We need a system of cooperative public-private infrastructure financing, a national infrastructure bank. But we also need to use that fabric of cooperative investment and output to foster specific areas of major improvement to our national economy. The model could be replicated across the world, but the US is uniquely positioned to deploy this solution and to vastly improve its chances of restoring vibrancy to the wider middle class by doing so.

Two parallel projects are necessary to make the infrastructure redevelopment and economic recovery strategy a success:

• a renewable energy infrastructure bank – to help target some of the wider funding options to the project of building a sustainable, smart energy economy, free of the massive externalized costs of carbon-based fuels
• an economic opportunity bank – to aggressively, specifically and persistently direct funds to businesses that are hiring, building capacity at the community level, and restoring real wage gains to the middle class

The first is our topic here: a national renewable energy infrastructure bank. To build such a bank, we would need to first establish how a cooperative public-private infrastructure financing scheme would work. Ideally, it needs to work much like an investment bank, where individual investors see visible gains, but money is kept in the pot for a long enough period of time to produce gain across the full spectrum of investor contributions.

In other words, there has to be commitment to the project, and that shared commitment of resources will yield shared substantial gains to all parties. In the area of clean energy investment, this is possibly much easier than with other types of infrastructure investment, because the industry is entering into a period of massive, and necessary, prolonged expansion. Big investors understand that big investment will help to secure that prolonged expansion.

If Congress acts to incentivize this investment, massive amounts of private-sector capital will flow to clean energy resources. There are three reasons why this will happen:

1. Fossil fuels carry with them massive production costs that have long been externalized; the economy can no longer afford to continue such a strategy.
2. Clean energy technologies offer a major opportunity for prolonged expansion of business value, as information technologies have shown over the last 30 years.
3. There are literally hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital sitting on the sidelines, waiting for directional certainty that fossil fuels cannot provide.

So, how to structure such an operation? The renewable energy infrastructure bank would need the following to reach its full potential:

1. A national price signal or clear set of incentives to direct investment to clean energy
2. An investment strategy that looks at best practices, value to community, prospects for building aggregate demand, and structural resiliency
3. A focus on job-creation, skilled retraining, and positive value feedback loops that favor consumers
4. A legislative charter that sets forth priorities favorable to public-sector, private-sector and start-up investors alike
5. A model for redirecting funding when key elements of a project require support or restructuring
6. A focus on rewarding institutions, individuals and investors who do cutting-edge R&D that is practicable, 100% carbon-emissions-free and scalable
7. Short-, medium- and long-term investment strategies for building, optimizing and utilizing the smart grid

Suggestions for deployment:

1. Implement a national carbon fee and dividend policy, to correct market failures in the pricing of carbon, return control of the energy economy to households and incentivize major private capital investment in the rapidly expanding clean tech sector
2. Identify, build or support and expand, focus facilities in cities and regions across the country, to operate as cooperative laboratories of R&D, start-up incubators, and investment engines (examples might be Brooklyn Navy Yard or Philadelphia Navy Yard, or the Fab Labs project)
3. Motivate scalability planning for distributed clean energy production projects, to ensure sustained investment opportunities, and optimized overlap between community-building, job-creation and investment strategies, for higher overall cost efficiency
4. Ensure legal support for avoiding corrosive business models, favoring generative ones, to ensure Investment flows to the new technologies and collaborative strategies that build future prosperity, not to extraction-oriented investments
5. Reward rapid ramping up of high-efficiency clean energy tech, because this will build structural resiliency, favor the highest-value market-healing technologies, and help to revive the middle class

We can begin doing this nationally tomorrow, if:

• We focus first on wind and solar, due to their naturally occurring US domestic supply far outstripping total demand and all possible demand growth
• We commit to decentralizing innovation, influence and income-growth in the energy sector, so community and regional economies are empowered by the transition
• We recognize the need to fully develop leading-edge infrastructure at all levels
• We identify and elevate the pioneers who already know how to motivate and execute this transition
• We charter public-private partnerships to manage investment flows to stakeholder-defined initiatives

The clean energy economy is coming, and to fully enable its expansion, the US needs to flex the muscle necessry to turn the ship of state, to wrest from entrenched industries and financial investment patterns rooted more in extraction than in generative payoff the ability to decide what comes next. There is nothing beyond clean and renewable in terms of energy production and distribution, except the work of achieving the most advanced efficiency gains and making robust power generation an ever more ephemeral affair, at an ever faster rate.

To lead in that new economy, we need to be the first to build its value.

 - – -

Originally published October 12, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

The Occupy Wall Street movement—now being called “the American Autumn”, after the Arab Spring, or the September 17th movement, after the day it got started in lower Manhattan—is now completing four weeks on the scene. Yet we can still be astounded to hear so many incredulous “experts” unable to understand how a grassroots movement, infused with the zeitgeist of very problematic times, is working toward anything constructive. What is the meaning of this? Why don’t they have a ready-to-go list of demands? What are they asking us to think?

It’s actually very simple. It’s self-evident, but if you’re at a loss, you can also go to Zuccotti Park, or to any of the Occupy Together protest sites, and just talk to people, and what did not seem evident will rapidly become so. The meaning of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the United States like wildfire is: democracy. The unifying sentiment, which is actively put into practice every day at Occupy encampments, is that citizens have a right to participate. They are building a participatory process to restore the principle of informed citizen participation to our political system and our economy.

Listen to the protesters: “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” This is not pretend protest; this is the message. The message is that people have a right to free assembly, have a right to free expression, have a right to govern their own destiny, have a right to earn a living, to expect that as citizens of a free society, as implicit signatories to the social contract that gives legitimacy to our democracy, they have a right to be treated with dignity.

Above all, they believe it is necessary to restore to prominence the idea that we all have a right to expect that the powers that decide the shape of our everyday existence 1) represent us, and 2) be accountable directly to us, to the people. Participation and transparency are antidotes to the temptations of unfettered power, elite negotiating environments, and deals that ignore the interest of most people and structure outcomes to favor insider interests. Participation and transparency are democracy; their absence is not.

The non-violent citizen-action uprisings that ousted dictators in Tunisia and Egypt early this year inspired a wave of protest across Spain, in which people calling themselves Los Indignados—the indignant—occupied central squares in Madrid, Barcelona and cities across the country, with semipermanent encampments: acampadas. They formed asambleas by topic or task and held asambleas generales to decide the direction of the national movement through direct democracy.

OccupyWallStreet.org describes the American movement as follows:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy … join us!

There is now a nationwide OccupyTogether movement that seeks to coordinate the actions, debates and proposals of protesters across the United States, and across the world. As of today, they have rallies planned for 1,539 cities, large and small.

The global movement inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings has spawned not only the Spanish acampadas and the American Occupy protests, but also the Chilean student uprising, which has shut down much of Chile throughout the southern winter, as students demand wider access to high quality public education.

Some participants have been very vocal that the message should consistently be anti-corruption. And it clearly is. In every sense, the non-violent, sleep-on-the-street, do-for-others, collaborative enterprise that is the Occupy Wall Street movement, has persistently demanded transparency, integrity, corporate social responsibility and accountability. It is very much about transcending what is corrupt in the current system. But it is also about something deeper than that.

