Dark horse third party presidential candidate Paris Hilton released an online campaign ad taking on allegations about her connections to other 2008 candidates, and formally announcing her energy policy. Hilton’s announcement is an effort to put an end to speculation about how she would lead our country to energy independence. Like many others, I’m not surprised to see Hilton proposing a plan that will garner support from both sides of the political spectrum (and one can only assume it is part of a larger strategy to carry the votes of centrists from both parties):

“We can do limited offshore drilling–with strict environmental oversight–while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. That way the offshore drilling carries us until the new technologies kick in which will then create new jobs and energy independence. Energy crisis solved!”

(watch video here)

However, I have two issues with this ad, what it says about the overall campaign, and the likelihood of a Hilton presidency:

• According to this ad, energy solutions are at best a second priority after getting a good tan. We need a president who will be dedicated to getting the ball rolling on energy legislation within the first hundred days. After seeing this ad, I’m not sure that Paris Hilton would be that president.

• My second issue is probably more important–the solution is a political winner, but there are gaps in the logic. While walking the fine line of partisan politics with a finesse that could push it through both houses and into law, the “Hilton Solution” places too much faith on offshore drilling as a short term solution.

The Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlooks 2007′s analysis of the outcomes of drilling on the outer continental shelf (OCS) “indicate[s] that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.” The report also said that come 2030 “any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”

On the surface, the Hilton Solution seems like a platform worth rallying around. Overcoming the energy crisis in America is of utmost importance and any solution must be a political winner so that we can legislate and act with confidence and effectiveness.

However, our energy solutions also need to be real winners that can lead us to energy freedom and ever increasing levels of security and prosperity. And unfortunately, the plan that Paris Hilton put forth today cannot. Ultimately, the Hilton Solution is just more political posturing from a candidate who, frankly, seems a little over her head.

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The time for the environmental movement to become great has arrived, and we must grab this opportunity by its horns before it passes us by.

Despite what my you may have derived from my previous posts, I think that the environmental movement is a good movement. It has done good work cleaning up smog, fixing the ozone, and cleaning up lakes and rivers. The results, like the movement, have been pretty good. But the time for good is over. The time for the environmental movement to become great has arrived, and we must grab this opportunity by its horns before it passes us by.

I spent a good chunk of my Sunday afternoon reading sections of Good to Great, by Jim Collins. The book studies businesses that made a lasting, sustained transition from a “good” company to a “great” company. Collins wrote about corporations, but what he said can be applied to any organization of people, including environmental NGO’s or the movement itself. Collins dug up articles and conducted interviews with executives from these companies, including businesses like Walgreens and Circuit City, to learn what these companies had done in common during the point of their transition from good to great. He identified a few different practices and factors, including the presence of adversity, honesty about the brutal facts, and identifying what each company had the capacity and potential to become the best at. It’s critical that we similarly apply these to our movement in order for us to be great:

Adversity

Adversity, according to Collins, helps facilitate the transition from good to great. This is not due to adversity in itself, but the opportunity it presents to reconstitute an organization’s mode of operations and frame of thought on all levels. Adversity also acts as a great motivator, leading to increased dedication to the fundamental mission of the organization. Adversity can come in the form of a new opponent, a new paradigm to operate in or a struggle from the organization internally.

The challenge of climate change marks something qualitatively and quantitatively different than anything the environmental movement has taken on before. Carbon dioxide emissions are not chlorofluorocarbons—dangerous, ozone hole causing chemicals which were emitted by relatively few companies that had a viable alternative within cost-effective reach. They are a result of almost every activity that we engage in, linked to our infrastructure and our economy. This is not about stopping a single pollutant in a single industry. In fact, its not about stopping anything at all. It is building entirely new: a clean energy economy, a clean energy infrastructure, and a clean energy society.

If we recognize the adversity we face, and acknowledge it, we will be ready. Overcoming climate change could be the challenge that transitions the environmental movement from good to great.

Confronting the Brutal Truth

In order to transition from a good movement to a great movement, environmentalists must face the facts. We need to be more honest about the state of things:

• The scale of the technology challenge is huge, simply staggering. We must tackle this head-on and aggressively invest in clean energy solutions across the board—this could mean making compromises from our current energy policy preferences. For example, maybe we do need carbon capture and storage as part of our investment portfolio. Maybe the mitigation challenge is too great for cap-and-trade alone to regulate away.
• Time is short and the challenge is urgent. We are quickly approaching 450 ppm of carbon – often considered the climate ‘redline’ beyond which we do NOT want to cross. Given the urgency of the challenge, we must begin working with the technology we have now in addition to investing heavily in the technology breakthroughs we know can come.
• China. It exists and continues to grow at an explosive rate. We’d better deal with that fact and willful ignorance of the international context of climate change will get us nowhere. We need solutions that will spur the deployment of clean energy technology across the globe, fueling a new era of clean economic development that can lift billions of out of poverty without cooking the climate.
• Traditional environmentalism has failed to galvanize the country (and the world) because its messages and tactics don’t run parallel to (and often run against) most people’s values. The environmental movement has also demonstrated an astounding ability to cling to old ways of thinking, even when faced with new and different problems. Let’s be clear: just because Al Gore won an Oscar doesn’t mean we are reaching and convincing people in droves.

We need to recognize these truths, and others. It is not until we have recognized these truths that we will be able to move forward with firm footing.

I am not saying that we must give up due to insurmountable facts; I am simply saying the time has come to stop sugar-coating the pills that we must swallow. Collins identifies something he calls the Stockdale Paradox: maintaining faith that we will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, while at the same time confronting the most brutal facts of our current reality.

At what are we The Best?

Collins points out that to become a great organization, you must recognize what it is you have the potential to be the best in the world at. It might not be what you are engaged in right now, and it might not be what you have done before. But to be great, to achieve great results, you have to identify what it is you will be the best at.

Perhaps the old guard is best at conservation, clean up and preservation. But we are a new generation of advocates and activists, and what we can be best at is ours to own. We, the youth arm of the environmental movement, need to recognize what we can be the best at. It might not be what movements of the past have done.

At this moment in time, the youth engaged in climate action have met the preconditions to be best in the world at advocating for and achieving global, sustainable, just and prosperous energy equity. We are a movement that cares about energy use, we are a movement that considers global consequence, we are a movement that wants to reduce our carbon emissions. These concerns are the preconditions for our greatness; we can take these concerns, couple them with a care for lifting billions out of poverty, couple them with a dream of making the earth one that can sustainably and prosperously accommodate nine billion human beings, and couple them with a knowledge that a clean energy civilization is the best avenue to achieve our ends. We can take all this, and know it, and own it, and work towards it, and then we could be great.