Donald Trump's call for change carried him to victory over Hillary Clinton's message of experience. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Although our electorate has succumbed to Donald Trump's siren song about immigrants threatening America, we cannot afford to give in to despair. The real existential threat continues to loom. We need to wean the economy off fossil fuel immediately, and this cannot happen without the commitment of America's citizens.
As helpless as many of us may feel today, we retain immense power within our markets and our communities, power that affects millions across the globe. The election of a demagogue lacking in basic qualifications doesn't shift the imperative to use this power. If anything we need to redouble our efforts. We do not have the luxury of four years to mourn. If you are grieving, shocked or ashamed today, channel that emotion into action.
Trump, despite his bald claims during the debates, has repeatedly called climate change a hoax – variously attributing it to the Chinese, to President Barack Obama and to "hoaxsters." We have elected a regime of climate change deniers, and make no mistake, this will have an extraordinary impact. As Eban Goodstein, director of the Bard MBA in sustainability, emphasized in an email today: "America, and the world we touch, has crossed overnight from a state of economic and political stability into a highly uncertain future. It is clear that much of the policy direction in support of sustainability that Washington has provided the past eight years will be reversed."
Energy prices have been volatile since the election, as markets anticipate a Trump evisceration of conservation policy. Even under Obama, the Republican-controlled congress voted to block pledges to cut fossil fuel. Now, at a time when we can afford to take no more out of the ground, Trump has pledged to open federal lands (and offshore areas) to drilling. That's tantamount to repeating Kodak's decision to double down on film in the era of the digital camera, except the ghost town we leave behind will be the entire planet.
That is, if we fail to act.
The required solutions are not theoretical: They're in use, and ready for scale. In our cities, for example, buildings are the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses today. The good news is that we have demonstrated the capacity to finance, build and manage multifamily dwellings that cut carbon use by 70-80 percent. Such solutions are proven and fundable, and they create jobs.
To take them to scale is feasible now, but it requires a willingness to move beyond ideology in order to combine public investment with triple-bottom-line business models. By investing in environmental and social sustainability alongside financial returns, and using public funds to incentivize the right kind of risk, we have the capacity to make such solutions real, and drive job creation in the process. By implementing the passive house standard for new construction in Brooklyn, for example, we have driven demand for builders and workers with relevant skills, and for makers who specialize in passive building products. Meanwhile, community organizations have begun to retrofit existing building stock, reducing urban carbon footprint while creating additional jobs. This opens the door to real economic growth.
Moreover, what we do in our cities impacts us everywhere. For example, in the Hudson Valley, investors in development contend with pervasive uncertainty about how much the waters will rise. This isn't some doomsday scenario; it has immediate impacts on infrastructure investments, risk assessments and payback periods. If you don't know what's happening along banks and coasts, where so much of our population lives and generates wealth, it's hard to invest in growth. What we do in our population centers affects our options everywhere else.
Whether we're talking about cities, transportation, supply chains or food, alarms should go off whenever we hear about incremental carbon reduction by 2030. That's far too little, too late. We already give billions in government handouts to fossil fuel companies. If we continue to favor these obsolete giants, we are history. If we fail now to disrupt our markets, skills base, community institutions and infrastructure, our economy will slip irredeemably behind while we watch and wait for the flood.
Historically, we found the national will to meet daunting threats while fostering disruptive innovation in the process. Seven years after President John F. Kennedy said "we choose to go to the moon in this decade," a man walked on its surface. That's the kind of urgency we need to beat climate change. We ramped up military spending to average $298.5 billion a year during the Cold War. Not only did our economy bear the burden: it thrived as we rose to the challenge.
Twice now – in the year 2000 and this week – the electoral college has robbed the American majority of a leader who might have set the needed national agenda. And while we may rightly feel shame to have allowed a cheap huckster, whose idea of innovation stops at border walls and Trump University, to be elected president of the United States, we must not forget that American ingenuity lit and connected the world. Today, sufficient investment in moving past fossil fuels could kick off what Hunter Lovins in "Climate Capitalism" called "the next industrial revolution."
We have the tools to reduce emissions while generating prosperity at every level. We can count on the Trump regime to disdain these tools, but we do not have the luxury to wait for change. We must build momentum at the local level now, in our economy and our communities, or risk irreversible decline. All of our fates hang in the balance.
Alejandro Crawford is a senior consultant at Acceleration Group and co-founder of the Mountaintop Program. He is professor of entrepreneurship for Bard’s MBA in sustainability and graduated from the Tuck School of Business.
Scott Short heads business and real estate development for the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council. Under his leadership, the organization has marshaled $250 million to build 1,300 units of affordable housing, including the first two multi-family passive houses in New York.
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