Obama "wants to launch an 'Apollo project' to build a new alternative-energy economy. His rationale for doing so includes some hard truths about the current economic mess," according to this Joe Klein interview reported in the current Time magazine.
The engine of economic growth for the past 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20. That was consumer spending. Basically, we turbocharged this economy based on cheap credit." But the days of easy credit are over, Obama said, "because there is too much deleveraging taking place, too much debt." A new economic turbocharger is going to have to be found, and "there is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy ... That's going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.
This succinct statement of where we are, how we got here, and why we need to do something different in the future, and the focus on a new alternative-energy economy as our next growth engine is all good. It could mean big domestic investment and spending, creating millions of hot jobs with low unemployment, rising middle class incomes and spending, downward pressure on oil prices, shipping less of our wealth to petro-states, getting our balance of payments in order, and stopping global climate change.
Skeptic
And Obama put this same message into his 30-minute infomercial aired last night. A transcript is here on Joe Romm's blog.