Last week, with a large crowd echoing her words in chorus—a practice called “the people’s mic”, done to amplify spontaneously, at the human scale, without electrified amplification—Naomi Klein said the movement was attempting one of the most arduous, improbable and time-consuming tasks: that of “changing the underlying values of our culture”.

There have been crazily tone-deaf responses from some in the political establishment, calling citizens engaging in constitutionally protected non-violent assembly “mobs” and referring to calls for justice, fairness and the restoration of middle class opportunity “class warfare”. What motivates such comment is hard to fathom, though pundits, activists and foreign observers alike seem to think it is simply an unwillingness to see the obvious truth: that the powers that be have forged a dysfunctional and distorted economy that does not benefit most people and does not foster real democratic freedom at the human scale.

The movement has consistently made reference to “the 99 percent“, the vast majority of people not earning 7-figure annual income. The movement seeks to represent the right of that 99 percent of all people to be heard, to have a direct role in helping to fashion the policies that determine what kind of society they and their children and families will inhabit. Messages describing the complaints and motivations of those who want better treatment of the 99 percent are posted at We are the 99 percent.

And they have won support from many of the 1 percent that do benefit from the policies that disadvantage so many. A Tumblr page called We stand with the 99 percent is recording their messages of support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems only to be spreading, gaining support and becoming more organized, because it is focused on restoring a sense of reason and justice to a nation too long forced to accept widening inequality, rigged markets and pervasive corporate tax dodging. The cause is as close to universal as one can get. It is about calling on those with responsibilities to hundreds of millions of people, whose decisions affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people, to behave as if that responsibility carried some weight in the calculus of their decisions.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is about people willing to give voice to those without a voice. In the assembly process, people don’t just debate ideas, or choose leaders. They aren’t caucusing for positions, or jockeying for influence. The assemblies allow anyone to speak, and aim for consensus. The consensus building process entails hearing all voices, considering competing ideas, then building coalitions of support in order to achieve real consensus among those in attendance. The plan is direct democracy, plain and simple, but specifically a kind of direct democracy in which no one is marginalized.

- – -

Originally published October 14, 2011, at ProjectQuipu.net

With gasoline prices at record highs in 2008, 2009 and 2010, 2011 has looked like a microcosm of the longer oil-market trend: consistent increases in pricing, fuel costs hurting small business and the middle class, slowing the pace of economic growth in the US, and—maybe most strangely of all—no national policy to motivate a rapid, comprehensive transition away from fossil fuels and the volatility and cost inefficiency of their products to the wider marketplace. Instead, we have seen a recommitment to ramping up production, expanding drilling and exploration, and prioritizing local importation (from Canada and Mexico), instead of real coordinated policy planning to end dependency on foreign-sourced fuels.

With the oil strain on an already precarious American economy at an historic extreme, Pres. Bush in 2008 pushed Congress to hold an “up-or-down vote” on renewed exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) before its August recess. Opponents protested vocally that none of any oil found there would be available for production for 10 to 15 years, the total amount would do little to ease the overall dependency on foreign-sourced fuels, and that the OCS plan was little more than an aggressive attempt to deliver to hugely profitable oil firms an unjustifiable gift, taking advantage of the pressurized situation of exorbitant prices.

The Energy Information Agency (EIA), evaluating the OCS strategy, found that opening offshore sites in the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico would still not produce enough oil and natural gas to have a significant effect on domestic reserves, even as far out as the year 2030. In July 2008, as the debate raged over drilling, CNN reported that Democratic members of Congress were saying a preliminary investigation was attributing more than 50% of the soaring oil prices to speculation, while traders were saying OPEC had deliberately held production low in order to drive prices up. Dependency on speculation-susceptible foreign-sourced fuels was building unaffordability into the US economy.

So, after three years of prolonged economic malaise, with the energy and fuel sectors continuing to extract massive amounts of wealth from our local and regional economies, transferring economic leverage away from the middle class and spontaneous job creation, we must face the underlying truth: that fossil fuels work on the marketplace in ways that are corrosive to the long-term health and stability of democratic societies conducive to a vibrant middle class. And given the massive negative externalities, which all of us are funding all of the time, and the unaffordability of so much of the stagnant, status-quo industrial economy, we must also face the increasingly clear economic reality that carbon emissions are not just destructive to the health of our natural environment, but that they have real economic costs not directly related to ecosystem resilience, such as human health, and the cost of industrial activity related to clean-up and to the obsolescence of devices running on combustible fuels.

Devoting increasing amounts of our energy economy to combustible fuels at a time when prices are soaring—a periodic reverse trend of a few months of gradually easing prices is not a reversal of the long-term trend—has a multiple-negative economic effect. The key to understanding what is happening, and which looks likely to make recourse to nuclear and carbon-based fuels counterproductive, is to understand that we are no longer living in a traditional industrial energy economy. We are now dealing with the consequences of that economy’s exploration and combustion burden. The “carbon footprint” is not merely an environmental ethics concern, but a serious economic factor potentially mitigating future productivity, or added long-term costs on a scale never before seen.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 Republican nominee for president, proposed building 45 new nuclear plants across the country in order to bring down energy prices overall. The idea was borrowed, to a large extent, from then Vice President Dick Cheney, who had long been close to the nuclear lobby and who included nuclear energy as part of his initial proposals for a new national energy policy. Yet the economic reasoning behind such proposals is dubious: no plants have been built in the US in three decades, and environmental and cost concerns, including pending court rulings, make the strategy unlikely to be implemented.

The state of California—the world’s 5th largest economy—has only two nuclear plants, so the amount of energy sought in producing 45 plants is more than ambitious, especially when compared to the promise of new alternative fuel and energy-production options. That each plant could ulimately cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in construction, maintenance, security, decomissioning, insurance, health and environmental costs, makes the proposition seem like an ill-informed proposed detour into fiscal collapse.

The entire nation has only 104 nuclear reactors, so the commitment to 45 new nuclear power plants—under McCain’s 2008 plan—would be serious, even as new options become available. What’s more, the history of accidents and near accidents is widely unknown among the public. We know the word “Chernobyl”, but most people don’t know that the V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station had four reactors, only one of which exploded in the cataclismic disaster of 1986. The other three reactors were finally shut down only years afterward, in 1991, 1996 and 2000, respectively. And, the Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant, also Europe’s largest, at Zaporizhzhia, has six pressurized light-water reactors.

We saw this spring what kind of unrelenting social, economic and biological catastrophe can result from the failure of multiple reactor cores, containment strategies and engineering and regulatory mechanisms, when Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi complex went into meltdown, after being struck by a tsunami. That crisis has yet to be fully contained, and no government agency in Japan or elsewhere, seems willing to publish definitive statistics detailing the full scale of the radiation released into the air and water. We know that contaminated rain has fallen on the other side of the Pacific Ocean—which covers half the globe—and so the US is living with fallout from the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

We have heard of the serious nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in March 1979, in which partial core meltdown in one reactor led to the release of 43,000 curies of radioactive krypton (1.59 PBq), and 20 curies (740 GBq), considered a relatively small amount of the especially dangerous iodine-131 isotope, into the surrounding environment. But few people are aware of the major explosion, following core meltdown, in January 1961, at the National Reactor Testing Station in the Idaho desert. All three people working the plant during the explosion were killed and the radioactivity levels were so intense, they were required to be buried in lead coffins.

