What’s an EcoShot?

“Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.” — John Adams, Founding Father and the second President of the United States

Climate change and sustainability have been passions for me for several years. During my writing of my book, EcoShot: How America Can Win The Industrial Revolution Against China, the National Climate Assessment report and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report were both released, which gave drastic outlooks for the path humanity is currently on — climate change went from a passion to an obsession. The clock is ticking, and we have to take a moonshot effort in the next decade to prevent the worst-case scenarios of climate change.

The first draft of my book actually attempted to convince conservatives that clean energy is about clean air, clean jobs, economic opportunities, national security, and more. I thought I’d be able to make an argument without even mentioning climate change, as the Green Tea Party has successfully been able to do. What I realized though is that these arguments didn’t really sell the “speed” we need in decarbonizing the entire country. This narrative wouldn’t move the needle quick enough, so I needed a different compelling argument.

During my research, I came across a podcast with Rich Powell at ClearPath, who spent almost an hour talking about the need for American innovation in clean energy. The interesting part was climate change wasn’t brought up until the very end of the discussion. He spoke the whole time about the how American innovation was lacking, and China is leading in clean innovation. The lightbulb really went off when Rich said he’s made progress on clean energy discussions with Senator Jim Inhofe (yes, the Congressman who brought a snowball into the Senate chamber to question climate change).

The real angle of the book would be about significant advancement in cleantech in China (the opponent), and how America could catch up with impactful cleantech policies (the fight). Climate change would still play a role, but only to show that the world is moving to a clean economy, whether American politicians believed it or not. This is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity that America would miss out on due to inaction, unless we came together and put the needed policies in place now.

My personal prediction is that climate change will move from a controversial partisan issue to a competitive bipartisan issue, with both sides coming to the table with their own climate/cleantech policies. Because of the Green New Deal legislation, I see this partisan dam starting to crack, evident by an article two days ago titled “Republican lawmakers face pressure to propose ‘Green New Deal’ alternative.” Many of the policies I present in my book actually come from conservative policy wonks and think tanks, because I believe we need a bipartisan approach to truly push legislation through the House, the Senate, and the White House. I’m hoping I can provide these bipartisan solutions to Congress, so we can find common ground and begin pushing real solutions to address climate change today. When we saw the Soviet Union was technologically superior in the space race after Sputnik, JFK put out a vision for a moonshot effort to get a man on the moon. It wasn’t technologically feasible at the time, but the vision was put in place. Today, we are competing with China in cleantech, and we need a similar moonshot to regain our innovative leadership in this modern-day energy race — we need an EcoShot!

Over the following weeks, I will share several blog posts to give a glimpse inside my book, EcoShot: How America Can Win The Industrial Revolution Against China. You can pre-order the Kindle version today, and the physical book will be ready on the official publication date which is February 22! I’ll be in Boston the weekend of February 22 for the official book launch, so if you’re in the area, let’s meet!

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