Earth Days Page #8

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of supplies.

People couldn't get gasoline.

Gas lines would stretch on

for half a mile sometimes.

We were driving these big cars,

absolutely reliant upon them

and you couldn't find gasoline.

So they started rationing.

I can't see the United States

running out of anything,

but maybe that's, uh, I'm, uh,

prejudiced that way.

I think the United States

should be able to have

plenty of anything.

The United States

recognized for the first time

that our standard of living

could be held hostage

by people halfways

around the world.

With good policy,

this could have been

the initiation of a transition

to a... to a renewable society.

That in itself

was not a new concept.

In the early 1950s,

a government commission

called the Paley Commission

urged a transition

as rapidly as possible

to renewable energy,

to solar energy,

to energy efficiency

as a matter

of national security.

Of course we ignored them.

The United States of America,

as the greatest industrial power

in the world, with seven percent

of the world's people,

and using 30%

of the world's energy,

shouldn't have to depend

on any other country

for energy that provides

our jobs

and our transportations

and our light and our heat.

We can become self-sufficient.

This is a great project,

and I am going to push it.

Well, thank you very much,

gentleman.

I guess that's the end.

I remember when Nixon stood up

and announced

Project Independence.

Every president

after him announced

some sort of energy

independent program.

And, of course, they all had

more or less the same result.

But these were...

These were peripheral responses.

They didn't get

to the heart of it.

And, uh, and never did.

The energy market at that time

was a market that was

a combination

of guaranteed monopolies,

cartels, and insurance

and price subsidies

favoring the largest,

the most powerful,

the most wealthy,

and I will say

the most ruthless

corporations in America.

And they had just

a stranglehold on Congress.

Electric utilities

were the largest monopolists

in the country.

There was only

one way to buy power.

So, historically, you have

one set of hugely

powerful interests

defending their preeminence.

And on the other hand,

a bunch of solar entrepreneurs

operating

out of their garages

with, with virtually nothing.

Its like me going into the

boxing ring with Muhammad Ali.

It's just not a contest.

It's done.

Development

and economic progress

has been at the heart

of the election of congressmen.

And there's generally

been a lot more money

from the energy companies

than the developers.

So the environmental

movement may be

viewed by most of the public

as important,

but to the politician

who's elected,

who gives them money?

There's no benefit to them

in looking at the solution

of long-range problems,

like global warming

or the conservation of energy.

It's a short-term problem

that he's got to address

to get re-elected.

Follow the money.

It's not a fad.

The concern for environment

is a very...

Many of us believed,

if, uh, you just elected

the right people

and they passed the right laws,

if you could

bring a case to court

and get a ruling, then everybody

would have to be good.

Well, no.

People said,

"You can't make me do anything."

And that in part, set up

a conflict that to some extent

endures to this day.

A case in point

in the '60s and '70s

was people

went to logging areas.

City people went and shook their

fingers at the loggers and said,

"Stop clear-cutting."

And the loggers

looked at these folks.

I was a logger, so I'm

on their side on this one.

They just said,

"You're not from here.

"You don't know

what you're talking about.

"And your entire effort

seems to be

"making sure

that my livelihood goes away.

Why don't you just go away?"

Just look around.

All the land's going into parks.

And if it all goes

into parks, then, uh,

we just won't have no timber

and jobs will go.

Housing will go sky high.

This area will become

practically a ghost town.

And so as a result,

what you got was,

instead of some engagement

that might have lead to better

forest practices right away,

you got a standoff

that lasted decades.

Then you have to ask yourself,

"Is the thing that we want

"to make a big fuss

and feel righteous

or is the thing that we want

better forest practices?"

Which is a completely

arguable thing for people

who would not only like to keep

their job as loggers,

but have these

rural communities keep going,

because logging is what they do.

Sustainable logging

looks to them

like a good thing

put in those terms.

But put in the terms

of "stop what you are doing,

you bad person you,"

that doesn't fly.

The environmental movement

was becoming

more professionalized

and Washington-centric.

And to a certain extent,

the environmental movement

developed some clout through

the big national organizations,

but it also became susceptible

to being overpowered

by bigger organizations

with deeper pockets.

I began to recognize that much

of what the early environmental

movement was trying to do--

to litigate,

to legislate, to lobby

in a top-down fashion

could buy time.

It could hold off the worst,

but it could never implement

true sustainability.

A whole cadre of people

that I hung out with

wanted to solve problems

right now directly

with minimal resources

and maximum ingenuity.

We imagined that we were

outlaw designers.

We had a sense that there

were design solutions

that would be brought to bear

on everything

from, say, solar technology

to energy conservation

and efficiency.

We wanted to take

the engineering approach and say

"Let's just fix that."

There's not

a political fix for it,

but there is a technological fix

for it; just do it.

Don't try to change

human nature.

It's not going to change.

Don't try to change politics,

it's too clueless.

You can change technology

and that will fix things.

Human nature can stay

right where it is,

the politics can

catch on 20 years later,

but, meanwhile,

you've fixed the problem.

Many large American companies

had within them

individuals and small groups

desperate to innovate

in the same way.

For example, since the '60s,

there were people

within General Motors--

I know I've talked to them--

who were designing

super-efficient cars

with technologies

like electricity

and hybrid-electric

or even hydrogen.

And yet senior management,

I think had a lack

of imagination

and a resistance to change.

There was a sense

that if you just keep doing

what you've always done,

you're safe.

Probably the biggest

shift in perspective I've ever had

was going from being

a somewhat Libertarian,

grassroots, uh,

fringe-y outsider,

to working in the center

of power in California,

which is the governor's office,

for a guy who was

exactly my age.

Who is now an elected

governor of the state

who was appointing my friends

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