A massive 890 square-mile complex, now known as the Idaho National Laboratory, was the site of the first success in producing electricity from nuclear reactions, and is in part a national historic landmark. But among its 52 reactors, only three are currently operational, and there are reported to be plans to use at least one to produce plutonium-238 for classified national security purposes.

Now, given the intense security concerns related to nuclear power, rapid construction is literally impossible. Federal public health and environmental laws also require fastidious attention to detail, which has intensified since the last plant was constructed 3 decades ago. Failure to meet with absolute precision all the security requirements can result in catastrophic accidents and/or major cost-overruns in relation to federal regulatory fines and/or takeovers. This means that entirely new systems for construction need to be designed and tested before even the first construction of any new plant can begin.

There is, simply put, no way that new nuclear plants can affect current gas prices.The timeline here has also been pushed back as far as 2030 for any significant shift on percentage of national energy production derived from nuclear power, if the massive new construction project were undertaken.

With both offshore drilling and new nuclear construction likely to delay the infusion of new supply into the domestic energy economy, the real economic result of committing to these strategies for expanding domestic energy production may actually be the increase in prices for oil and automotive gasoline, as it becomes clear that overall supply depends heavily on these resources for the foreseeable future. Over the last few years, as carbon pricing legislation has stalled, discussion about future economic development has shifted to the need for funding the broad expansion of national infrastructure for renewable resources, like wind and solar power.

It is fair to say that given the revolutionary advances in cost-effective construction and comparable end-user cost for renewable resources—we now know existing wind and solar technologies can power the entire US economy—, there has not been enough attention given to the potential for rapid infrastructure development that could bring new sources of energy production online within 2 to 3 years.

We face a stark choice, at this moment of economic division, confusion and peril: we can continue to heavily invest in the old, dirty, costly energy paradigm, or we can deploy smart policies to price carbon accurately, in a way that is designed to return economic influence to the middle class, to innovators and communities, and build a local, user-centered smart energy economy.

- – -

A version of this report was originally published July 31, 2008, at CafeSentido.com

Saturation means more of a given ingredient cannot be added to a given volume or fabric of activity, without spilling over, and being wasted. The fossil fuels market is saturated, in the sense that it cannot effectively capitalize on major new production investment without major new construction of productive facilities. The industry has effectively pushed prices higher and cannot reduce them without seeing a dropoff in profits. Most people can no longer afford the fuel they used to consume.

This raises the question of scalability. Scalability refers to the notion that as activity of a given kind expands, as the benefits and efficiencies of size, reinforced by growing market share, which means a greater ability to determine outcomes, an economy of scale arises: a thing begins to cost less per unit or per usage, because a scalable activity has made the unit or the usage cost less without reducing overall revenues.

Scalability depends on many other features of the marketplace, however. One of these is the value of investment. Another is the availability of that investment. When a market has already gone global, and is controlled by a handful of megaconglomerates and governments, and is saturated, and is pricing reliant consumers out, investment slows down. In a credit-scarce economy where no one is as rich as the oil interests, even moreso.

The ability to rapidly scale up production, and to create a potent and escalating visible return on investment for consumers, is hampered by justifiable skepticism about where this globalized, saturated and entrenched market sector can hope to go. Add to that this problem of a business model whereby one consumes a finite fossil resource that cannot be reproduced, burning one’s assets as one goes, and you have a model that does not shape up favorably for the 21st century.

The S&P 500 are now sitting on over $1 trillion in accumulated cash reserves. This money could, and normally would, be invested in future economic development. But sclerosis in the top-heavy oil sector, a serious lack of capital in the hands of consumers, and the real vulnerability of banks and even governments, are all conspiring to hold that money back. Wise investors understand that when the marketplace for risk and investment fails, a rainy-day fund is the best option.

In stark contrast to the fossil fuels sector, the clean renewables sector:

• is far from saturated,
• produces an ever-increasing rate of return for investors,
• is primed to produce economies of scale,
• can offer more jobs at better wages over a longer term,
• and lends itself to accelerating efficiency gains.

So, why are so many smart people still saying they favor the economics of oil? Two reasons:

1. They are invested in the fossil-burning-for-profits model and so don’t accurately perceive the saturation problem;
2. They don’t understand the paradigm shift and so view clean energy not as a rapidly expanding market but as a feeble one.

It’s not presumptuous to make these assertions about the anti-clean-energy crowd; it’s giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are not seeing the lay of the land as it is, but rather as they are accustomed to hoping it is. It is wishful thinking to hold that oil will always be king and no better option will replace it, wishful, that is, if you profit from oil’s dominance. The same with coal.

We are running out of ways to extract coal cheaply without literally blowing mountains apart, wiping them off them map, which carries very significant costs. Coal is an 18th-century technology not optimized for our 21st century needs. While employment from coal steadily declines, the risks and costs of its production mount, and coal-rich communities continue to experience chronic endemic poverty which the industry has been unable to solve.

We are running out of easy access to oil; the remaining reserves are trapped in undeveloped remote wilderness, behind high-risk, low-yield extraction processes that require major new dirty energy infrastructure to be built. Their development will impede investment in and development of better, cleaner, more efficient alternatives. We can do much better.

The fossil fuel saturation problem, known to states like Texas as an ongoing “energy emergency”, means we need to be actively searching not only for alternative fuels, but also for investment opportunities where we can build in drivers of more generalized prosperity, i.e. a restored and strengthened middle class, and accelerating returns in productive capacity.

The only way to achieve that is by building a smart-grid-based distributed clean renewable-energy market.

- – -

Cross-posted from TheHotSpring.net

El ser humano se ha vuelto tan influyente en los proceso naturales que los científicos ahora temen que la naturaleza ha perdido capacidades vitales de resistencia

Futurismo Verde :: En una reunión de científicos europeos, en Estocolmo, el hombre que inventó el término ‘antropoceno’ para describir una nueva época geológica—en la que la influencia humana domina los proceso naturales—ha anunciado que el término ahora se está aplicando desde múltiples campos de estudio. La importancia real del término es que la información ecológica es cada vez más imprescindible para poder llevar a cabo las ambiciones humanas de una forma responsable y sostenible.

The Financial Times, de Londres, ahora informa que “The EuroScience forum in Stockholm heard on Thursday that climate change was the most obvious of a complex range of man-made effects that is rapidly changing the physics, chemistry and biology of the planet.” [En el foro EuroScience, en Estocolmo, el jueves pasado, escucharon que el cambio climático era el más obvio de un complejo tejido de efectos de la actividad humana, que están cambiando rápidamente la física, la química y la biología del planeta."] Otros efectos tendrán que ver con la resistencia de la cosecha, fertilidad de la tierra, elasticidad de habitat vital para especies de sustento.

