According to Duke Energy's Jim Rogers, the greenhouse gas conversation among world business leaders at Davos last week took a turn much like the one Congress and President Obama took this month: It's all about jobs.
"A reframing of the issue" is how Rogers put it in an interview with forbes.com. "If you transform the energy sector, you stimulate the economy and you create jobs." And reduce emissions. Reframing indeed. Changing the subject, from climate change to jobs. Not a new element in the US climate-energy debate, but now in a newly important place: the driver's seat.
At Davos, while Rogers said there was discussion of climate change policy, it was not one of the high-profile subjects on an agenda built on economic worries of major proportions.
Senator Lindsey Graham talked about it for a minute with the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus at Davos, telling her he was optimistic about a deal in Congress. And saying he's telling fellow Republicans it's their best chance in a generation to get a good energy and environment package, which will do them good with younger voters.
Back to Rogers: There's more momentum than people may have thought from the December international climate meeting in Copenhagen, he said. For one thing, it brought developed and developing countries closer. Now, the world is looking to the US, he said, and to China, where Duke has established memorandums of understanding with Chinese companies. Businesses putting themselves in the picture, in "a ladder of cooperation," could embolden governments to work together, Rogers suggested.
Obama is reminding lawmakers that China is forging ahead on renewable energy, and that they really wouldn't want the US to be squashed like a bug on that front. Coincidentally, The New York Times put it on its front page Sunday: "China Leading Race to Make Clean Energy." The article notes, though, that an assembly line worker in a Vestas wind turbine factory there makes $4,100 a year. Not much is made of that, but it does make one think.
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