Learning from Obama
This radio program gives some insight into how Obama catered the ‘green’ part
of his election campaign to different levels of environmental skepticism. For example he emphasised the gains to the car industry and being competitive with Japan and China in the ‘automobile state’ of Michigan .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jrpvs/b00jrpsq/Costing_the_Earth_Obamas_Green_Dream/
It also reinforces the ideas that Anthony Giddens puts forward in his book The Politics Of Climate Change. Anthony Giddens (Labour life peer and sociologist) had to say in this interview about the book (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio
- The strategy of trying to scare people about the future catastrophe of global warming doesn’t work because it is an abstract notion of what might happen in the future.
- We need to show people there are many positive innovations that will reduce the risk of climate change.
- With innovations we need to talk about opportunity not risk, benefit not just costs.
- He sees the difference between himself and the Green party as he has more interest in the sharp edged technological innovations than the protection of nature.
- He expresses the opinion that nuclear is the technology that can scale in the short term.
- We need incentives rather than taxes.
- He says that Obama is an inspiration, as he sees the new economy converges with climate change investment.
- Energy markets should be under some government control as markets won’t do the job on their own.
- He wants to see a group of business leaders who publicly put forward the idea that it should be only those companies that are ‘environmentally progressive’ that will be competitive in the future. And they will lead by example.
- He puts forward the idea that we need a wider set of measures of growth/welfare for the future, as he believes that the economic growth measures we have do not reflect the total sum of human welfare.