El alba de la época Antropocena, en la historia geológica, conlleva una cantidad importante de desafíos y oportunidades. En sentido de llevar a cabo una transición rápida de ubicuos modelos económicos a una metodología sostenible, hay una gran oportunidad de aumentar la producción económica potencial de la economía global. Hacerlo, sin embargo, exigirá cantidades masivas de inversión y de innovación acelerada.

Un grupo de 21 de los científicos e investigadores más respetados ha publicado su estudio de la cronología geológica en GSA Journal, y han confirmado que ocurrió un cambio fundamental a una época geológica definida por el efecto humano en el medio ambiente, a principios del siglo XIX. Lo que ocurre ahora, más allá de eso, es que se está desarrollando una conciencia del impacto severo de 200 años de expansión industrial agresiva, incluyendo explotación de recursos, construcción urbana y remodelación terrenal sin precedentes.

Estamos llegando a un punto de inflexión, después del que la ciencia no podrá evitar la necesidad de reconocer y manejar los impactos de la actividad humana en los sistemas naturales. Se ve ahora alteraciones fundamentales en la sedimentación, calidad de tierra, patrones geológicos y habitat biológico, hasta en la misma flora y fauna que habita los sistemas naturales afectados, y en la atmósfera respirable.

Específicamente:

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day, global human population has climbed rapidly from under a billion to its current 6.5 billion (Fig. 1), and it continues to rise. The exploitation of coal, oil, and gas in particular has enabled planet-wide industrialization, construction, and mass transport, the ensuing changes encompassing a wide variety of phenomena, summarized as follows. [...]

Humans have caused a dramatic increase in erosion and the denudation of the continents, both directly, through agriculture and construction, and indirectly, by damming most major rivers, that now exceeds natural sediment production by an order of magnitude [...]

Carbon dioxide levels (379 ppm in 2005) are over a third higher than in pre-industrial times and at any time in the past 0.9 million years [...]

The projected temperature rise will certainly cause changes in habitat beyond environmental tolerance for many taxa (Thomas et al., 2004). The effects will be more severe than in past glacial-interglacial transitions because, with the anthropogenic fragmentation of natural ecosystems, ‘escape’ routes are fewer.

Los mecanismos principales de resistencia ecológica se ven erosionados, y el medio ambiente natural se encuentra menos capaz de adaptarse a los cambios en los sistemas naturales y su manera de competir dentro de y entre sí. El estudio también cita evidencia de un nivel acelerado de extinción de especies y de la creciente probabilidad de una ola masiva de extinciones, resultado directo de la actividad humana.

La comunidad científica ha comenzado a elaborar modelos informáticos del sistema natural integral, un complejo de ecosistemas e interacciones a nivel planetario. Esos modelos servirán para averiguar hasta qué punto la actividad humana influye en el medio ambiente y cómo se puede actuar para mitigar esos impactos y lograr un futuro más sostenible, y más capaz de seguir proporcionando los beneficios naturales necesarios como base de la civilización humana.

La idea del periodo Antropoceno es más que una clasificación cronológica del momento en el que nos encontramos. Se trata de una conciencia cada vez más desarrollada de la necesidad de modificar nuestras tendencias para colaborar con los sistemas naturales de los que dependemos tanto para la supervivencia. Es un despertar al efecto que tiene nuestro nivel de vida, nuestra producción y consumo industriales, y a lo que significa la integración de las sociedades alrededor del planeta, en una red global de comunicación y un mercado global de intercambio material y cultural.

Es posible ahora hablar de una creciente conciencia global de la necesidad de cambiar las motivaciones básicas de la política estatal, el negocio privado, el consumo y los mercados en general. Es posible ahora hablar de un momento en el que la evidencia existe para darnos cuenta del poder que tiene la industria de una civilización globalizada sobre el medio ambiente.

La época Antropocena existe porque el impacto medioambiental ya no se trata de un impacto local, en un ambiente limitado, sino de un impacto a nivel global, con secuelas en ecosistemas que no parecen tener contacto directo con la causa de su malestar. El cambio de pensamiento que ahora viene tiene que coincidir con una creciente capacidad de imaginación y colaboración, para dejar atrás la dependencia peligrosa que nos ata a los combustibles fósil.

• Geological Society of America: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene”
• Financial Times / MSNBC: “Scientists warn of a new Anthropocene age”
• About.com Geology: “Introducing the Anthropocene”
• Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie: “Anthropocene” [article that coined the term]
• Resilience 2008: “Resilience, Adaptation & Transformation in Turbulent Times” [Conf., Stockholm 14-17 April]
• Albaeco, Sustainability School: “Masking Environmental Feedbacks”

creative prosperity is sustainable prosperity

To build a future of vibrant open democracy and robust and sustainable economic prosperity, it is necessary to privilege creative activities and constructive solutions to the challenges we face. Addressing major challenges in constructive, innovative ways, is the single most significant driver, historically, of sustained economic booms. In short, we need to move deliberately and swiftly toward a creative prosperity agenda.

The first consideration, then, is to examine how the creative prosperity agenda would differ from what we are doing now. At present, we are wrestling with the complex fabric of consequence related to long-running economic distortions, most of which we have not yet corrected. Healthcare reform and financial regulatory reform were comprehensive in scope, but moderate in impact, cautious and rooted in the prevailing model; energy reform needs to move forward rapidly and do more to prioritize innovation.

We are facing a major, civilization-wide transition from one way of conceptualizing political and economic power to another. We stand at the dawn of what should be the global solidification of open democracy as the standard for elevating and defending human dignity and freedom of thought. But we need to build creative prosperity into that future, and this will require a fundamental shift in the dominant view which holds that power is more effective when concentrated in fewer hands.

That view comes from ancient times—from prehistoric times, in fact—when the governing principle of human life was the need to survive in competition with forces far more powerful than any one individual, family or band. Power, then, was a combination of accumulated resources and raw force. In that light, power is a destructive force, requiring intense concentration of resources and the ability to draw a line between the inside and the outside of the power circle.

the feudal (concentration) model

Economically, the fact of human society was that there was not enough technology, enough resources, enough liberty, to deliver real comfort to most or all people. In fact, there was only the material wealth to deliver substantial comfort to about 1 in every 100 people. The model of concentration allowed those in that 1 percent to cling to comfort and fight off would-be attackers.

The only way into the circle in which power, means and comfort were concentrated was to pay the toll for access. That might be done by force of arms, or by handing over significant sums of wealth. Paying the toll perpetuated the model, and won significant privileges for those who helped to make sure that system remained viable.

This developed eventually into authoritarian empires and the medieval elevation of aristocracy. The logic of the model of concentration held: those inside the circle must remain there, and the society must be organized to keep them there. They were, it was presumed, worth more than other people, and so they were able to treat their privilege as if it were part of a life of service—maintaining law and order—to those with less.

the democracy (decentralization) model

Modern democracy posits an entirely different model: the model of decentralization. Modern democracy, according to the ideals of the American revolution and the French revolution, requires a comprehensive departure from the status quo of feudal dominance. It requires the engineering of a model for economic and political activity whereby power cannot be concentrated, and where excessive concentration of power brings disadvantage.

