We write on behalf of dedicated individuals who believe that a large number of America's most urgent problems can be solved by simply electing candidates on November 2 who have the guts to do one simple thing...
Commit to making America Energy Independent on clean, American energy by the end of this decade.
That's it.
A commitment to Clean Energy Independence will:
It's time!
This is not a partisan issue. It is an American issue and one that is critical for our very survival as a nation. Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush as well as Democratic presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama have, for over 40 years, warned us about our addiction to foreign oil, our pandering to dangerous dictators and regimes, the economic insanity of sending a billion dollars per day out of the country! In fact, way back in 1973 Richard Nixon created "Project Independence" and set a national goal for The United States to develop "the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy sources" by 1980. It is embarrassing that we haven't reached that goal today, 30 years later, shameful that we haven't really even tried and more important now than ever before.
But, crippled and drunken on special interest money like a pathetic beggar with a bottle of whiskey and a tin cup, our Congress has failed to stand up to Big Oil and their lobbyists and make any significant progress to bring Energy Independence to America.
Accordingly, there is really only one issue in this election ... GUTS.
Does America have the guts to really -- no kidding -- create new jobs by investing in and building new infrastructure that will allow us to get off of foreign oil and become Clean Energy Independent?
Do we have the guts to think like Dwight Eisenhower or JFK? Can we be visionaries who plan beyond this fiscal quarter and build the modern day equivalent of a national highway system or a bold new space program, and create an energy system that can power America, on American Energy, through the rest of The 21st Century?
Do the 472 candidates we will vote for on November 2 have the courage to be real leaders?
We have come together to ask America to think beyond the lobbyists, the millions of dollars of special interest attack ads, the political bickering and also beyond party or political philosophy. American sovereignty is not a political or a partisan issue. Being held hostage to the whims of oil dictators half way around the world should never be an option for a country as ours. Sending at least $360 Billion out of the country every year for something we could produce here with American jobs is a travesty and spending an additional $50 Billion every year to send our young men and women in the military to protect those countries and supply routes that provide our addiction to foreign oil adds to the insanity.
We are better than that. We are The United States of America.
And yet we are slowly becoming a 2nd or even a 3rd world country, as Arianna Huffington writes, as our infrastructure crumbles and China, (while boldly employing 6 million of her people in new, clean energy technology jobs), heads towards their complete economic domination of this country, and the world, for the rest of The 21st Century.
Yes We Can manufacture and install solar panels and solar mirrors on our homes and in our vast deserts across this great land.
Yes We Can manufacture and install even more windmills that capture the great winds that sweep through our plains.
Yes We Can build a permanent infrastructure that utilizes Geothermal energy for cooling and heating our homes, energy efficiency technologies that lower the need for heating and cooling, tidal energy that taps the great forces of the oceans that kiss our shores, even more efficient internal combustion and a seismic move to electric cars including the conversion of all Government vehicles, conversion to LEDs, biodiesel and algae farms that can produce the liquid fuels of the future, piezoelectricity and smart grids that efficiently distribute power when and where it is needed and other amazing, creative solutions.
The technology is here. Now. We can certainly have conversations about more oil drilling and nuclear energy but these are not clean, are not renewable, are many years away from making us energy independent and are not our future or the future of the 21st Century.
If everyone who wanted America to become clean energy independent by the end of this decade went to the polls on November 2 and voted for candidates that would make this happen, it would happen. That's the beauty of Democracy. We have the power. WE the people elect EVERY one of the 435 members of The House of Representatives and a determinative number of United States Senators on November 2.
We stand together for this vision and, in collaboration with three great clean energy pioneers - The League of Conservation Voters, The Sierra Club and The National Wildlife Foundation Action Fund -- have compiled a bipartisan list of those candidates who these organizations believe have the guts to do what is necessary for a 21st Century America.
It's up to you. The media will hardly talk about this issue, but we must because we can become Energy Independent on clean, American energy by the end of this decade. Join us and Maroon 5, Jason Mraz, Rosario Dawson, Jason Alexander, Michelle Rodriguez, Peter Coyote, James Cromwell, Noah Wyle, Ed Begley, Valerie Harper, Brenda Strong, Rosanna Arquette, Felicity Huffman, Richard Belzer, Tate Donovan, Richard Schiff, Melissa Fitzgerald, Deidre Hall and foreign friends of the campaign, Sting, Trudie Styler and Graham Nash, in supporting the bipartisan clean energy candidates listed at www.EnergyIndependentCongress.US so we can, in THIS election, get off of foreign oil, put our people back to work and finally solve some of the deepest, most profound problems facing this great country!
