New Year’s Eve serves as an occasion for considering lessons
learned from the past 12 months
– and pondering the promises of our tomorrows. So in today’s
column, let’s do some time-tripping 10 years hence. Let’s crank up
the flux capacitor in our old DeLorean time-machine and, like Marty
McFly, let’s go
”
Back to the Future.
”
New Year’s Eve serves as an occasion for considering lessons learned from the past 12 months – and pondering the promises of our tomorrows. So in today’s column, let’s do some time-tripping 10 years hence. Let’s crank up the flux capacitor in our old DeLorean time-machine and, like Marty McFly, let’s go “Back to the Future.”
Dec. 31, 2020: Putting Christmas stuff away in my attic this week, I stumbled upon a shoebox containing clippings of old columns I wrote. Going through the yellowing scraps, I felt a wave of nostalgia recalling the days when newspapers were printed on actual paper. One journalistic endeavor struck me as particularly prophetic. Published on Dec. 31, 2010, it’s headlined: “A 2020 vision for a clean energy nation.”
When I wrote the words in that column, Americans faced high unemployment and a staggering $14 trillion national debt. That December, the Cancún Climate-Change Summit achieved no significant gains in reducing humanity’s release of 90 million tons a day of global-warming pollutants into earth’s atmosphere. And bitter partisanship created a political polarity in Washington, D.C., causing many American citizens to lose their faith in their nation’s future.
In my “2020 vision” column I wrote: “My wish for 2011 is that President Barack Obama would give me a phone call on New Year’s Day so I could tell him personally what he can do to get the United States back on track. I’d tell him that he should give America an optimistic vision for the future. Much like John F. Kennedy gave our nation a deadline of the end of the 1960s to land on the moon, Obama needs to give our nation a great and daring goal with an ambitious target date that would unite all our American citizens. I’d propose to him this great and daring goal must be to upgrade America into a clean energy nation by New Year’s Eve 2020.”
Historians now consider New Year’s Day 2011 the birth date of the Clean Energy Nation campaign. As I remember that morning, just before answering the phone I read on the caller-ID screen the words: White House, Washington, D.C. Honestly, I thought it was a practical joke when the caller introduced himself.
“Marty, this is Barack Obama,” the voice said in the president’s dry, professorial tone. “Let’s talk about your column in today’s Gilroy Dispatch. Let’s talk about this here 2020 vision for a clean energy nation.”
My jaw dropped. I never imagined the White House subscribed to the Gilroy Dispatch. After he convinced me he really was the commander-in-chief, Obama and I had a cordial phone chat about America’s future and the promises of a clean energy revolution.
“Your column is dead-on right. Our nation does need a leader who can create a vision for a clean energy future,” Obama said. “We need to focus on creating a bright, new tomorrow for us and for future generations. We need a great and daring goal to unite our national family.”
During that historic New Year’s Day conversation, Obama proposed holding what he called a “Clean Energy Nation Summit” in Silicon Valley. He saw our region of California as a place where imagination and engineering can dream up innovative ideas for solar and wind power, modern electric cars, and an energy-efficient power grid. Four month later on Earth Day in April, President Obama opened his historic Silicon Valley conference, setting America on the path to achieving its freedom from the tyranny of fossil fuels.
What a difference a decade can make. Americans did indeed gain the great and daring goal we set in 2011. United, inspired and focused on an ambitious target date, our citizens produced advanced energy efficiency technology and sustainable fuel sources that upgraded us into a clean energy nation.
We’re now free of our addiction to foreign oil, so we no longer need to protect other countries’ petroleum or fight terrorist threats – saving $200 billion a year in national security and defense costs. We’re saving $70 billion a year on public health costs because our water, air and soils are cleaner. Instead of a projected $20 trillion debt in 2020, our nation now enjoys a surplus, freeing us of the fear of China someday calling in our credit card. Our taxes are lower by a third because America now enjoys a booming economy with a broad base of citizens working in millions of clean-tech jobs. Most importantly, Americans have faith in the future.
When the “vision 2020” column was published a decade ago today, I never dreamed its words would change the world. Looking back, President Obama just needed a little nudge to take charge as our national leader and give America the great and daring goal of transforming itself into a clean energy nation.