A creative prosperity agenda for public policy and economic renewal would put aside the bias of the old model, once and for all, asking enterprises large and small to join together in a fabric of imaginative competition, prioritizing localization, innovation and service value to the marketplace. It would help to recapture the energy of modern democracy, wherein monopolies and juggernauts sputter and trudge, slowed by their weight, and individuals and small businesses are better able to take the field, to effect positive change, to feed a generalized economic expansion.

The key to that model is the vibrancy of an expanding and upwardly mobile middle class. Achieving that means doing what the United States did so effectively in the 1950s and 1960s, decentralizing the levers for creating wealth, allowing more free people to participate not only as citizens but as leaders and entrepreneurs.

losing our former focus on creative (decentralized) prosperity

A period of intensive deregulation in key industries has led the United States’ economy into a period of prolonged slow growth, because it has led to the hyper-concentration of wealth and of access to the levers of wealth-creation generally. Average household income has dropped by about $2,500 since 2000, even as the gap between average pay and the earnings of the wealthiest has expanded to historic highs.

There is a problematic knock-on effect of this, which is that innovation is no longer a priority, as major conglomerates seek first of all to secure their position. Upstarts like Apple are not emerging at the rate they were during previous periods of economic expansion, and the most powerful, most concentrated interests—Apple now among them—are controlling the field of play.

recapturing momentum: how to build a creative prosperity agenda

There are a couple of key changes that need to take place to move toward a creative prosperity agenda:

1. Move from a bias favoring large conglomerates to one against them;
2. Move away from subsidies for high-polluting, low-yield fossil fuels;
3. Move toward clean energy technologies that favor rapid innovation, brainy startups, more robust job creation, and local economies;
4. Revive national commitment, public and private, to infrastructure redevelopment;
5. Provide direct tax credits for real job creation (payable on a per-job basis);
6. Establish sustainability incentives for municipalities (ref: Sustainable Jersey), states and businesses;
7. Establish an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard;
8. Prioritize higher education spending, including post-graduate studies incentives for businesses looking to sponsor their employees;
9. Introduce critical thinking, macroeconomic studies, engineering basics and public policy debate, to public high schools—judge these as more valuable than test scores;
10. Make sure tax reforms are not regressive; make sure they prioritize family and community-level “thriving”, i.e. asset-building, quality of life and spending power;
11. Tax derivative financial instruments at a higher rate than direct capital investments in enterprise, innovation and hiring;
12. Apply national policy to correct market distortions relating to fossil fuel costs.

The outcome of this process of reform would be:

• accelerated, more widespread innovation;
• entree for creative small business models;
• unprecedented opportunities for sustained hiring;
• more vibrant, resilient local economies;
• a consumer-centered smart electricity grid;
• cleaner air and water;
• a sustainable economy where growth is not tied to the promotion of vast negative externalities;
• more robust civic engagement from citizens, communities and creative thinkers…

The United States is perfectly capable of achieving this kind of virtuous cycle between democratization, decentralization, creative thinking, entrepreneurship and the expansion of the middle class. But substantive policy changes need to be made—to remove the incentive for corrosive activities that favor the unhealthy concentration of wealth and productive capacity and motivate the revival of generative activities that favor the healthy decentralization of assets and productive capacity.

A vibrant middle class—where the best ideas can come to the fore and be implemented and the dignity and worth of citizens and communities takes priority over the naked pursuit of profit—is better suited to fostering creative, sustainable prosperity. The first step is to recognize where we favor profit over people, and then work to change the prevailing model and free human creative talent to achieve that goal.

Texas, the most energy-rich populous state in the country, with more oil, more wind, more sun, and a more developed energy sector, than any other state, is now undergoing rolling blackouts, in part because Gov. Rick Perry’s budget policy is bankrupting the state, ending incentives and cutting off supply. Under Perry, the state has run up a $28 billion deficit, and Chinese firms have been buying up major wind energy projects.

Perry’s ideological manipulation of state budget priorities has not only hampered the state’s development of cutting-edge clean energy sources, it has eroded the educational opportunity, targeted lower income families for reduced opportunity, and slowed job creation. The one thing propping up the state’s economic output is immigration, which has allowed new opportunity, new hiring and new capital flows, despite the governor’s attempts to shut them down.

When he named a top utility regulator to head the state’s railroad agency, he did so specifically proclaiming his appointee ”will continue to push back against the Obama Administration’s misguided energy policies which threaten Texas jobs and our nation’s energy security”.

Specifically, Perry meant he wanted to stop construction of high-speed railways—which would create tens of thousands of jobs—and slow, halt or even reverse the transition from costly fossil fuels to more efficient clean energy technologies. The reason? Fossil fuels produce a higher profit margin for the interests that back them, though clean energy technologies, high-speed rail and the smart grid would produce more generalized prosperity and a healthier economy for the state and the region.

Perry has consistently sought to stock the state’s regulatory authorities with industry-interested figures. He has complained that Texas, which emits a huge amount of carbon-dioxide and other pollutants, from fossil fuel-powered plants, should not be subject to the clean air rule that seeks to prevent contamination of one state’s air by activities in another state. He maintains that Texas is above federal law, and has been criticized for a ‘head-in-the-sand’ approach to energy.

Now, in the long, hot summer of 2011, Rick Perry’s Texas has run out of energy, and is experiencing rolling blackouts. The energy capital of the United States is out of energy, because the governor’s fiscal policies and manipulation of incentives has been reckless, ill-informed and biased, crimping the flow of investment and undermining the rate of innovation.

Though oil and gas are not producing the level of job creation of wind, solar, geothermal and renewables, Perry has sought to curtail investment in new technologies, privileging outdated fuel sources whose entrenched power is hampering the job creation potential of what has been Texas’ best opportunity for growth: wind and solar power.

While the nation has been moving toward, albeit at a painfully slow pace, a cleaner energy paradigm, for three decades, with technologies to achieve this accelerating in efficiency and productivity several fold in the last ten years alone, and while Texas is the nation’s wind-energy leader, he has sought to put fossil fuel interests first, to the detriment of the state’s immediate and long-term economic health and vibrancy.

Under Perry’s stewardship, the leading energy-rich state in the nation has been forced into its fifth “energy emergency” this year alone, and is now importing electricity from Mexico. According to a Texas Tribute report from earlier this week:

As scorching temperatures continued and Texas electricity use reached another all-time high, the state grid operator initiated the first step of emergency procedures today, seeking power from other grids, including Mexico.

About 20 power generation units, accounting for around 3,000 megawatts of capacity, were unavailable today during unplanned outages, adding to the strain on the grid. Today’s temperatures soared well past 100 degrees, and it’s not likely that the situation will get better Wednesday or Thursday unless some thunderstorms pass over a major metropolitan area, like Houston or Dallas, to lessen demand.

