Leadership Quote by Sherwood Boehlert

Policy talk rarely admits its real target, but “create demand” gives the game away. Boehlert isn’t just endorsing cleaner tech; he’s arguing that markets don’t magically summon the innovations politicians love to name-check. Demand has to be engineered: through subsidies, procurement, tax credits, standards, or carbon pricing. The phrasing makes the state a customer and a choreographer, not a referee.

The double bind in “foreign oil and environmental degradation” is classic late-20th/early-21st century political bundling. Energy security and ecological harm become one problem so a broader coalition can sign on: hawks uneasy about OPEC, moderates weary of price shocks, and environmentalists pushing emissions cuts. It’s also a permission slip for intervention. National dependence and environmental damage are framed as outcomes of a market that, left alone, keeps rewarding the old infrastructure.

“For starters” signals incrementalism and a tacit awareness of political reality: no sweeping Green New Deal rhetoric here, but a stepwise agenda that can survive committee markups and partisan bargaining. The subtext is that the technology exists or can exist; what’s missing is adoption at scale, the notorious “valley of death” between lab and market. Boehlert’s intent is to justify policy that pulls innovation forward by making it profitable to deploy.

Context matters: a Republican-leaning science-and-environment moderate (and former House Science Committee chair), speaking in an era when “energy independence” was a bipartisan refrain and climate policy often had to disguise itself as competitiveness and security. The line works because it translates moral urgency into the language Washington actually spends money on: demand.