We should control the commanding heights of environmental
technology. Summon up all of the nation’s intellectual, economic, and social
resources to deal with this crisis. We want to dominate the market in these
technologies.
We should emphasize environmental nationalism rather than
military nationalism. If we limited our military to a truly defensive
posture—just enough to make sure that nobody would screw with us— we could
devote a significant portion of the savings to research and development for
renewables, energy conservation, carbon removal, maybe nuclear power.
In the wake of Sputnik, President Eisenhower proposed and
the Congress approved, on a bipartisan basis, the National Defense Education
Act, to train more scientists and mathematicians to meet the Soviet threat.
Later, President Kennedy set the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end
of the 1960s. This was a specifically nationalist appeal, yet no one criticized
it on that basis. Although he never lived to see it, the goal was realized in
1969. Rather than a National Defense Education Act, we need a National Climate and
Energy Education Act to train the nation’s youth to address the climate crisis.
Beyond that, we need to marshal the nation’s resources to meet this challenge.
