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 Nov. 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:
1. Create millions of new jobs, almost overnight
2. Create new industries and a new, vibrant economy where we actually make things again
3. Stop the funding of foreign terrorists, prevent the ability of one dictator or one country to unilaterally choke off our energy supply and vastly increase America's national security and sovereignty
4. Create a sustainable planet for our children
5. Allow us to keep trillions of dollars circulating within the U.S.
6. Be a heroic investment in America and generate the largest return on any investment in the history of our country, ultimately supplying virtually free energy for the rest of our lives and our children's lives
7. Allow America to successfully compete with China and remain the world's #1 economic power into the 21st Century.
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 second or even a third 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 jots), 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 Nov. 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 Nov. 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!
(This blog first appeared on the Huffington Post.)