ERCOT—the Energy Reliability Council of Texas—has sought to implement these emergency procedures due to a combination of record electricity demand and inadequate supply. The unplanned outages were the most significant development, in that they suggest the grid itself has been underfunded and unprepared for the volume needed.

When Perry’s bad fiscal planning and ideological manipulation of taxes is combined with his loyalty to entrenched oil, gas and coal interests, it is clear the clean energy and smart grid industry is fending for itself, and doing very well, but not as well as Texas’ world leading electricity demand requires. His policies have, in fact, left his state with a massive and worsening budget deficit, with no serious plan for course correction, and with severe obstacles to improving the electricity generation crisis.

According to the New Republic:

The Lone Star State has a standing $10 billion shortfall every two-year budget cycle, thanks to a faulty tax system pushed by Perry that fails to balance the budget. Although the governor normally stays away from the state Legislature—sightings in either chamber are rare and exciting—Perry engineered a new business tax in 2006 to replace a prior one riddled with loopholes. Ostensibly a good idea, his new tax nonetheless suffered from the simple fact that it didn’t bring in enough revenue. Furthermore, it turned out to be incredibly complex, leaving many business owners scratching their heads. Those who figured it out, meanwhile, realized that, because the new tax was levied on gross margins as opposed to profits, companies could be losing money and still find themselves on the hook.

State legislators on both sides of the aisle have decried Perry’s ill-conceived fiscal planning. The chief Senate budget writer, Republican Steve Ogden, hasn’t been afraid to mince words about just how bad the business tax is. “None of us were elected to raise taxes on anybody,” he said the first day of the session. “But the margins tax is different. If we don’t fix the margins tax, local property taxes will definitely go up.” The regular legislative session came and went, however, without any real effort to fix the broken tax. The result is that the state is still operating with a structural deficit, and will very likely face more cuts the next time around.

Perry’s loyalty to old energy interests means the state’s cuts are hurting the more job-creation-intensive new energy sector. There has not been the funding available to develop the smart grid, or the major transmission lines, needed to maximize output from wind farms. So even as the Texas wind industry has seen a nation-leading boom in the last decade, its ability to adequately serve the marketplace has been slowed by outdated priorities and what some call overt political bias.

Due to its Renewable Portfolio Standard, which Perry supported, Texas has outpaced other states in wind energy sector development, but critics say too much of the profit is going to foreign companies, not enough Recovery Act funding was deployed to spur investment and too few incentives are in place for in-state start-ups to compete with big oil, coal and gas, and with the Chinese firms Perry is now relying on to fund wind development.

When the Texas wind industry was gearing up for what was likely to be one of the biggest investment booms the state, or the nation, for that matter, had seen in a long time, as a result of Congressional action to reduce carbon emissions and incentivize a transition to clean energy, Perry vehemently opposed the action. When the carbon pricing legislation failed, in the summer of 2010, the result was a swift reversal on the part of major investors, like oil tycoon Boone Pickens, who had been ready to devote record sums to the wind energy sector.

One year later, Texas is undergoing rolling blackouts, its fifth energy emergency in just 8 months, and is having to import electricity from Mexico, because the fiscal and regulatory management of Gov. Rick Perry is not designed to, and is not capable of providing for a more robust smart energy economy. The state has more demand than conventional energy sources can provide, and Gov. Perry has sought to prop up those power sources, to the detriment of innovation and job creation.

The most wind-rich state in the Union could be supplying more than half its electricity from advanced wind power systems, were the infrastructure in place to do so, and Perry’s budgetary mismanagement has diverted both public and private investment to wasteful spending on outmoded power sources, which are costing the state still more in terms of regulatory and public health adaptation, and in opportunity costs from jobs foregone, competition not stimulated, and infrastructure not built.

A wind-and-solar supplied smart grid would allow Texas’ hobbled fossil fuel economy to meet demand, and could, within just two years, reach the 20% clean energy threshold, using existing public-private investment incentives, were they directed where they need to be. The long-term plan should be for 50% wind and solar by 2020, something an adequately funded Texas clean energy sector could easily accomplish, with its abundance of wind, solar and land area.

There are also concerns that, as the focus has moved away from aggressive development of wind energy, Texas may now be experiencing a kind of energy market manipulation like what took place in California, right before the collapse of Enron, when power utilities and power-supply traders colluded to deprive the market of supply in order to force blackouts, during hot—deadly—summer months, and extract huge long-term price hikes from the state. Public policy in Texas has been steered toward subsidizing low consumer electricity prices, but now, the same suppliers that benefit from the resulting massive demand are crying poverty, producing too little and demanding higher prices.

They have hit the state electricity price cap of $3,000 per megawatt-hour, but despite that cap, and what should be the potential to rapidly ramp up clean energy output, the deregulated Texas energy sector leaves the state vulnerable to this kind of underfunded energy production, supply shortages and potential market pricing disruptions. It will be up to Rick Perry to figure out if the status quo is the best thing for Texas; we can only hope he sees that what Texas needs is a majority-renewable smart energy sector, sooner rather than later.

List of Legislative Riders on H.R.2584, The Interior & Environment Approps bill for FY12
39 provisions in the bill specifically eliminate environmental protections in service of big polluters and GOP campaign donors

*In order as they appear in the bill, with section numbers cited.

Blocks Endangered Species Act Designations [Language on page 8]: Prohibits funding for Endangered Species Act listings or critical habitat designations.

Blocks NPS Boat Checks on Yukon River [Section 116]: Prohibits the National Park Service from carrying out boat inspection or safety checks on the Yukon River within the Yukon-Charley National Preserve in Alaska.

Blocks Agency Appeal of Grazing on Public Lands [Section 118]: Amends administrative appeal procedures for grazing on public lands to require parties to exhaust all administrative appeals before they may file suit in Federal Court.

Blocks Judicial Review of De-listing Wolves in Wyoming/Great Lakes [Section 119]: Protects from judicial review any decision of the Secretary of the Interior to de-list wolves in Wyoming or the Great Lakes region.

Blocks NEPA Review of Livestock Movement across Public Lands [Section 120]: Provides that for FY 2012 through FY 2014 the movement of livestock across public lands shall not be subject to NEPA review.

Requires BOEMRE Oil & Gas Permit Reporting [Section 121]: Requires Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement to keep detailed records and provide quarterly reports on any oil and gas permit or plan that was not approved by the agency.

Blocks Wild Lands Secretarial Order [Section 124]: Prohibits funding for the Wild Lands Secretarial Order announced by Interior Secretary Salazar last December. Proponents of the Secretarial Order argue that the Order is a reiteration of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 requirements for BLM management of federal lands with wilderness characteristics.

Allows for Export of Alaskan Western Cedar [Section 414]: Allows Alaskan western red cedar and yellow cedar to be sold for export. Current law requires such cedar to be used domestically.

Blocks NEPA Review of Extended Grazing Permits [Section 415]: Allows grazing permits to be extended without the required NEPA review in FY 2012 through FY 2016. In prior year’s appropriations, the extension of grazing permits was only for one year.

