A clean energy proposal race to the top Jennifer Granholm

well I was introduced as the former

governor of Michigan but actually I’m a

scientist all right a political

scientist it doesn’t really count but my

laboratory was the laboratory of

democracy that is Michigan and like any

good scientist I was experimenting with

policy about what would achieve the

greatest good for the greatest number

but there were three problems three

enigmas that I could not solve and I

want to share with you those problems

but most importantly I think I figured

out a proposal for a solution the first

problem that not just Michigan but every

state faces is how do you create good

jobs in America in a global economy so

let me share with you some empirical

data from my lab I was elected in 2002

and at the end of my first year in

office in 2003 I got a call from one of

my staff members who said gov we have a

big problem we have a little tiny

community called Greenville Michigan

population 8,000 and they are about to

lose their major employer which is a

refrigerator factory that’s operated by

Electrolux and I said well how many

people at work at electrolux and he said

3,000 of the eight thousand people in

Greenville so it is a one company town

and Electrolux was going to go to Mexico

so I said forget that we’re I’m a new

governor we can fix this we’re going to

go to Greenville with my whole cabinet

and we will just make Electrolux an

offer they can’t refuse so I brought my

whole pet cabinet and we met with all of

the pooh-bahs of little Greenville the

mayor the city manager the head of the

community college and we basically sort

of emptied our pockets and put all of

our chips on the table incentives you

name it to convince Electrolux to stay

and as we made our pile of chips we slid

them across the table to the management

of

electrolux and in the pile were things

like zero taxes for 20 years or that

we’d help to build a new factory for the

company would help to finance it the UIW

who represented the workers said they

would offer unprecedented concession

sacrifices to just keep those jobs in

Greenville so the management of

Electrolux took our pile our list of

incentives and they went outside the

room for 17 minutes and they came back

in and they said wow this is the most

generous any community has ever been to

try to keep jobs here but there’s

nothing you can do to compensate for the

fact that we can pay a dollar fifty

seven an hour in Juarez Mexico so we’re

leaving and they did and when they did

it was like a nuclear bomb went off in

little greenville in fact they did

implode the factory that’s a guy that is

walking on his last day of work and on

the month that the last refrigerator

rolled off the assembly line the

employees of Electrolux in Greenville

Michigan had a gathering that for

themselves that they called the Last

Supper it was in a big pavilion in

Greenville and indoor pavilion and I

went to it because I was so frustrated

as governor that I couldn’t stop the

outflow of these jobs and I wanted to

grieve with them and as I went to the

end of the room ourselves and the people

there it was just a big thing people

were eating box lunches with round town

round top tables and there was a sad

band playing music or there was a band

playing sad music probably both um and

this guy comes up to me and he’s got

tattoos and his ponytail and his

baseball cap on and he had his two

daughters with him and he said gov these

are my two daughters he said I’m 48

years old and I’ve worked at this

factory for 30 years my I went from high

school to factory my father worked at

this factory he said my grandfather

worked at this factory all I know

all I know is how to make refrigerators

and he looked at his daughters and he

puts his hand on his chest and he says

so gov tell me who is ever going to hire

me who is ever gonna hire me and that

was asked not just by that guy but by

everybody in the pavilion and frankly by

every worker at one of the fifty

thousand factories that closed in the

first decade of this century enigma

number one how do you create jobs in

America in a global economy number two

very quickly how do you solve global

climate change when we don’t even have a

national energy policy in this country

and when gridlock in Congress seems to

be the norm in fact there was a poll

that was done recently and the pollster

compared Congress’s approval ratings to

a number of other unpleasant things and

it was found in fact that Congress’s

approval rating is worse than

cockroaches lice Nickelback the band

root canals and Donald Trump but by the

weight the good news is it’s at least

better than meth labs and gonorrhea we

got a problem folks so it got me

thinking what is it what in the

laboratory that I that I see out there

their laboratories of democracy what has

happened what policy prescriptions have

happened that actually caused changes to

occur and that have been accepted in a

bipartisan way so if I asked you for

example what was the Obama

administration policy that caused

massive changes across the country what

would you say you might say Obamacare

except for those were not voluntary

