The Politics of Positivity « It’s Getting Hot In Here

I was inspired by this post by David Roberts on Gristmill, so I’m going to put off my final paper for a few more minutes to write about the Energy Bill.

In the past two weeks or so, I’ve been doing as much as I can to call and write all my congressmen and get as many other people to do the same as possible. We were telling them that dropping strong provisions of the Energy Bill was unacceptable, and that to reduce the bill’s substance at all would make it insufficient.

Now, though, they passed the bill, and they did so by eliminating some of the really wonderful parts of it (cutting dirty fuel’s subsidies, for one). But they passed it. They passed a bill that has numerous amazing requirements. Roberts reminds us that, “Of course this bill is not enough….But it’s a victory, and you know what people like? People like winning. They like being on the winning team.”

So let’s not fret that this bill is not enough; let’s not slip to the opinion that the 2007 Energy Bill is bad. Let’s applaud loudly our achievements, and the achievements of the politicians who pushed this through. And of course we can’t stop there: keep demanding more. This bill is indeed an astounding victory, but let’s push our leaders to do more. The more positive and solution-achieving we are, the more people will join us.

About Alex

Alex Krogh-Grabbe is a 2008 graduate of Connecticut College, where he studied Philosophy and worked extensively in extracurricular environmental clubs. He reawakened to the environmental movement in the summer of 2006, when he started reading Treehugger and the Gristmill blog religiously, and feebly blogging about his interesting environmental findings there and elsewhere. Recently strongly interested in progressive politics as well (that's how we can get all this good stuff done), Alex worked briefly as a campus organizer for U.S.PIRG, and now works in Development at WFCR, the NPR station in Amherst, Massachusetts