As President Obama has said, “it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” However, we disagree strongly with the President’s assertion that the federal government needs to help bail out America’s aging coal industry by footing the bill for carbon capture and sequestration technology as they limp into the 21st century. To see the rest of this post head over to the current green bog. added by: leahl
