Eban Goodstein, director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, has a plan for building a political movement around climate change. Given my own recent realization that the only way this issue is going to be addressed effectively is if it is transformed from a partisan wedge issue into a consensus view that is shared by both major parties, I definitely sat up and took notice when I read the following passage in New year, new idea for climate: the American Clean Energy party.

How would ACE work? Simply. Run ACE-endorsed candidates in Democratic and Republican congressional and U.S. Senate primary elections. Most ACE races would be in swing districts — challenging especially dirty energy Democrats in primaries, but also creating space for a clean energy Republican voice.

ACE would be a “single focus” party, endorsing only candidates who pledged to run and govern as “moderate” D’s or R’s (as defined by their district or state) in all areas excepting one. For economic revitalization, jobs, national security, rural development, energy independence, clean air for our kids, climate stabilization, we need a revolution: clean energy!

Why moderate elsewhere? Because clean energy is the defining issue of our time. On all other issues there is time to debate, and room to compromise. But on energy, time has run out. Addiction to fossil fuels is strangling our economy, and impoverishing the planet, and we have only a few short years to act before the window for action will close, forever.

Sign me up.

This entry was posted by jbc on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 at 7:38 am and is filed under global warming, the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.