David Morris spoke at our event last night at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church on the challenges of pursuing renewable energy in a recession. Here is the text of his remarks:
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this distinguished audience this evening. My charge is to address the question, “Can We Be Green in a Recession?” Or as the teaser for this meeting puts it, can we be green without green?
Clearly we are in a recession, or worse. Indeed, the last 6 months has witnessed the most precipitous contraction of our economy in at least 100 years. Even the Great Depression did not come on so swiftly. And there is a growing consensus among economists that when we emerge from the recession economic growth rates will not return to their pre-recession levels, levels which themselves were the lowest since world war II.
In Minnesota our legislature is grappling with a $4-6 billion budget deficit. Politics is the art (notice I didn’t say science) of making choices, of allocating scarce resources. And in a recession the resources are so scarce that the choices are where to cut and where to tax, not where to increase spending.
