George Mitchell, former senator of Maine and special envoy for the Northern Ireland peace process, spoke as part of Skidompha Library’s Chats for Champions lecture series on July 13. The turnout was so high that Lincoln Theater hosted the event, although Mitchell returned to the library to sign copies of his books afterward.

Lincoln Theater had a full house. Mitchell promised to speak on only two subjects, the economy, and clean energy. Before that, though, he talked a little about his experience as Maine’s junior senator, traveling the areas around his hometown in Waterville, and meeting with dairy farmers and others who didn’t know him very well. He said he learned to be humble. At one point, he was asked if he could have his photo taken with a couple of prize cows, which appeared in the paper the next morning. In another case, a woman came quite a long way to see him speak about one of his books, and she brought along a poster she wanted him to sign. It was a poster of Henry Kissinger, and when Mitchell gently told her that he wasn’t Kissinger, she told him her friends wouldn’t know the difference, and asked him to sign it with Kissinger’s name anyway. He did.

Mitchell said that despite the current worry about America’s place in the world, the U.S. will continue to be the dominant power in the world. “Right now, we have tens of millions of people who are anxious, fearful, and angry,” he said. “They are not benefiting from the changes that have taken place under globalization. But this is not the first time the economy has changed and left people behind.”

He discussed the Industrial Revolution, which ultimately brought up the average income of most people, but along the way had significant challenges, including child labor issues, poor pay, health problems related to mill work, and other issues. People of the day were also feeling displaced and left behind, Mitchell said. “There were riots and looting by those whose livelihoods were being displaced. Railroads largely replaced a system of canals in England, and canal workers and those along the canals who catered to them were suddenly in danger of losing everything.”

Nowhere did the Industrial Revolution come to greater fruition than in the United States, Mitchell said. As America pushed west, agriculture was automated with new equipment, replacing many field workers. Railroads ran the width of the nation, replacing horses and stages. But new industries sprung up to provide employment for many of those displaced workers. 

Combined with globalization, technological changes and a dramatic increase in the number of people in the world from the time of the Industrial Revolution until now, Mitchell said, the world is at another turning point, one that may be more difficult to overcome. That, he said, is the spectacular increase in wealth, but the equally spectacular wealth inequality that followed. “Wages are stagnant, and many wages have even declined relative to inflation,” he said.

“The desire for people to turn back the clock and go back to the good old days when companies paid living wages is understandable, but it won’t work for a number of reasons. First, there isn’t the need for people to do some of this work. If you look at a factory floor that in the ’50s would have had thousands of people in it, today there might be a few technicians and engineers, but most of the work is done by robots. Second, old-school industries like coal mining are losing their market share to completely understandable market forces, and if we are wise, we’ll move with them.”

Mitchell was referring to clean energy, which is the fastest growing energy segment in the United States, in large measure, because the market is shifting from carbon-based to carbon-free or neutral sources of energy.

“The president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord is a monumental mistake,” he said. “It puts us on the wrong side of history with only two other countries – Nicaragua and Syria.”

The U.S. could be a leader in the shift to clean energy, he said, but not if the country is not willing to participate in the process. “All of the economic opportunities that could be going to displaced industrial and mining workers in the United States will head to China instead,” he warned. China is a leader in clean energy for numerous reasons, including their natural resources, and a state-run economy that makes global decisions quickly, Mitchell said. But ceding our clean energy economy to China would be a disaster for many years to come, he said.

“We have to accept scientific reality,” he said. “It is nothing short of shocking that the American president says that climate change is a hoax. The scientific consensus is overwhelming.”

Mitchell said that there is a legitimate debate over the best way to deal with the change, but not to deal with it at all is deeply contrary to the interests of our country.

Mitchell said that immigration has always been part of what makes the U.S. a vital society. “It’s an extremely emotional issue,” he said. “But it’s not new. Our first official immigration law was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which was enacted to send Chinese who had come to build the railroad in the West home.” He talked about how each wave of immigrants was subjected to poor treatment, but if they got their foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder in the U.S., their children did better, and their children did better than they did. “Immigration is what refreshes our nation,” he said. “It brings new ideas, new talents, new skills, and makes us a better country.”

Mitchell reiterated that the U.S. is not in decline. “It’s the greatest nation that ever existed,” he said. “We’re not perfect. But we have primacy of independence, equality of rights and opportunity, and we are a nation of laws. In troubled times, we would do well to remember that, and remember that we can change what we don’t like and improve things. It’s our rights as citizens.”