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