FRAMESHOP:FRAMESHOP: TO WIN THE ENERGY DEBATE, REMEMBER APOLLO 13

This summer there is a big opportunity for the Democratic Party to win the debate on energy.  To do so, however, everyone from grassroots activists to presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama will have to resist being drawn into a useless fight about 'drilling' and launch the big discussion that focuses voters on the daunting, but very American challenges we face.

How do we do that?

In today's post, I offer a few suggestions not just on how to reframe the debate on 'energy,' but how to win it.  They takeaway concept I repeat over and over again is big story.  What is the big story in the energy debate?   Who controls the big story in the current debate? Who benefits from one big story versus another big story?

To win the debate on energy, Democrats need to go beyond giving advice on car maintenance (e.g., inflate your tires), and push a big story about: rapid redesign.

The Wrong Big Story: 'Hidden Treasure'

The Republicans are stopping a real debate on energy from unfolding not just by repeating ad nauseam the line 'Drill Here! Drill Now! Pay Less,' but because that line invokes a very persuasive big story: hidden treasure.

The logic is that there is a hidden treasure of oil reserves sitting off the coast of the continental U.S. (and in Alaska) and that treasure has not been tapped into because Democrats will not allow it.

The big story 'hidden treasure' undermines the discussion of energy in two ways.  The first way it undermines the discussion is t by making the energy debate fundamentally about prices--not just money,  per se, but the actual price per gallon of gas.  Republicans look at the price of gas that has spiked in the past few years, see that Americans are frustrated and afraid when they think about energy in terms of that rising price, and then turn the debate on energy entirely into a debate about prices.  That 'hidden treasure' of gas in the ground is free money, so to speak, in the logic of the Republican talking points.  We dig it up the treasure and everybody gets rich. 

The second way the 'hidden treasure' big story undermines the energy debate is by trapping the debate entirely in the tools and concepts of present day technology and ideas.  We currently get energy from oil wells, so the way to get more energy is to:  build more oil wells.  More of the same.  It makes sense because it is what everybody knows.  But it is, fundamentally, a pessimistic approach.  The 'Digg Here! Digg Now!' talking point makes us all feel desprate rather than free--gives people no sense of liberation from the problems of the past,  only a sense that if we hustle, we can keep doing what we are doing in the short run.

Money and trapped in the present--that's what the Republican 'big story' gets us.

What might be a better big story to get us out of these two traps?

A Better Big Story:  Rapid Redesign

By now it is clear that the key to winning the energy debate is to avoid the Republican trap of getting caught in the 'hidden treasure' big story. It is a hard trap to avoid because it articulates with other, very American big stories, in particular the 'get rich quick' story that drives people to do things like buy lottery tickets, invest in Ponzi schemes, gamble their Social Security checks, and so forth.  Americans like to believe in 'hidden treasure' stores. We like to believe there is something out there that will solve our problems if we just find it and dig it up.

The key, then, to winning the energy debate is to replace the 'hidden treasure' story with one that is even more powerful and equally American: the story of 'rapid redesign.'

Rapid redesign?

Consider this, instead of talking about digging up new oil, what if Democrats suddenly began talking about the 'race to redesign the car engine.'  Suddenly, we are in a new big story--a story about innovation, technology, quick problem solving.  A story about using what we have right in front of us to survive.

My favorite example of the 'rapid redesign' big story is the Apollo 13 mission.  In that ill fated 1970 mission to the moon, the survival of the three astronauts depended entirely on their ability to change the big story of their mission.  Apollo 13 began as a mission to the moon--yet another attempt to use the same technology and tools to accomplish the same goal that had already been accomplished.  Suddenly, when the original rocket failed, the mission was recast in a big story of 'rapid redesign.'  Everything had to be redesigned and quickly in order to make sure the astronauts survived the trip back to earth.  The resources were finite.  The clock was ticking. The only way to succeed was through focus,  teamwork, and  good old American ingenuity.

The first rapid redesign was to transform the  Apollo 13 landing module into a 'life raft' that could sustain the 3 astronauts. 

