Taking Moon Shots
Russia’s rash move of taking Crimea might actually benefit us.
Recently, as you know, Russia has gone Imperialistic on the world and decided to use the Ukrainian revolution to their advantage and take Crimea back under Russian control. While it seems the vast majority of Crimeans really want to be back under Russia rule, there are many issues with the move by Russia with the obvious one being one country claiming ownership over land by use of military force. This might infuse people with grave concern especially since Russia seems to be looking for another Cold War, and in a lot of ways you’d be right to be concerned but there is a reason to be hopeful in light of this situation.
Thomas Friedman of the NYT wrote a great article titled “From Putin, a Blessing in Disguise” , where he talks about taking this opportunity to create a clean, independent energy policy for the United States. I love this idea but would like Obama and the US to take it even further than what Friedman mentions in his article. I believe the job of the President of the United States isn’t to push policy or stand as the leader of their party or even be the military chief. The job of the President is to create a vision for the American people, a vision that gives them hope and motivates them to make that vision a reality.
This is what Kennedy did so well with the vision of putting a man on the moon. Is there possibly a grander vision than that? Obama has the chance to create his own moon shot with energy. If you really want to make Russia squirm than cut off their life line, oil and gas. As Friedman mentions in his article, we already have land with the resources to do it on our own. However, I think this is our unique opportunity to push the envelope even further. Let’s be honest, the Keystone Pipeline is not great for the environment and natural gas isn’t as clean as everyone seems to think it is. What Friedman nailed on the head though is our ability to develop technology.
We are better at building technology companies than anywhere else in the world. Obama should use this in his moon shot speech to go above and beyond to create an energy policy that aims for 100% use of clean renewable energy (i.e. wind and solar) in the US. Sure this sounds like quite the lofty goal but it would not only take care of the Russian problem, it could serve as an example for the rest of the world to finally take a real step to addressing the growing climate change problem. That is a vision even Buzz Aldrin would be impressed with.