Richard Greene is an attorney, political and communication strategist, author of the Prentice Hall coffee table book, "Words That Shook The World: 100 Years of Unforgettable Speeches and Events"
Marshall Herskovitz has helped shaped American culture with his Emmy Award winning television series, "30 Something" and many movies including "The Last Samurai" and "Dangerous Beauty". He is immediate past President of The Producer's Guild.
Paul Haggis is an Academy Award winning writer and director ("Crash", "Million Dollar Baby") and co-founder of Artists for Peace and Justice. Richard Greene is author of "Words That Shook The World: 100 Years of Unforgettable Speeches and Events" and ran for Congress on the Green Party, on this very issue, back in 1992. Richard@WordsThatShookTheWorld.com
Ray Waddle: Hearing Ourselves Think Again
![Forever Amber [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ER4Y7S1DL._SL160_.jpg)
This is the 21st century.
"Robin Carnahan is in favor of job killing energy taxes."
The folks in Branson or Ozark hear this and say "Can't vot for her. She wants to raise taxes."
Until we have $5 gas or long lines at the pumps, how can you get ordinary people to understand how important energy independence is? How can you compete with the millions of dollars the oil and coal industry spends on lobbying congress?
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/10/youre-doin-heckuva-job-browner.html
Politicians say one thing during the campaign then do another thing when sworn in.
Try reading the history of environmental law vs. oil baron profits.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/10/glorious-addictions-war-oil-2.html
What the people want is INDEPENDENCE FROM ALL BIG ENERGY, that means a serious, generous feed in tariff that supports CLEAN ENERGY AND EFFICIENCY SITED IN OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENT, not another Chevron project destroying our healthy, fragile desert ecosystems.
Stop being so THEORETICAL and start thinking deeper. Democracy depends on US decentralizing and cleaning the grid. Ask George Schultz and James Woolsey - 2 of Reagan's top guys - both of them SUPPORT FITS and do not want to see the new era be one of centralized, remote, vulnerable power plants, shooting electrons long distances.
They understand that sunshine is ubiquitous, that local grids are more secure and reliable, and that LOCAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS will flow from LOCAL CLEAN POWER production. We can't afford another "kill wilderness for money" period on this planet. The built environment is plenty big to supply all the renewable energy we need. Let's start there, pay PEOPLE not Big Energy for producing clean power while creating twice as many jobs as Big Solar and improving property values.
We can't do this wrong again, just to cave into Big Energy. THINK GLOBALLY, INSTALL LOCALLY!
be sure to sign up at www.1BOG.org so you can consolidate your installation with others in your area and receive 15-20% discounts (because one bidder gets all the jobs). i am not affiliated with them, but i have seen them in action - it's incredible! they will help you size your system properly and answer all your questions, and it is no obligation at all to actually use their service or install solar at all, although i hope you will!
we are working hard to get programs going called feed in tariffs so WE can be paid fair rates for producing clean energy on our own rooftops. you may have heard that Germany is having a solar renaissance, and it's 100% due to their (very generous) FITs. We have a lot more sunshine than they do, and many more rooftops, so this could make a real difference here!
we are also working to get PACE loans back on track, so that people can install solar with no money down, repay it through a special assessment on property taxes (and you will save enough each year to make those payments), and the loan stays with the house if you sell, making it much easier to buy and sell property (which will immediately be worth more if you install solar!)...
Thanks for your support, and please keep up the fight for TRUE energy independence, which means independence from ALL Big Energy parasites!
Why do writers on the Huffington Post group nuclear and oil together in the same sentence? There is plenty of uranium-238 and 10 times as much thorium-232, both of which are fertile isotopes which can used to breed fuel for reactors. Nuclear power in the US has virtually eliminated oil used in electric power generation and replaced many oil burning ships in the US Navy. Nuclear went from zero to 20% of US electricity generation in just a few decades, and that was when our economy was substantially smaller than it is today. Nuclear power is very clean; containing its waste products in a volume that's just 1% the volume of the Great Pyramid Giza.