What came next was even more challenging and eerily relevant to the challenge we face in the debate on energy:

Because there were three astronauts in Aquarius, the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the air soon began to build up to a dangerous level. All animals (including humans) breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Too much carbon dioxide in the air can make people feel very sick and can eventually cause suffocation (dying from a lack of oxygen). A chemical called lithium hydroxide removes CO₂ from the air and traps it.

The LM had some lithium hydroxide canisters, but not enough to support three people. There were spare canisters in Odyssey, but they were a different shape to those in Aquarius. NASA scientists had foreseen this problem, and had designed an air filter using one of the CM’s canisters, a flight-plan cover, a sock, a plastic bag, tape, and a spacesuit hose—all materials that were aboard Apollo 13. Mission Control instructed James Lovell and John Swigert on the correct way to assemble the filter. It worked, and the CO₂ in the air dropped to a safe level. (The World Almanac for Kids, link)

Carbon levels were rising in the vehicle.  The astronauts knew what technology they needed to reduce carbon levels in the the ship.  They only had a short period of time to solve this problem.  They had to use the resources available to them in the ship itself and keep the ship running.

My goodness!  Apollo 13 is a story about solving the energy crisis. 

The big story about energy, in other words, is not just about the price of gas--it is about our ability to solve the problem of carbon levels so we can survive, while keeping the ship keeps moving ahead.  We have everything we need, but the clock is running out fast.  We need to work together, but that work is  about dumping everything out on a table and figuring out a solution to putting a big square peg in a small round hole.  And unless we figure out this problem, the consequences will be dire.  Now get to work!

Imagine that.  Imagine if the Presidential election changed the big story so that by November every American was arguing over the best way to build a new, super fuel efficient, low carbon emitting engine using only the existing technology around us.

Imagine if we changed the big story so that we stopped thinking of cars and trucks and planes and trains as vehicles to get us from one place to another, and started thinking about vehicles as 'life boats' to keep us afloat while we rapidly solve the problem of lowering carbon levels that threaten our survival.

Imagine if we changed the big story so that it was about that all American talent of fashioning inelegant but beautifully functional solutions to urgent problems.

Imagine if every school in American had a contest to this end, if every TV network covered the race to solve the problem, if every politician talked about their proposals to meet the goal, if every carpool, if every water cooler, if every dinner table came alive with chatter about the best and fastest way to put the square peg of our technological resources into the round hole of our energy needs--and thereby solve the singular problem of our age.

How silly it would sound, in the midst of that big story about 'rapid redesign', to propose giving more land to oil companies so they could dig up more oil to fuel the same cars, the same trucks, the same planes--and add to the very problem that we are all trying to solve.  No time to waste on that, we would say in response.  We have work to get to--work together to be finished.

Forget Party Squabbles:  Remember Apollo 13

Amazingly, in the life-or-death situation of a failed mission to the moon, Americans were able to work together and solve the problems needed to bring home a spaceship threatened by rising carbon levels. We can do the same with the failing of our energy economy,  today.

But to do it,  Americans of every political stripe must be willing to rise to the level of a more meaningful and more powerful 'big story' than the get-rich-quick 'hidden treasure' story being pushed by the Republican Party.

Keep in mind, however, moving beyond party squabbles should not take the form of simplistic attempts to work 'across party lines'--particularly when that kind of coalition building includes politicians with a history and a professed willingness to show that their main goal is undermining the debate for political gain (e.g. see this discussion of Newt Gingrich's betrayal of Al Gore's non partisan effort on energy initiatives).  Moving beyond party squabbles also means refusing to work with people who care only about scoring party points--and have spent their entire lives working to undermine productive debate.

We must embrace a 'rapid redesign' big story and put ourselves on the fast track to rebuilding the very technology that runs our lives.

The next time I hear someone say 'Drill Here! Drill Now!' I am going to respond, 'I don't care about what anything was designed to do.  I care about what it can do.  Now let's get to work!' 

And when they look at me quizzically in response, I will be happy to tell them the story of Apollo 13 and how a small team of Americans worked together--quickly--to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem. 

© Jeffrey Feldman, Frameshop