Leading by Example

Bill Richardson

Description

Global climate change?

We can stop it.

Addiction to oil?We can replace it.

Technological innovation?

We can create it.

But we can't wait twenty, thirty, or fifty years.

Bill Richardson launched his campaign for the presidency to remind the American people--and their representatives in Washington--that we know how to get things done. We need to end our dependence on oil, and we need to do it yesterday.

This isn't something that's going to happen only in Washington, or Detroit, or even Hollywood or Tokyo. It's going to take all of us, a united United States. We have the opportunity, perhaps for only a few years, to make dramatic but beneficial changes in the way we run America.

As Leading by Example makes clear, if we succeed, with strong presidential leadership and the support of the American people, we will restore America's role in the world--a source of moral leadership, a source of astonishing technology, and a source of optimism to be admired.
Introduction.

1. No Challenge Is Greater or More Important.

2. 1997–2007: Then and Now.

3. Oil, Coal, and the Planet’s Future.

4. A Confused World, an Opportunity to Lead.

5. Learning from Others.

6. The Costs of Action, the Price of Inaction.

7. Government Must Play a Role.

8. Using the Bully Pulpit: The Power of the Energy President.

9. Facing Reality.

10. 2020 Vision: An Energy Revolution, in Five Simple Steps.

Acknowledgments.

Further Reading.

Index.

Sujets

• Political Science
• Governor
• Bill Richardson

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 31 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470490198
• Langue: English

Extrait

LEADING BY EXAMPLE
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
How We Can Inspire an Energy and Security Revolution
BILL RICHARDSON


John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Copyright 2008 by Bill Richardson. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
Wiley Bicentennial Logo: Richard J. Pacifico
Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Richardson, Bill, date.
Leading by example : how we can inspire an energy and security revolution / Bill Richardson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-18637-4 (cloth)
1. Energy policy-United States. 2. Power resources-Government policy-United States. I. Title.
HD9502.U52R49 2008
333.790973-dc22
2007029108
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Barbara, for her ideas, for her support over decades of dedicated public service, and for letting me try to be the leader America needs.
This book is further dedicated to the American people, whose enthusiastic attention and commitment will be necessary to meet the nation s energy, security, and climate challenges in the decade ahead.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as [people], and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.
-F ranklin D. R oosevelt , J anuary 1945
The new Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises-it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.
-J ohn F. K ennedy , J uly 1960
CONTENTS

Introduction
1. No Challenge Is Greater or More Important
2. 1997-2007: Then and Now
3. Oil, Coal, and the Planet s Future
4. A Confused World, an Opportunity to Lead
5. Learning from Others
6. The Costs of Action, the Price of Inaction
7. Government Must Play a Role
8. Using the Bully Pulpit: The Power of the Energy President
9. Facing Reality
10. 2020 Vision: An Energy Revolution, in Five Simple Steps

Acknowledgments
Further Reading
Index
Introduction

Most Americans grow up believing that their country is great-not perfect, but a model for other nations. The United States is where anyone can achieve almost anything, depending on how hard he or she is willing to work. It is a nation where ideals such as freedom and democracy are vigorously discussed and defended every day.
That greatness will help us meet the single largest challenge we face as a nation today: our energy, security, and climate policies have left us far too heavily dependent on foreign oil, and on fossil fuels in general. The results include overexposure to price spikes that badly hurt people and the economy, vulnerability to hostile nations and terrorists, and a carbon-clogged atmosphere with the prospect of catastrophic climate change that could change Earth as we know it, potentially affecting billions of human lives.
Public concern is provoked daily by the high gasoline prices forcing everyday folks to spend more money on transportation costs instead of on household equity, education, or health expenses. There are larger, hidden costs as well. Our trade deficit suffers from our purchases of foreign oil, affecting borrowing costs and long-range prospects for investment and growth in our economy. We defend oil around the world at great cost, and we will need to spend much more on reacting and adapting if climate change is allowed to gain momentum.
By quickly adopting and implementing the policies I recommend in this book, we can do much better. We can stop paying hundreds of billions of petrodollars every year to oil-producing countries and use that money to rebuild manufacturing and opportunity across the United States. The price of change will not be very high, and it is far lower than the costs of continuing what we have been doing.
This book is my effort to show the nation, no matter who is the next president, what needs to be done. We need a national effort, led by an enthusiastic and informed president, to bring Congress, the public, and business together behind this important national mission.
Some of what I say in these pages will be controversial. I am particularly rough on the leaders in the White House and Congress who have watched the energy situation dramatically worsen in the past six or seven years, yet have not offered even the ghost of a program to change direction. My criticisms of past congresses are aimed not at Republicans or Democrats but at those who continue-regardless of who s in charge-to stand in the way of needed energy and climate policy. Further, my focus on the president is meant not to be partisan, because energy and climate are not a partisan issue, but instead to indicate his failure to address these huge issues. (I know many Republicans who are as distraught about the lack of leadership on these issues as I have been.) I am also hard on a few players in the existing energy and auto industries. I don t take the doctrinal line professed by many energy advocates, from environmentalists to libertarians. Instead, I mix a lot of needed initiatives into a comprehensive, integrated program that will produce results quickly. We need to be honest about people s interests and their potential to be involved in new solutions. But at the end of the day, we also need to work together to meet these challenges comprehensively and quickly.
I don t provide much fluffy rhetoric in this book. I leave that to other candidates. This book is about real issues facing the country, issues that desperately demand forceful and focused attention. I am willing to gore some oxen, because I know there can be no sacred cows. I try to provide solutions, not just describe problems. Sometimes it may seem that I talk more about old options (like coal) than about new ones (like solar). That s because we are more than 50 percent dependent on coal for electricity today, a situation that is both dangerous for the atmosphere and a bad model for the developing world. And I include some personal stories to keep it from being too wonky. Policy shouldn t be painful!
As you ll see, I believe we must act boldly, and we must act now. I am not proposing half measures or long-term solutions. I want to reduce oil dependence by 50 percent by 2020, and I want to reduce carbon emissions sharply and quickly so that we are down 20 to 30 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2050. And I expect that after enacting our domestic program, we will be in position to lead the world again-to be great again, the way Americans know we, and our nation, were born to be.
CHAPTER 1
No Challenge Is Greater or More Important

Several years ago, I had a visit from some oil executives in my Santa Fe office that signaled sharp, surprising, sudden changes in world energy markets.
The executives told me a story, a rather frightening story, about a liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker that had been en route to the United States only the week before, carrying a load of natural gas under contract to a buyer in the United States.
The tanker had turned around, literally done a 180, when buyers in Asia decided to intercept that natural gas on its way to markets in the United States by paying the contract penalties and a price premium.
I don t know whether it was day or night, stormy or quiet, but picture it: the diversion of a huge tanker carrying liquefied natural gas, out on the high seas. The order comes in. The tanker turns around. In a relatively stable, long-term market like that for natural gas, this was a big event. For a buyer to turn a huge LNG tanker around, and for U.S. buyers to face such unpredictable competition, marks a significantly new world.
Oil and gas markets are tightening. Global pressures from the explosion of economic growth in China and India are changing world oil and gas supply and demand, perhaps structurally. As a result, prices are higher than we expected they could ever reach. The price of oil broke through $70 per barrel in July 2007, even as the U.S. Se