| Disclaimer Up Front: I am a supporter of Brewster McCracken for Austin Mayor.
In the late 18th Century, the English city of Birmingham was relatively prosperous, but certainly nothing to compare with the capital in London or the great trading centers of Liverpool and Glasgow. It took some time for people to realize the city's vast untapped potential. Most important were the men of the Lunar Society, an informal Birmingham dinner club of local business leaders and inventors, whose membership role reads like a who's-who of geniuses. Meeting every evening there was a full moon (so there would be enough light to find their way home), this gathering of brilliant men endlessly debated and discussed how to apply new scientific discoveries and technological inventions to the improvement of their community.
Among the members of the Lunar Society were Matthew Boulton and James Watt, the two men most responsible for the development of steam power technology, who went into business together in 1775. With Boulton providing the financial backing and Watt the inventive genius, Birmingham suddenly found itself transformed from a provincial backwater into the center of the Industrial Revolution. The new steam engines provided the power, literally and figuratively, that shattered old ideas of trade and manufacturing and created an entirely new economic system. By the beginning of the 19th Century, Birmingham had become a global economic powerhouse, while innumerable communities that had failed to embrace the future entered a state of decline from which they never recovered.
Austin in the early 21st Century has much in common with Birmingham in the late 18th Century. As the old industrial model of fossil fuel power declines and the new model of alternative energy arises, our city is fortuitously positioned to take advantage of the coming changes. Our people are highly educated and we have a well-earned reputation for technological innovation. We are already ranked as one of the nation's leaders in alternative energy, largely thanks to forward-looking policies implemented by Austin Energy. If we ranked American cities in order of how well-positioned they are to take advantage of the coming Green Economy, Austin would have to be close to the very top, if not at the pinnacle itself.
Few people understand this as well as Brewster McCracken, who has made the eager embrace of the emerging Green Economy one of the centerpieces of his time on the City Council. Some cynics may denounce his attitude as "visionary" (is there something wrong with having vision?), but many unimaginative people doubtless pooh-poohed the men of the Lunar Society when they sought to lead Birmingham into its future.
McCracken's emphasis on alternative energy has found its most concrete manifestation in the Pecan Street Project. By forming a great coalition between the city government, the University of Texas, the Environmental Defense Fund and an assortment of high-tech companies, the project intends to create a new energy matrix that not only will provide our great city with vast amounts of alternative energy, but will develop new energy technologies that can benefit both our city and the nation as a whole. The project is unique in America and has the potential to play a major role in the development of the Green Economy, both locally and nationally.
Making Austin a center for the development of alternative energy is not only good in and of itself for obvious environmental reasons, but will serve as a powerful engine for Austin's economy. The development of alternative energy will create untold numbers of new jobs for our city, just as the development of steam technology did for Birmingham during the Industrial Revolution, and, for that matter, just as the development of the semiconductor industry did for Austin in the 1990s.
It's ideas like the Pecan Street Project that make me support Brewster McCracken for mayor. As much as I like and admire Lee Leffingwell, I frankly cannot see him taking the lead on issues such as this in the active and dynamic manner Brewster has. As Brewster himself pointed out at the opening of his campaign office, we should hope and expect Austin not to emerge from the current economic turmoil merely intact, but rather as a stronger and better city than it was before the troubles began.
To end by bringing back the example with which I began this blog entry, Birmingham faced tough economic times and responded by daring to embrace the future. Other communities with similar challenges responded by digging in their heels and trying to outlast the troubles using obsolete ways of doing things . History rewarded Birmingham by making it one of the most prosperous cities in the world for more than a century, while the other communities eventually faded into total obscurity. Austin would do will to remember this lesson of history. |