1. Regardless of how much of the resource is available now, nuclear is not renewable energy. It is finite and, as such, wars (maybe 10 or 50 years from now) could be fought for it if and when it does become scarce. Not true for solar or wind.
2. The waste is still an issue. Not true for solar or wind.
3. American taxpayers must subsidize this source of energy forever by having government insure the plants as a meltdown would melt down any private insurance company, and maybe even the country's resources. Not true with solar or wind - build the infrastructure and it is virtually free and will not be a target for terrorists.
4. It takes very long to build nuclear plants and they are enormously expensive.
1. Assuming that US electricity use doesn't grow much more (achievable with efficiency improvements), there's enough energy accessible in the uranium already mined out of the ground to meet this country's energy needs for several centuries. Not renewable, but certainly on a time horizon that enables other technologies to mature. Load balancing for wind and solar require natural gas; a finite source.
2. Radioactive waste is not an issue for solar or wind, but there's still a waste stream with the manufacture, installation and maintenance of these systems. The waste stream from nuclear can be reused if we choose to (see response #1).
3. Nuclear power companies buy into insurance worth $15B. This is to cover an accident that involves the complete release of the fission product inventory, which at over 100 tons per core, would be a very difficult task. US reactors won't explode and burn like Chernobyl. The government funding is after the private insurance is used. Bring on the terrorists; I'd rather they waste their time and lives trying to attack a nuclear power facility than kill me with a backpack bomb in the DC metro. I'll take a 30-year cancer risk over a prompt explosive death any day.
4. We built over 100 reactors in just over two decades in an economy that is smaller than what we have today. If we as a country decide to build more plants, we are certainly capable of doing it in an affordable manner.
Unless you want to pave over every endangered habit in the country with solar farms, that's out as a major player. Wind has the same issue. Solar has the different issue of needing significant amounts of highly toxic chemicals in a VERY energy intensive process. If you want an eye opener on the viability of solar, do the research on the amount of watts needed to make a panel versus the watts that panel gives over its useful life.
More speculatively, I am betting that if you start sucking major amounts of power from wind and wave, you will find fish, fowl, and forest will soon be deprived of what they need that we didn't understand.
Except for nuclear and geothermal energy, ALL energy on earth is solar. Petrochemicals are solar energy stored up from the past. All presently incoming solar energy is already needed by animal and plant species we have decided are critically important. There is no untapped ready source.
Rooftop solar is the first undertaking we need. WE can own it, and the sun shines everywhere in this country. Agreed about paving over wilderness, but it's simply not necessary. There are more than enough rooftops, parking lots and in-city brownfields to fully power this country during daylight hours, and to fully power it 24/7 once better storage solutions come online. Prices are dropping and capacity factors are increasing all the time on PV, too.
No moving parts, no wasted water, no drilling and poisoning, no dead deserts, no Big Energy mercenaries, no new transmission, no construction emissions which increase global warming, no hackers or terrorists, no weather or pricing/supply manipulation blackouts, and no additional cost to ratepayers (if we implement feed in tariffs properly).
Local solar is a total win.
* 2016 Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources from the Annual Energy Outlook 2010
[2008 $/Megawatt hour]
Conventional coal........................................100.40
Natural gas, conventional combined cycle......83.10
Wind...........................................................149.30
Advanced Nuclear........................................119.00
Solar PV......................................................396.10
Solar thermal...............................................256.60
full table can be viewed at - http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
Second, it will fail to offer any advantage. Guaranteed in the first 6 months of operation there will be a shooting or stabbing, at which point TSA cavity search security will be in effect. At this point, you've got the same misery as you do at the airport. What would be the point? Show up 2 hours early so you can travel at 200mph versus showing up 2 hours early so you can travel 600mph?
You want to make it work? Eminent domain the route between places business travelers go, make the stations in the office parks, with a policy of showing up 5 minutes before departure.
fails to offer an advantage in your mind, but noone else's. uses less fuel (according to airline reported avgas usage in short hops), improves environmental quality and offers faster commutes on city to city routes. (guess you've never spent any time in an airport, waiting , and waiting, and... never been bumped off a flight, etc.)
it's clear you don't want to make it work (hsr) , but that's ok. it'll work just fine without you.