I don’t know about you, but I’m glad this presidential race is over. This campaign seemed to go on forever. And its harsh, negative feeling seemed to split Americans apart more than any other election in the past that anybody can remember.
Like lots of people across the country, you may or may not be happy with how things turned out. Yet, I feel hopeful that, after the dust settles from the presidential race, our country can come together again, as we have so many times in the past.
[Download our free guide answering the top 10 questions on solar power in Virginia]
How Solar Can Unite Americans
Through wars, economic crises and social upheavals, Americans who took different sides have managed to return to the common values we share: freedom, justice and the pursuit of happiness. And we’ve done it in a practical, can-do style, coming up with new ideas and then putting them into action to help people right away and make life better for the future.
This time, as a person who is lucky enough to help people around Virginia start making their own clean solar power at home, I think my own business can play a key role in bringing people back together.
Getting clean, affordable energy for decades to come is one of the biggest challenges that both America and the world as a whole face today. And perhaps the best way to address that massive challenge is by putting solar panels all over the place.
An all-hands-on-deck campaign to make America solar powered can also bridge the gaps that have opened over the last few months. That’s because everybody loves solar.
First, compared to other energy sources, solar is America’s top choice for a new energy source, as a survey done this year by the Pew Research Center shows:
Second, solar is not a partisan issue. These days, both liberals and conservatives love solar. You probably already know that a majority of Democrats support solar power and clean energy. But you may be surprised to see that a majority of Republicans (72%), even conservative Republicans (68%), also support clean energy, as a 2015 survey from Clear Path shows:
[Download our free guide answering the top 10 questions on solar power in Virginia]
Conservatives who Love Solar Power
Conservative Republicans said they liked clean energy for three main reasons:
- Less pollution
- More innovation
- Energy independence from the Middle East
Those points resonate with a growing movement of conservatives who’ve been campaigning for the right to create their own solar energy. Perhaps the most famous of these is Debbie Dooley of the Green Tea Party in Georgia.
In 2013, Dooley led the state’s Tea Party Patriots in a successful campaign to make Georgia Power buy more solar power.
“I’m a staunch, right-wing, radical conservative and I believe — I know this is something many don’t agree with — but I believe conservation is a conservative principle,” Dooley told Public Radio International.
It’s now clear that Dooley was on to something. Solar energy can allow a family to transform their home into a self-sufficient power plant with the addition of a few panels on the roof. This appeals to conservative ideals of self-reliance, free from interference from Big Government or even Big Corporations.
This fall, Dooley’s group recently went down to neighboring Florida to fight against the anti-solar Amendment 1 put on the November ballot by big electric utilities like Duke and Florida Power and Light. Working with an unlikely coalition of environmentalists and small-government conservatives, Dooley’s group helped defeat the ballot measure, scoring a major victory for solar in the Sunshine State and setting a precedent for other states in the future.
[Download our free guide answering the top 10 questions on solar power in Virginia]
Stop Fighting. Start Fixing.
In the future, I think we can look forward to supporters of both Trump and Clinton working together to help more Americans go solar. There’s even a group that’s already doing that.
No Labels, a non-profit group based in Washington, DC, whose motto is “Stop Fighting. Start Fixing,” brings together Democrats and Republicans to develop new policy ideas that a majority of both parties can support. One of their ideas is to make the US more energy secure by the year 2024 by modernizing the US electricity grid, which is currently vulnerable to storms, terrorist attacks and other threats. To modernize the grid, America will need more solar.
“The electric grid is neither as smart nor as secure as it needs to be,” says the group’s chief strategist, Ryan Clancy. “The need to invest in a smarter, more secure electric grid will lead you to more solar capacity in the system.”
Finally, I hope we’ll see more national leaders take the approach of Ben Ho, who served as an energy advisor to President George W. Bush. Ho thinks that both conservatives and liberals can understand why the public should support solar power, as he told the New York Times:
“From both a market and an environmental point of view, supporting the solar industry should make sense, no matter which side of the aisle you come from.”
— Andrew Brenner, Main Street Solar
