News

Former Colorado governor Bill Ritter, a Democrat, spoke today at the “After Fossil Fuels: The Next Economy” conference taking place at Oberlin College in Ohio on a panel covering “Climate Leadership.” But in a sharp contrast to remarks by 350.org co-founder and “Keep-It-In-The-Ground” leader Bill McKibben, Ritter talked about the importance of collaboration on energy issues. From Ritter’s remarks:

“So it is really interesting to have been here for the last few days, or couple days and especially to have heard the presentation last night by Bill McKibben and some of the presentations made this morning because I would say that I do come at this from a bit of a different orientation. I am a lawyer by training, I was a prosecutor for twenty years, was the elected DA in Denver and was not a person who had really involved myself in climate and energy things in a really big way until I decided to become a candidate for governor in Colorado. “(3:18-3:18:43)

Ritter went on:

“I’ve chosen this place of policy, and it’s interesting to think about Bill McKibben’s remarks last night and what I call empowering toward the need for speed and to being dedicated to trying to change things through the policy lens. It’s a difficult, difficult thing to do. I hosted a seminar at Colorado State University last week, we had a former chief economist from BP, Christof Rühl, who was part of it because we believe in never having echo-chambers to try and get people of diverse thought to really have the hard discussions.” (3:19-3:20)

Ritter’s comments offered a dramatic departure for a conference that has been dominated by an extreme fringe anti-fossil fuel agenda pushed by activists like McKibben and San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, who is scheduled to View Full Article