changes as we know only half the states

have opted in you might say the Recovery

Act but those didn’t require a policy

changes the thing that caused massive

policy changes to occur was race to the

top for education why the government put

a 4.5 billion dollar

hot and said to the governor’s across

the country compete for it 48 governors

competed convincing 48th state

legislators to essentially raise

standards for high schoolers so that

they all take a college prep curriculum

48 states opted in creating a national

energy policy from the bottom up so I

thought well why can’t we do something

like that and create a clean energy jobs

race to the top because after all if you

look at the context 1.6 trillion dollars

has been invested in the past eight

years from the private sector globally

and where and every dollar represents a

job and where are those jobs going but

they’re going to places that have policy

like China in fact I was in China to see

what they were doing and they were

putting on a dog and pony show for the

group that I was with and I was standing

in the back of the room during one of

the demonstrations and standing next to

one of the Chinese officials where we

were watching he says so gov when do you

think the u.s. is going to get national

energy policy and I said oh my god

Congress gridlock who knows and this is

what he did he goes he says take your

time because they see our passivity as

their opportunity so what if we decided

to create a challenge to the governors

of the country and the price to entry

into this competition use the same

amount that the bipartisan group

approved in Congress for the race to the

top for education 4.5 billion which

sounds like a lot but actually it’s less

than one-tenth of one percent of federal

spend it’s a rounding error on the

federal side but price to entry into

that competition would be when you could

just say use the president’s goal he

wants Congress to adopt a clean energy

standard of eighty percent by 2030 in

other words that you’d have to get

eighty percent of your energy from clean

sources by the year twenty thirty why

not ask all of the states to do that

instead and imagine what might happen

because every region has something to

offer you might take states like iowa

and ohio two very important political

states by the way those two governors

and they would say we’re going to lead

the nation in producing the wind

turbines and the wind energy you might

say the solar

the Sunbelt we’re going to be the states

that produce solar energy for the

country and maybe Jerry Brown says well

I’m going to create an industry cluster

in California to be able to produce the

solar panels so that we’re not buying

them from China but we’re buying them

from the US in fact every region of the

country could do this you see you’ve got

solar and wind opportunity all across

the nation in fact if you look just at

the upper northern states in the West

they could do geothermal or you could

look at Texas and say we could lead the

nation in the solutions to smart grid in

the middle eastern states which have

access to forests and to agricultural

waste they might say we’re going to lead

the nation in biofuels in the upper

northeast we’re going to lead the nation

in in energy efficiency solutions along

the eastern seaboard we’re going to lead

the nation in offshore wind you might

look at Michigan and say we’re going to

lead the nation in producing the guts

for the electric vehicle like the

lithium-ion battery every region has

something to offer and if you created a

competition it respects the states and

it respects federalism it’s opt-in you

might even get Texas and South Carolina

didn’t opt into the education race to

the top you might even get them to opt

in why because Republican and Democratic

Governors love to cut ribbons we want to

bring jobs I’m just saying and it

fosters innovation at the state level in

these laboratories of democracy now any

of you who are watching anything about

politics lately might say okay great

idea but really Congress putting four

and a half billion dollars on the table

they can’t agree to anything so you

could wait and go through Congress

although you should be very impatient or

are you renegades we could go around

Congress go around Congress what if what

if we created a private sector challenge

to the governor’s what if several of the

high net-worth companies and individuals

who are here at Ted

decided that they would create band

together just a couple of them and

create a national competition to the

governor’s to have a race to the top and

see how the governor’s respond what if

what if it all started here at Ted what

if you were here when we figured out how

to crack the code to create good-paying

jobs in America and get national energy

policy and we created a national energy

strategy from the bottom up because dear

tedsters if you are impatient like I am

you know that our economic competitors

are other nations are in the game and

are eating us for lunch and we can get

in the game or not we can be at the

table or we can be on the table and I

don’t know about you but I prefer to

dine thank you all so much

you