Al Gore's speech envisioning a totally transformed US energy system crystallizes the challenge posed by US politics to European progressives. In the US politics really matter and the area of contingent decision-making is so open, that the speech cannot be rejected as airy utopianism but has at least some chance of structuring policy. Given that the US sets the terms of much of international life such a transformation in the domestic US political economy would have enormous consequences for everyone else. So this call to collective action to address a common problem should be embraced. The devil, as always, is in the detail. Gore's speech was framed within a very simple model of the American national interest. This is perfectly understandable as that is the constituency he is trying to move, but it is a premonition of how this debate and the political movement it mobilises is likely to go. Europe, among others, will again be in the position of a client, reacting to the changes in the imperial centre, but not shaping the future. The current spate of Europeans gazing adoringly through the window at the Barack Obama phenomenon is a good illustration of this tendency. The real frustration at the Gore speech is that for all practical purposes Europe is far in advance of the US in adapting itself to a post-carbon future, but this is invisible. Gore's move was to promise that American national greatness will be amplified by a national movement to a post-carbon society. He has made up his mind about what will work to effect change, and that is American nationalism.
Complaining about American nationalism would not be an adequate response to this disappointing frame for such an important movement, but that has become the default position for the European left. If European progressives want to have weight in the solution of international problems then we are going to have to come up with an international vision, and in particular with a progressive vision for the Atlantic. Gore can't cite the positive elements of Europe because they are framed in terms of the European social contract, and while this is the common ground for the European centre-left it is completely inadequate as a context or vision for a cosmopolitan response to international challenges. As so often the fundamental problem is political; without a European vision that does not reduce to a defense of the welfare state or an ambition to limit American power, the European left cannot act politically. The fault lies not in our cousins, but in ourselves.
