president obama makes a new pitch for green - by Paul Bernier

Entities Mentioned

• Barack Obama
• Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act.

1. 

   The environment was a key theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address last week.

    He pushed the Senate to follow the House in passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation. (The House passed the Waxman-Markey bill in June. The bill aims to lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent by 2020. In fact, the President committed to that target during his speech late last year at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.)

    During the State of the Union, address, the President also noted that the science behind arguments that the Earth is experiencing climate change due to greenhouse gases is overwhelming. This comment, of course, was targeted at folks who believe that those who warn us about global warming are just full of hot air.

    But President Obama said something else that really stuck out, at least to me. He said even those who doubt global warming is a reality need to understand that “providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future – because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

    While I most certainly believe global warming is a reality, it seems near impossible to change the minds of those who remain unconvinced about this important issue. So rather than continuing to push the global warming idea, the President took the smart tactic of instead finding an angle to the story that would appeal to those on the other side of the issue. He indicated investing in clean energy will be key to helping the U.S. recover from the recession and positioning the nation for long-term growth and leadership.

   
   

   And, as I’ve said before in this blog, those in the green data center arena would do well to take a similar position by focusing less on the message of green as it relates to the environment and more on the message of green as it relates to customers’ energy savings and positioning for the future. 

   
   

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