THE QUESTION MOST IMPORTANT TO BILL CLINTON

Former President Clinton demonstrated that when it comes to talking to crowds he can still hit with power.

His keynote address to close out Fortune Magazine’s Fortune Brainstorm Green kept the crowd of New Energy, Energy Efficiency and Sustainability innovators at attention as he talked about his work in the fight against global climate change and what the most important question is that he and his audience can ask.

He began by jokingly confiding to the crowd that the thing he enjoys most about being out of office is being able to say whatever he wants to say.

He then pointed out that context is important and today’s fight for New Energy and against climate change has a unique context. There are: (1) New levels of awareness about the problem, (2) a worldwide financial crisis, (3) the pending expiration of the current international (Kyoto) climate change agreement and the imminent (Copenhagen) summit to write a new agreement, and (4) a President and Congress sympathetic to New Energy, Energy Efficiency and the international effort to reverse climate change.

Wryly reminiscing about his 1997-98 efforts, along with Al Gore, to bring the U.S. into the Kyoto agreement despite an obstinate Congress, he said it was the first piece of legislation of his that Congress rejected before he officially proposed it.

The former President spoke encouragingly about the financial crisis. He joked that it was impossible to predict the exact date of its end but explained that the indicators would be (1) an upward trending stock market over a few month period followed by (2) a series of rising GDP numbers and, several months later, (3) a drop in unemployment numbers. He said he could be encouraging about an end to the crisis because he believes there are sufficient sources of capital in Asia and in some stolid (and therefore still solvent) U.S. banks. He believes the Bush and Obama administrations’ emergency measures against toxic assets will eventually bring about a turn or Congress will allocate spending until the turn comes.

Mr. Clinton believes the country can come out of the downturn strong if habits change. Moving to New Energy and Energy Efficiency can have a favorable effect IF – and this is the point he was driving at – there are many answers to the single most important question.

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“My strong conviction," Mr. Clinton said, "is that the only way for us to come out of this in better shape than we were in when it began is…to change the way we produce and consume energy. That’s the only way to guarantee a decade of rising productivity in businesses and jobs, greater national security and to minimize the damage that already will certainly come because of climate change. Therefore to me…the most important thing you can do unless you have a vote in the United States Congress or a seat at the table in the Copenhagen conference in December is to prove that the transformation we are all committed to is or can be made to be good economics. That will do more than anything else to give America a good climate change bill, that will do more than anything else to generate a consensus at Copenhagen…and it will do more than anything…to attract the participation of China and India…The question of HOW to do this is the most important thing…”

For 30+ years in politics, the debates he heard focused on 2 questions: What are we going to do? How much are we going to spend?

The former President described the enormous demonstrated economic benefit from doing extensive building retrofits and said that such undeniable economic outcomes from doing the right thing for climate change are much more important than the details of the climate change legislation now being debated in Congress or the details of the agreement to be debated at Copenhagen.

He talked about the recent publicity garnered by philosopher-physicist Freeman Dyson from his high-profile climate change denial rhetoric. He then moved to the popularity among the uninformed of climate change denier Bjorn Lomborg’s new book arguing that spending on the fight against climate change is not worth the expense. Showing how enormous economic benefits can be obtained from New Energy and Energy Efficiency ends the debate with deniers like Dyson and Lomborg because it would be foolish to leave the money on the table even if 99% of all the experts on the subject – which Dyson and Lomborg are not – are wrong.

From clintonfoundationorg via YouTube.

The former President reminisced briefly over a long and noble career of efforts to legislate and institute efficiencies and launched into a captivating description of some of the enormously important and successful work being done by the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to transform cities all around the world. CCI is financing building retrofits and efficiency upgrades and beginning the daunting and vital work of cleaning up urban landfills and turning them into precious deposits of recyclable raw materials and biomass energy resources.

The audience sat entranced, caught in the grip of a great storyteller speaking utterly engagingly yet with the authority of a wonky professor. The chat ranged from New York City to Sweden to Chicago to Seoul. There was a stop for a scene at the Mumbai landfill from Slumdog Millionaire and then it continued on to Haiti, Peru, Mexico City, Australia and the Indonesian rainforests.

Everywhere on the tour, Mr. Clinton described examples of HOW, how New Energy, Energy Efficiency and Sustainability principles are being put to work to redeem human life and the environment - at a profit! And that crucial question, the HOW question, is where the former President ended his tour and his talk.

Legislation can provide important solutions, he observed. Long-term tax credits for the New Energies, more demanding appliance standards and building codes, a mandate for decoupling utility company profits from volume energy sales, a national transmission system, and strengthening the market for EVs and PHEVs were examples Mr. Clinton quickly ticked off.

But there are so many things that need to be done, things that demonstrate how New Energy and Energy Efficiency and Sustainability make more economic sense than doing things the old ways. Those are the things the former President urged his audience to go out and find and do.

“I think symbols are important. I think evidence of success spurs people to take new risks and make new investments…”

He wanted to know why New Energy wasn’t already at work proving itself by turning around the economic downturn in Arizona and Nevada, where the crisis has hit hardest and New Energy is most abundant. And he wanted to know why Caribbean nations and Native American tribes, so rich in New Energies, remain so dependent on fossil fuels.

“On balance I’m pretty optimistic, “ he concluded. “But I’d feel much better about our ability to get a good climate change agreement and to get China and India to sign on to it if I had been able to stand up here and do nothing but read a list of 40 examples, or 50, or 60…Those of us that don’t have a vote in the Congress or a vote at Copenhagen, the most important thing we can do is to do, to answer the how question.”