One of my favorite hobbies is improv theater/comedy. Like the TV Show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” or the live shows that I watched or did here in San Diego. One of the basic tenants to good improv is “yes and,” meaning that the premise pitched by your scene partner is accepted and built upon, setting up one of a handful of different scene types.
In much of my life I try to match the energy of the people that I deal with. This is helpful because it helps put them at ease or at least lightens the mood. I also try to have the “yes and” mentality when it comes to politics. I believe that more options are better, more opinions are better, more speech is better, more choice is better.
During the second and final Presidential debate, Joe Biden said that he would transition away from the oil industry. And honestly, long term, that’s fine. I know that there are more effective, more efficient, and cleaner methods of energy generation, and I do believe that we need to transition away from fossil fuels. This will further enable us to be energy independent and could allow us to become even larger exporters of oil and technology to help countries reduce and eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels for industry.
My umbrage to Biden’s comment is how it underplays what impact that sort of transition would have on people, on our economy, and how sorely lacking our infrastructure is in terms of storing excess energy generated by wind and solar. Recently, California had a series of heat waves that forced the government to issue rolling brownouts in areas so that the grid wouldn’t be overexerted. Also recently, Governor Newsome issued an executive order that would prohibit the sale of new gas powered vehicles by 2035. We have had the San Onofre nuclear power plant decommissioned following a small leak in 2012, which followed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, leaving many people scared of the potential negative effects of nuclear power.
My position on power generation is “yes and…”. Yes we still need fossil fuels, and wind, and solar, and geothermal, and nuclear. We are still working toward the future where we can eliminate our need for fossil fuels, but to shut down fossil fuels when people depend on them for their income, their shelter, their health and well being is not a compassionate response. Telling someone that they don’t matter, or their job doesn’t matter, that their input doesn’t matter, that their choice doesn’t matter is not compassion. The government shutting down people and expecting them to just pick up and learn a new skill without grief or struggle is not compassion. If we really want to address the energy issues, we still need a base of compassion. And being a “yes and” person is that answer.
This may all be moot, Biden could win, pass either the Democratic Party’s Green New Deal or a version of it and it will not matter. We’ll just have to wait and see.
A Place 4Politics 