The Sustainable State of the Union

There are times when sustainability takes the back seat in political address, earning only brief glimpses amidst purportedly grander plans for our country’s direction. Tonight was no such occasion. President Obama made sustainability a fixture in his State of the Union address to the country, touching on numerous points as priorities for how we should utilize sustainable goals to strengthen the economy and improve our quality of life. Though some of the mentioned goals were admittedly very tenacious, it is encouraging to see that the White House is willing to put sustainability center stage.

The President wasted little time in drawing the road map of “winning the future” and it began with investment in innovation. “We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.” All true statements and as manufacturing competition escalates with eastern countries like China, innovation becomes one of our country’s last and most powerful weapons in commerce. The move was one of many that attempted at bridge-building between partisan groups, as incentives for innovation are always more popular with conservatives than subsidies for infrastructure.

As supportive as I am of the President’s green energy goals, even I have to admit that some of them set the bar extremely high. Mr. Obama proposed the goal of having 80% of American energy be renewable by 2035, having 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015 and give 80% of Americans access to High Speed Rail within the next 20 years (I already know what the post on Randal O’Toole’s blog will be tomorrow).

These are big goals. As of now, only around 11% of our energy would be truly considered renewable (which does not include natural gas and nuclear that the President had in his objectives), we have merely thousands of EVs on the road and 0% of Americans currently have access to High Speed Rail. The last could be a tall order given that it comes in the wake of Republican’s targeting transportation funding—including all Amtrak and HSR funding—in proposed spending cuts. As much as I would like to see all of these things accomplished, I have to wonder if the President did not over-extend himself in trying to energize the country for accomplishment.

Other initiatives were well within the realm of plausibility, like putting an end to billions of federal (read: taxpayer) dollars that support oil companies. As the President aptly pointed out, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.” Obama also emphasized reinvestment in our nation’s infrastructure and raising levels from the lackluster 2% of GDP that our country commits to its systems now. Whether it be water, power, transportation or sewage, we are in dire need of new infrastructure systems that allow us to live safely and efficiently.

President Obama claimed that we stand at this generation’s “Sputnik moment,” labeling our need to devote time, effort and resources to making a great deal of technological progress very quickly. Though I understand the reference, I still see our current position as different. The space race that escalated after the Soviet Union succeeded in sending Sputnik orbiting the earth drove a country of smart, dedicated innovators into a field we knew nothing about and had virtually no experience in. We created the map as we went and our ingenuity helped us prevail. 12 years later Americans were on the moon.

Though the image of a sustainable economy presents great task ahead of us at present, there is little mystery. Of the problems we have, most of them we know a great deal about and have been studying for decades. We even have solutions that can be deployed on numerous scales in numerous ways in every corner of the country. The space program required hard work from a small group of people to elevate the hopes of tens of millions. A national transition to sustainability requires diligent work from a large group of people to improve the lives of billions. Our greatest obstacles are not the technological unknown, but the slow distribution of education and a trepidation towards change.

Overall the speech was positive but not very confrontational; a ‘feel good’ speech that was meant to make no new enemies and shake the hands of a few friends. The follow through on some of these rather broad goals will be universally more important than the speech itself, but more than anything, the line from the speech that resonated with me the most was:

Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.

As is always the case, change is necessary and goes against the comfort zone of many American traditions, but these small sacrifices and struggles are the demands of a new age that we have to enter. Sustainability’s only real hopes for progress rest in our ability to make concrete, meaningful changes in the way that we live.

Image Credit: The Guardian