"Roy Neel is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a long-time staffer for former Vice-President Al Gore. Roy is in Australia as a Visiting International Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
The political environment here in Australia is fascinating. For a start, you require people to vote! Not only are you required to vote for a candidate, you have to rank the rest of the candidates as well!
If we had had that system in America there probably would have been no Bush-Cheney White House, no Iraq invasion, no suppression of climate science … but don’t get me started.
Poll after poll shows Americans are fed up with the name-calling and the do-nothing politicians that populate our legislatures. The level of cynicism is so great that, should America enforce mandatory voting and place “None of the Above” on every ballot, I fear we would have a government with no elected officials.
A long time ago I moved to Washington to join my friend Al Gore as he entered political life and began fighting established interests (often tilting at windmills, as we like to say). One of those windmills was the growing threat of climate change.
He didn’t get a lot of credit for that work over the next 25 years and in 2000 he lost the presidential race in the most closely contested (and disputed) election in our country’s history.
That was a bitter defeat, one that some of us will forever believe was suffered not at the hands of voters but as a result of a tragically misguided Supreme Court decision.
The world has not recovered.
It would have been easy for Al Gore to take himself out of public life, but he did just the opposite, creating a documentary film that would change the way the world viewed global warming and place the challenge in front of governments throughout the world.
With An Inconvenient Truth, he gave voice to the countless scientists who had been sounding this alarm for a decade or more. Changing US laws so we could move away from a carbon-based economy and toward clean, renewable energy sources should have been a no-brainer.
But when it became clear the country was waking up to the threat of climate change, powerful corporate and ideological interests opened their war chests. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to distort, disrupt, and discredit the scientific consensus that has firmly established the devastating results of massive greenhouse gas emissions.
Last July in the US our Senate threw in the towel and declared climate legislation dead. Despite overwhelming public support for action, despite clear and profound evidence of the growing threat, the polluting industries succeeded in killing even modest controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
So now we in the US start over, building a new grass roots movement to prod public officials to do the right, moral thing. It will be a steep climb in our bitterly divided political system, where too many members of Congress and the Senate look more to powerful special corporate interests and their large campaign donors than to the public interest.
Australia represents the richest resource of renewable energy in the world. You have solar penetration that is 20 times greater than the US and most other countries, power that can be captured by solar photovoltaic panels – concentrated solar geothermal. You have wind power in vast areas of this country – power that can be harvested cheaply and quickly.
There is enough clean, renewable, cheap solar and wind energy in Australia to supply the entire world’s electricity demand. There’s enough to end Australia’s dependence on dirty coal, on transport fuel that is fouling our air, emissions that are making Australia the largest polluter of greenhouse gases per capita in the entire world.
But as Al Gore concluded in his now famous documentary, the only thing missing in the battle to expand renewable energy sources is political will. And political will itself is a renewable resource.
Here in Australia you understand the crisis. It has produced tragic flooding in Queensland, deadly drought and bushfires throughout the country, unprecedented typhoons, and record heat. You’ve seen your water supply threatened, and your farmers have seen their very livelihoods endangered.
And now, with the carbon price legislation, you have taken action. Those who believed the US would lead in meeting the challenge of climate change have been disappointed.
The US government has not led and effective leadership is nowhere in sight. We are stuck in the mud of partisan bickering and deadly brinksmanship, and it has us sinking to the bottom."
http://theconversation.edu.au/standing-on-the-outside-looking-in-a-washington-insider-reviews-the-carbon-tax-4210
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Al Gore sure knows how to pick right hand men. He did a great job having Roy Neel on his team. In this article he relays my feelings as well about this carbon tax, our climate crisis and our lackluster corporate bought government's response to it. I am also very grateful to him for not making this partisan, because it isn't. Granted, in our Congress we see Republicans more than anyone blocking progress on this. However, we have also seen Democrats doing the same thing by enabling Republicans and by having a president who refuses to use the bully pulpit he has to really educate the public on this and tell them the truth. It is beyond frustration especially seeing the science and the events as they unfold in front of our eyes.
But before I go on regarding this I wanted to relay a story regarding Mr. Neel. In 2006 I had applied to become a presenter with the Climate Project, the organization started by Mr. Gore in 2006. I was one of the first to apply and was actually looking forward to being selected to learn it. I was ready to spread this information and couldn't think of anyone I wanted teaching me more than Al Gore. For over twenty years I have loved and respected him very much. Well, I applied but had not heard an answer for a few months. Finally, after contacting a staffer at Mr. Gore's office I was informed that the response to it was more than they had anticipated and they had picked their quota.
Honestly, I was heartbroken because it was very important to me and I knew I could do it and already had ideas on how to convey the message effectively. I was also honestly upset with the staff there because of the lack of response to my application and because I couldn't understand why anyone would be turned away since it was so important. A little while after that unknown to me I received a very nice e-mail from Roy Neel who stated he had read an essay of mine describing that experience and discussing the climate crisis on a political site and thought I had a very compelling way of discussing it and asked me for my address and name so he could look up my application. Imagine, Mr. Gore's right hand man had seen my essay and wanted to help me out.
Anyway as fate would have it, somehow his e -mail had not made its way into the front of my mailbox so I did not see it until I was cleaning it out a few months after. I replied to him and thanked him and have wondered where it would have led. How that happened with the e-mail I still don't know but I at least have the knowledge that how I convey this is appreciated. So formally, thank you Mr. Neel for doing that and I truly wish I'd seen it sooner. It would have been a great honor for me to have personally been a presenter for Al Gore and for this planet... but in essence I still am.
Ok, so we all move on...the question is to where? Australia has done a very good thing by moving on to the future. And they have done so even under the nastiest of atmospheres. Death threats to climate scientists (one who was actually speaking at a university I believe and a member of the audience rose holding a noose and said, welcome to Australia) and also a bombardment by the world's resident denier coal backed debunked shill Christopher Monckton. And yet all the U.S. can muster is a hike in fuel standards (on cars that still run on oil) that takes place 14 yrs from now (as the Arctic continues to melt so they can allow Shell to drill for more oil.) This is where the bully pulpit should come in.
However, again, until we get corporate money out of politics, reverse Citizens United and see a shift in perception regarding the connection between this planet and ourselves (and that primarily includes our food system) and the way we invest in the future, I fear it will take much longer than the time we have to do something effective enough to at least give the next few generations a livable planet.
So on that note I have to wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Neel's assessment not only regarding this crisis but the theft of 2000. And make no mistake that's exactly what it was. But like him I can't get started on that, because looking at the U.S. that could have been had that not happened makes me angrier about what we face now. Which is why I am so grateful Al did not just give up. And I know he did not give up because this is more important to him than him. And to me that is the characteristic of a man of honor.
So hopefully, as we see this carbon tax take hold we will see more people of honor standing up inspired by Australia who will spark other countries including our own to come into the 21st century because that is something that is imperative at this point. Solar and wind are booming but $$$$- big $$$$$ from the very interests Mr. Neel mentioned are doing their best to hide that from the public. I can only hope that with the movements afoot globally including in the U.S. that the people will bring about the change necessary to address this crisis. We have no other choice if we wish to survive.
Thank you, Mr. Neel for being in the forefront of this endeavor.
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