Extension of Forest Service Stewardship Program [Section 427]: Allows the Forest Service stewardship contracting program which under current law does not expire until September 30, 2013 to be extended through September 30, 2023.

Blocks Livestock Emissions Regulation [Section 428]: Prohibits funds for the promulgation or implementation of any regulation requiring a permit for emissions resulting from the biological processes of livestock production.

Blocks Greenhouse Gas Rule on Manure Management [Section 429]: Prohibits EPA from implementing a rule requiring reporting of greenhouse gases from manure management systems.

Blocks Greenhouse Gas Rule on Stationary Sources [Section 431]: Severely limits EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. For a one-year period EPA is prohibited from proposing or promulgating regulations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources. The language also prevents civil tort or common law lawsuits during this one-year period. Furthermore the language states that any permit applied for during the one-year period shall not be federally enforceable.

Blocks Update to Mountaintop Removal Mining Rule [Section 432]: Prohibits the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) from updating the Stream Buffer Rule. This is for the benefit of companies engaged in Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Blocks Mountaintop Removal Mining Policy at Multiple Agencies [Sec. 433]: Prohibits EPA, the Corps of Engineers, and OSM from implementing or enforcing any policy or procedure contained in two specified documents on Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Blocks Coal Ash Regulation [Section 434]: Prohibits EPA from regulating Fossil Fuel Combustion Waste (coal ash) under the Solid Waste Disposal Act.

Blocks Modification of Clean Water Act [Sec. 435]: Prohibits EPA from changing or supplementing guidance or rules related to the scope of the Clean Water Act.

Blocks Clean Water Act Regulations on Cooling Water Intake Structures [Section 436]: Prohibits EPA from developing, finalizing, implementing, or enforcing rules for facilities with cooling water intake structures.

Limiting Public Appeals [Section 437]: Changes the general administrative appeal process for the Forest Service to the less rigorous one contained in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003.

Blocks Storm Water Discharge Regulations [Section 439]: Prohibits regulations or guidance that would expand the storm water discharge program under the Clean Water Act to post-construction commercial or residential properties until after the EPA administrator submits a study to the Appropriations and authorizing Committees. The study must include overall cost as well as a cost-benefit analysis for various options.

Financial Break for Big Mining Companies [Section 440]: Amends the 1993 law establishing the Hardrock Mining Claim Maintenance Fee to provide a financial break for placer claims held by an association of two or more persons.

Allows for Texas’ Cap-and-Trade System [Section 441]: Provides that the EPA shall take no action to disapprove or prevent implementation of any flexible air permitting program. This provision was for the benefit of the State of Texas.

Blocks Grazing Management of Bighorn Sheep [Section 442]: Provides that through FY 2016 no action can be taken to manage Bighorn Sheep if such action would result in a reduction in the number of livestock allowed to graze upon a parcel.

Waives Clean Air Act Requirements for Big Oil Companies [Section 443]: Amends the Clean Air Act to (1) preclude EPA from requiring offshore sources to demonstrate compliance with health-based air quality standards anywhere but in a single onshore area; (2) reduce the length of time during which exploration platforms and drill ships are considered emission sources under the CAA, thereby limiting the time when emissions would be controlled; (3) make it impossible to use the permitting program to set emission control requirements for service vessels associated with offshore sources; and (4) replace a relatively fast, inexpensive process for citizens to challenge government action with a longer, more expensive review process in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This legislation passed the House on June 22, 2011 by a vote of 253-166.

Blocks Arsenic Cancer Study & Formaldehyde Risk Assessments [Section 444]: New authorization language requiring EPA to improve its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) seeking to draw doubt to the program that highlights health implications from environmental contaminants. The language stops the release of draft or final risk assessments that are not based on improvements in IRIS based on a National Research Council assessment of formaldehyde. Further requires the National Academy of Science to review EPA’s changes to IRIS and review risk assessments undertaken by EPA. The language goes on to limit funds for any action that would lower exposure levels below or within background concentration levels in ambient air, drinking water, soil, or sediment. Report language directs EPA to take no further action to post its draft cancer assessment of inorganic arsenic until the completion of the NAS study.

Removes Protection of Grand Canyon from Uranium Mining Claims [Section 445]: Prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from implementing a land withdrawal to protect the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining claims.

Blocks Forest Service Travel Management: [Section 446]: Prohibits the Forest Service from implementing Travel Management Plans in California until completion of an assessment of unauthorized routes. It further limits the classification of certain forest roads.

Blocks EPA Opinions on Pesticides [Section 447]: Prevents the EPA from using biological opinions related to pesticides and the Endangered Species Act, with a focus on ESA-listed salmon.

Blocks Clean Air Act Regulations of Cement Industry [Section 448]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to implement Clean Air Act regulations on the manufacture of Portland cement.

Blocks EPA Enforcement of Florida Water Quality Standards [Section 452]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to implement or enforce numeric Florida Water Quality Standards even though the state receives millions in federal funds for water projects.

Blocks EPA Greenhouse Gas Standard for Automobiles [Section 453]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop or finalize a new greenhouse gas standard for automobiles after model year 2016.

Blocks Clean Air Act Regulations of Fine Particles/Soot [Section 454]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to regulate certain levels of particulate matter in the air under the Clean Air Act.

Blocks EPA Regulation of Hard Rock Mining Operations [Section 455]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop additional financial assurance requirements for hard rock mining operations.

Requires BLM Notification of Land Exchanges [Section 458]: Amends the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 to require BLM and the Forest Service to provide written notification of land exchanges to adjacent landowners.

Blocks EPA Funds to Great Lake States due to Ballast Water Requirements [Section 459]: Prohibits certain Great Lakes states from receiving any EPA funding if they have adopted ballast water requirements that are more stringent than Coast Guard requirements. The Coast Guard believes this will block at least four Great Lake States from receiving any EPA funds.

Blocks EPA Guidelines on Misleading Pesticide Labels [Section 460]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to finalize guidelines on misleading information provided on pesticide labels.

Blocks Fictitious EPA Action on Ammonia Emissions[Section 461]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop or implement regulations related to ammonia emissions under the secondary standard for NOx and SOx.   EPA has already stated that it has no intention of doing so.

Blocks Clean Air Rules for Power Plants and Requires a Study That Ignores Public Health Benefit of the Clean Air Act [Section 462]: Directs the EPA to do a cumulative assessment of the impacts of EPA regulations, and prohibits funding for the “Utility MACT” and “Transport” rules.

Blocks Permit Requirements for Pesticide Discharge in Waterways [Title V]: Amends the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Clean Water Act to eliminate requirements for chemical companies and agriculture to obtain permits for pesticides entering waterways.

• From the Democratic minority of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations

We will not fall magically into a rising tide of job creation, just by depriving ourselves of services and privileges we have built into our way of life and on which our prosperity depends. And we will not create jobs by privileging those industries that are doing the least to innovate. Innovation is the American way; it is what the nation has always struggled to accomplish, and it must be the cornerstone of a new job-creation boom.

