Apollo Weekly Update, 11/21/08: Rescuing Detroit

This week, the Apollo Alliance program staff spent two days in Detroit with our colleagues from Apollo affiliates in 12 states and 5 cities. Our work focused on how to begin scaling up the clean energy, good jobs opportunity that Apollo envisioned in 2004 and that Barack Obama embraced as one of his campaign’s central messages.

It’s hard to imagine a more apt place to convene. Detroit is one of the regional capitals of the national economic emergency. General Motors, the signature industrial institution of the 20th century, is fighting for its life in the 21st. In the very same hours that we were meeting in a UAW conference room, GM’s chief executive, the head of the UAW, and the leaders of the two other American auto companies were in Washington asking a Senate committee for a $25 billion survival loan. Congress responded with a practical request, asking the executives to lay out a business plan for the federal investment.

The Apollo Alliance and its state and metropolitan affiliates support the bridge loan. Our senior staff and board members are working with influential lawmakers, among them Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, to make the case that the American auto industry has vastly improved its vehicle lineup, quality, and energy efficiency. There is too much opportunity in fuel-efficient design and technology to allow American car manufacturers to melt away. And there are too many family-supporting jobs – including nearly half a million in Michigan alone – to allow the companies to fail.

You should know that the Apollo Alliance hasn’t wasted a moment since the election in pursuit of the clean energy, good jobs economy. Ron Ruggiero, our national field director, noted that the clean energy, good jobs message that the Apollo Alliance developed just four years ago has become the new development strategy for the nation. “When’s the party?” he asked.

The answer is that the party happened on November 4, and since then our game speed has increased. Our playbook is The New Apollo Program, a comprehensive investment strategy, which we introduced in October. It calls for scaling up and accelerating clean energy production, improving efficiency and conservation, building new infrastructure like transit and a 21st century electric grid, supporting American manufacturing and next-generation vehicles, and training millions of people to assume the career-building jobs the clean energy economy has started to produce.

Kate Gordon, our co-director and chief program strategist, asserts that the 10-year, $500 billion New Apollo Program is the economic stimulus package that America needs and that Congress has begun to debate. After leaving Detroit on Wednesday, Kate joined Co-Director Cathy Calfo and Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides in Washington to make that point clear to our allies in the labor, environmental, and business communities, and to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

We see a number of legislative opportunities to compel the federal government to make focused investments in clean energy. Bills to rewrite transportation and energy policy will be considered next year. This week President-elect Obama told a group of governors that he’s determined to take action to accelerate production of clean energy and reduce pollutants that cause climate change. We are working with a number of lawmakers on a proposal to retrofit American manufacturing plants to produce the tools and equipment of the clean energy economy while also making the plants cleaner and more energy efficient.

We’re also working with our partners to increase funding for the Green Jobs Act, which passed last year, to increase the number of green-collar training programs and the number of workers who participate.  And we are making the case that any stimulus plan must include significant new funding for clean energy research and development.

In other words, this organization is deploying all the tools and people at our disposal to implement The New Apollo Program.

Our most important ally, of course, is the president-elect. Just as he did from the very start of his campaign in February 2007, in informal town hall settings and in significant nationally noted speeches, President-elect Barack Obama is using the weeks between the election and the inauguration to describe his determination to switch from fossil fuel to clean energy. His goal: to once and for all fix the problem that started the American emergency.

If there’s one truly audacious idea that Obama rode to the presidency, it’s the notion that America can produce a new era of prosperity by changing how it powers itself. The basic details of his New Energy For America plan – a 10-year, $150 billion investment in wind, solar, biofuels, energy efficiency, transit, and conservation to create 5 million jobs – look awfully familiar to us.

Apollo Feedback: Detroit Bailout Raises Support, Ire

Last week we let you know that in partnership with our members the Apollo Alliance supported government intervention to rescue the American auto industry with a $25 billion bridge loan. We reached this conclusion knowing of the industry’s long-time recalcitrance on fuel mileage, climate safeguards, product lines, and the imperious behavior of its chief executives, who in case you don’t know by now, flew to Washington last week on corporate jets and without any clear plan for how they would use the money.
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