Cambridge Forum hosts a mini-conference on the impact of global engagement on America’s sense of security and well-being. During the afternoon session, speakers will examine challenges posed by the European debt crisis, changing relationships in the Middle East, and the war on terror. A new grad strategy for American global engagement in the 21st century is the focus of Stephen van Evera’s evening keynote.
This Program was supported by Mass Humanities. 
Dear Stephen Van Evera,
Here’s how to sell “The Great Conversion” off of carbon.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we had no standing army no significant air force, no navy, no battalions of tanks. So the entire country sacrificed, rationed, embraced austerity and pitched in and built what it took to beat the Japanese and Nazi Germany. And we did it in four years! This is how “the greatest generation” became so great. Do we owe the nation less than they did? Were their sacrifices something only they were capable of? No. The nation would gladly embrace all of the above to convert to green energy, thus creating millions of jobs.
The shared sacrifices of World War II are what made the nation UNITED. Everybody pitched in. This is what will unite us again. In return for our sacrifices today we will earn our FREEDOM. Freedom from the strangle hold a handful of criminal corporations have on our energy supply. These corporations are the current incarnation of the East India Trading Company that the U.S. was formed to fight against. The East India Trading Company is what the real Tea Party was against. We, the population, Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, tea bagger, anarchist, will all benefit by generating our own power and selling it back to the power companies. We need energy independence from the oil, coal, and nuclear power companies just as much as from foreign suppliers. The new Marin County CA utilities model is a great start.
That’s how you sell the conversion to green jobs, with the WW II analogy. There is no army of corporate lobbyists, no senator, no congressman or woman, no right-wing talk show host, no media mogul that will attack the success of WW II. And according to top military annalists today catastrophic climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are the biggest threats to our national security.
Which tells us how to fund this Great Conversion, with the current military budget. Republican climate change deniers will listen to the military. Replace states current military pork with green power pork.
WHERE DO WE START? We do the math, and don’t fudge the numbers. How many home solar systems need to be purchased in order to bring the price of each one down to less than $1000. per home? How much would it cost to buy that many? Find out, then state and federal administrations need to purchase enough solar cells to cover all state and federal buildings in the country, bringing the prices down through the economics of scale. Once the price is down the market will do the rest. A home computer is far more complex than solar power technology and we all have computers in our homes. Every household can then afford this green technology just as every household now can afford a personal computer.