American Wind Energy Association | Comprehending the Climate Crisis: Everything You Need to Know about Global Warming and How to Stop It

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”
—Mitt Romney (January 2012)

If you were a Republican running an election campaign to become President of the United States, your particular political ideology might mean you think global warming isn’t real, and that green energy is a bad idea and totally unnecessary in today’s economy. There’s also a chance you completely disagree with those concepts, but because you’re base of constituents and your lobbyist supporters disagree with them, you go along with them anyway. But the optimist in me hopes that presidential candidates speak true to their convictions.

So if you thought that wind energy was a joke and you didn’t want to continue supporting it in any way whatsoever once you became President, it would make sense that you’d want to end the wind production tax credit, scheduled to expire at the end of this year. This tax credit—a benefit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated—will indeed end unless it’s extended. If it does expire, it will not only put an end to some energy that is greener than the fossil fuels Republicans seem so eager to support. It will also mean the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing and construction jobs that are supported by the wind energy sector.

Now if you were a Republican running for President of the United States and that was your perspective, what you thought was best, then I think you should come out and make a definitive statement to that effect. Let the voters know exactly where you stand on the issue. If some Americans agree with you, you’ll likely get some of their votes from that stance. If others disagree with you, you might make it more likely they’ll vote for your opponent. But either way, people will clearly know where you stand on the issue.

Mitt Romney, the most likely candidate for the position of Republican running for President has hinted that he wants to end federal tax support for wind energy—along with other forms of green energy—but alas, he hasn’t made a crystal-clear statement to that effect. We certainly don’t yet know if he thinks it should expire at the end of the year as is currently the timeline for its fate, or if it should perhaps be phased out more slowly. (For the record, President Obama has made it very clear that he believes the tax credit should be extended indefinitely.)

In other words, Romney is taking the passive-aggressive approach to the issue. He doesn’t want to support extending the tax credit, but he doesn’t want to look like the outright villain and state that he wants it to expire when the year is up.

The reason this approach is passive-aggressive is because of the uncertainty associated with the lack of a decision on the issue. It means that developers are having a difficult time planning for the future beyond 2012. The effects are already being felt, and the website ThinkProgress has been reporting extensively on the losses that are being felt. In Pennsylvania, 165 workers at a turbine manufacturing-company lost their jobs. In Ohio, a $20 million dollar project was cancelled, losing up to 200 construction jobs in the process. In Arkansas, a $100 million wind turbine production facility has been stalled.

For companies that still plan to continue their business, one solution is to export their products to the many nations around the world that are expanding their own wind sectors. But many companies believe they’ll be about 18 months behind in production while waiting for Congress’s verdict of the tax credit extension.

As the American Wind Energy Association has demonstrated, wind energy has been good for the US. Since 2012, it has brought $20 billion in annual private investment and helped to support 75,000 jobs, making the US one of the most competitive countries in the world when it comes to the wind industry. If the tax credit isn’t extended at the end of the year, however, it will lead to an estimated 37,000 lost jobs in the following year.

What’s saddest of all when it comes to Mr. Romney and his attitude toward green energy is that he vehemently defends tax credits for the oil and gas industry. If he truly believed in good old-fashioned capitalism and free market enterprise, I would think he would pledge to support all industry equally and let the market sort out in the end which it thinks is best. But he clearly wants to maintain an advantage for the established fossil fuel industry, ignoring scientists all over the world who argue that renewable sources of energy need to be developed, and quickly.

If Mitt Romney is a real man true to his convictions, he should make it clear what he thinks about extending the tax credit, rather than using his passive-aggressive approach to slowly devastate an industry without ever having to take the blame once the damage is done.

I hope American voters will see who has spoken more truly about his convictions come November and re-elect the man with a vision about where the US needs to be in the 21st century, rather than the one who believes so strongly in business-as-usual, but doesn’t even have the guts to make that clear to the voters.

“We’ve got a growing economy that’s increasing energy consumption and wind energy should be part of the solution.”
—Karl Rove

No need to rub your eyes or shake your head, you read that right: Karl Rove, the famous (some would say infamous) political strategist and mastermind behind George Walker Bush’s gubernatorial elections in Texas (1994 and 1998), and his subsequent presidential elections (2000 and 2004). He served as senior advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff until his resignation in 2007.

As a staunch Republican, one might expect Rove to be pro-fossil fuels and anti-climate change / anti-green. Indeed, less than two years ago at an oil-shale gas conference he made the following comments:

“Climate is gone. I don’t think you need to worry the new Congress will consider proposed legislation to put the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing under federal rather than state regulation.”

And just last month he wrote a scathing editorial where he described President Obama’s efforts to block the Keystone XL pipeline, actions that made Obama “a job-killer, not a job-creator.”

So I was as surprised as anyone to read that Rove has publicly supported extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for the wind industry, scheduled to expire at the end of this year. The PTC has been a substantial subsidy for wind energy in the US, but many argue that such tax breaks should come to an end, and that the resulting tax hikes can be offset by other means if necessary.

The quote at the beginning of this post came from Rove’s keynote address at a conference sponsored by the American Wind Energy Association this past week. Displaying a surprising amount of bipartisan insight, he stated the following:

“You don’t need moderates to get this done. You need conservative Republicans who say this means jobs to my district and a resource we’ve got plenty of. And you need Democrats to say this is a way to expand the range of options that we have as a country for energy.”

And there you have it. Motivated by ways to boost the economy (which I don’t deny is important), Rove sees the benefits of supporting wind energy. In fact, Navigant Consulting has studied the Production Tax Credit and estimates that if it is extended, 54,000 jobs will be created, but if it expires then 37,000 jobs in manufacturing, maintenance and installation will be lost. That’s enough to get any Republican’s spidey senses tingling.

I think a lot of people would consider the economy and the environment two of the world’s most pressing issues today. “Hard-nosed conservatives” believe we have to do what we can to help the economy of today; “tree-hugging liberals” believe we shouldn’t do what we have to do if it means it will irreparably harm the environment of tomorrow.

Finding efforts that will help both is key. So although I don’t believe that Karl Rove’s comments this week means he has suddenly seen the light regarding global warming and climate change—which would be such an about-face I expect he’d develop vertigo—he at least recognizes that if green initiatives can also be helpful to the economy, then they should be encouraged rather than opposed simply because they’re green.

I believe we’ll see even more conservatives making comments like this in the coming years. Renewable sources of energy are going to become viable economic alternatives to fossil fuels. Oil is going to become gradually more expensive as more extreme sources such as offshore drilling and tar sands are explored. Thermoelectric sources (coal-burning and nuclear power plants) are going to produce more costly electricity as water from cooling towers becomes warmer and scarcer secondary to climate change. And as renewable sources (solar, wind, and geothermal) are researched and developed, their costs will naturally drop.

As these changes develop, I’m optimistic that the two sides of the political spectrum will find common ground where their own individual priorities will require the same means, albeit to achieve different ends. If Karl Rove can see the sense in that—and for that I give him credit—then anybody should be able to.

Now let’s see how long it takes for other prominent members of the GOP to figure out the same thing.