“URGENT!” Seriously? Every political email claims this and, even though they might be correct, it’s damn annoying, especially when it’s the same old hand out for contributions.
Let’s face it, we’re all muddling around with little cartoon bubbles over our heads filled with thoughts like #:@{!!*:@), right? Well how about a ray of light in these rather dark days? Not just a ray but a blast. A column of light. A lighning bolt. A gosh-darned solar flare?
Look, I’ve written about climate issues in the past, and about how we might address the changes required, but today I discovered a solid strategy to avoid what is otherwise a truly abysmal future. Yes, folks, a real solution. And what fun; it will require nothing less than an overhaul of everything in very short order! That means getting to work this very minute, like now. Time is pounding out a beat, guys.
Before you shake your head and guffaw, meet Saul Griffith – the man of my hour. I first encountered him on an Ezra Klein podcast last fall, and recommended the show to everyone. Griffith turned my head around, like the devil did to Linda Blair in The Exorcism, but in a good way. So when he reappeared last week on Klein’s show, and now with an entire website devoted to his essential premise – RewiringAmerica.com – I thought hot damn! I’ve got to spread the word.
Can you guess what Rewiring America actually means? Yup – decarbonizing, rapidly phasing out all fossil fuels and electrifying the entire nation by running it all on solar, wind, and other sustainable, ‘substitution’ technologies. I personally am electrified by the prospects. And, what is crucial here – the handbook Griffith and his partners have created, to present this comprehensive approach to what would seem an outlandishly enormous enterprise, is laid out with a firm grasp of the economic shifts that will need to happen. We’re too young to remember this, but America has accomplished similar feats in the past – consider the War Powers Act which, in a span of five years, geared up an entire nation and transformed our military into a formidable foe against Nazism.
Griffith makes the distinction between ‘seventies thinking’ (bless all you hippies!) and his 2020 model. The old school approach hoped to reverse our downward slide by leaning on efficiency (industrial, appliance, auto) and his model, which rejiggers and rebuilds the entire system from top to bottom, will work with zero emission, ‘substitution’ technologies.
Yeah, there will be a few trade-offs along the way, including some use of nuclear for the build out, but Griffith’s scenario is a stunning win-win. More jobs, like 25 million, more clean air, more social justice. Less disease, less stress, less mass migration. All that and we get to keep to our ideas of The Good Life, circa 2020? How can we not get behind this? Only if inertia and despair rule. But that’s simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Really, there are no excuses.
So open your minds to The Possible, or should I say open your hearts. And flex your muscles. We, as a nation of individuals, each have power, and now is the time to exercise it and blast through the political stasis that cripples our national resolve. Our elected officials had better open their eyes and get off their asses, now!
Please pass on one of the links below to everyone you know. Or just link to this page. We’re all in this together; every one of us stands to suffer from our failure to act, or to benefit – if we do mobilize and build that better world now.
Are you with me? If you are, write me and let’s start a posse to keep the buzz going: (eddy at ellaryeddy dot com)
For Saul Griffith’s website & handbook, which lays out in great detail how this whole project can, because we know it must, happen. Or for a 15 minute read, here’s a piece Griffith wrote on Medium.
And here is Ezra Klein’s podcast with Griffith, which is an easy entry into the fertile workings of Griffith’s brain, as applied to solving the climate crisis. Just gotta say here what amazing work Klein does in finding the best brains and asking the best questions.
Another piece I wrote after watching a documentary about the making of GAME of THRONES and seeing the production as a possible paradigm for the re-engineering of the biosphere as a magnificently creative and collaborative enterprise.
And here are some of my previous thoughts about Silicon Valley’s navel gazing. It is a peeved shot I took at the tech sector’s apparent laxity of mission and our own consumer acquiescence to it. From Realize Magazine… Oh, it looks like some of the techies heard my pleas :@)