It may be that moments of grave economic pressure put grave strain on a culture’s ability to give voice to and to share a common understanding of core values. It may be that after the financial collapse that struck in 2007 and 2008, the US is facing a crisis of conscience and a struggle to regain its identity. We need to remember that we can take the reins of the 21st century economic landscape, and build the economy of tomorrow.

We could look at the crisis and its aftermath and say, ‘we need some tough love to get us back on track’, and we would probably be right. But we can’t use that sentiment, that truism, to justify bad policy choices or to seek comfort in the idea of a swift break with good social services being better than a slow recovery. The stakes are too high, and the work of building a 21st century world-leading economy requires more vision than that.

It’s not always healthy to divide the world into then and now, before and after, but we can say that many of the old comforts of boundless American resources and economic prosperity are no more; we need to make a future from what we have, and the best resource we have is the ability to invent new paradigms and erect the infrastructure to put them into practice.

One very important clarification must first be made, however, before we can examine with any degree of seriousness how innovation will help to restore our economy to vigorous and viable health: narrowly focused innovations carried out by cartels of privilege to maximize their hold on the marketplace are not true innovations, but mere reiterations of the primitive practice of concentrating wealth to build feudal spheres of influence.

In a 21st century democracy, innovation has to work to the genuine benefit of the democratic landscape of ideas and interests, to the benefit of free individuals seeking to optimize their experience of democratic freedom. Economic innovation that liberates capital flows and actually expands opportunity for ordinary people is of paramount importance in this recovery.

Another way to say this would be to specify that we cannot accept simply “more of the same”, along with the vague promise that eventually it will benefit the hundreds of millions of citizens who are not millionaires or billionaires. We need to demand genuine improvements, in policy and in practice, that restore decentralized economic vigor to our society.

And we have genuine technological innovations that bring with them this very important combination of decentralized capital flows and innovation of business models and economic assumptions. We stand now at the brink of a new industrial revolution, for the information age: the building of a green economy sustainable in terms of its relationship with the natural environment, but also in its use of resources, and its generation of prosperity.

The transition to a smart-grid, clean-energy-based economy entails decentralizing the control of powerful energy cartels over the resources that give life to our society and to its markets. It entails the vital correction of distorted price signals, which presently conceal costs and burden us with wasteful spending. Clean energy will be free of the vast negative externalities that plague our economic system, invite volatility and hamper recovery.

In a society that seeks to be truly democratic, the marketplace for enterprise must continue to innovate in ways that improve the circumstance and opportunity of all members of the society. To stagnate in terms of how intelligently we do things is to withdraw from the mission of a democracy, which is to continually expand the degree of human dignity each citizen can demand and experience without peril.

At the present time, in the United States, we face a choice between major forces that favor the economic status quo, with its massive and accelerating wealth divide, and the power of a new paradigm, which will require the participation of more people, at a higher level of responsibility and education, justly rewarded by a higher standard of living.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the President’s long-term budget reform, aimed at “winning the future” are sound beginnings, but cautious in comparison to what could be accomplished with a more explicit and committed push for building a green economy.

We need deep reforms to our economic and public policy landscape, but that does not mean we need to gut basic social services in favor of still more unaffordable tax cuts for the superrich. There is no economic theory that can support that policy, and there is no historical evidence of any kind that it would work or has worked, to create jobs.

Instead, we need to evaluate the actual social and economic value of spending (including tax cuts). What we have seen comprehensively, since the Bush tax cuts of 2001, is that when the “supply side”, the superrich and the business sector, are given massive tax cuts for no particular reason, they are not motivated to invest that money in job creation, but rather to hide it away in high-end investment strategies that avoid the volatility of enterprise altogether.

When the ARRA was passed, this began to change, because new tax breaks were targeted toward productive entrepreneurial activities, and there was no guarantee the Bush tax breaks would be extended. Job creation boomed and continued until 2011. But in December 2010, the Bush tax cuts were extended, even for the wealthiest of the wealthy, and the clear outcome has been a month-by-month slowing of overall job creation.

Once again, the history, and the economic logic, is clear: when you give would-be investors in job creation free cash, so that they don’t need enterprise to make them their extra cash, they slow down their job-creation activity. We need policies that will motivate wealth to flow toward new jobs, sustainable jobs, the kind of employment that doesn’t evaporate when investors suddenly find what they consider a sure thing.

So, we need to build a green economy:

• we need to build the infrastructure that will carry clean, renewable energy to all points of consumption;
• we need to retrain industrial workers to produce the technology that will produce clean, renewable energy;
• we need to employ millions of people to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure, install the production capacity and manage our rapid advance toward comprehensive energy efficiency;
• we need to liberate major capital flows to foster this level of technological and commercial innovation…

Some relatively subtle policy shifts can achieve this, but first of all is the standard that we will not continue to prop up, through subsidies, negative externalities or unfair pricing, industries and entities that refuse to be part of this innovation dynamic, this transition to a sustainable economy. Putting a price on carbon emissions will allow us to then motivate the flow of capital away from dirty, risky, expensive fossil fuels, reduce the negative externalities that plague our energy economy, and build the world-first true clean energy economy.

Doing so is a national imperative, because getting beyond combustible fuels is the destination for large-scale energy production. Whoever gets there first will be the world leader in the global economy of the 21st century. To create jobs, we need to innovate, not reward the least imaginative and least cooperative of our entrenched powers-that-be.

TheHotSpring.net :: The rupture of a pipeline in Montana has caused at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil to spill into the pristine Yellowstone River, raising concerns about the tar sands pipeline planned to pass through the most important fossil aquifer in North America. The spill is precisely the kind of irreversible and unnecessary environmental disaster conservationists, farmers, energy reformers and local activists across the Great Plains seek to prevent.

The initial reports cited Exxon-Mobil spokespeople explaining that only a few hundred barrels of oil had been released into the river, and that the multinational was bringing in top cleanup experts from across the nation to do the most advanced cleanup work possible. But yesterday the news came that the spill had in fact released at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River, threatening pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, and human health, across several states.

Exxon-Mobil now says its expert cleanup effort is being hampered by Mother Nature. The takeaway seems to be that, more than twenty years after the catastrophic Exxon-Valdez spill, the oil giant has used its routine megaprofits to produce no viable cleanup strategy. It also appears there was insufficient maintenance to an insufficiently constructed pipeline, and a near total disregard for the potential impact on the natural and human environment.

The scale of the disaster was revealed when the multinational’s false reports were shown to be false by huge amounts of oil washing up on farmed land and spilling over the banks of the rising river. Critics say Exxon-Mobil’s complaints that rising waters are responsible for hampering the cleanup effort reflect the company’s frustration with how that same phenomenon revealed it had lied to the press and, presumably, to authorities, about the scale of the spill.

The material composition of the nation’s energy markets has a lot to do with this kind of crisis. Unreasoned overreliance on carbon-based combustible fuels continues even now, in the second decade of the 21st century, to incentivize irresponsible practices that threaten other natural resources, as well as animal life, arable land, aquifers and human health.

Hydrocarbon fuels currently comprise such a significant segment of the overall energy landscape, they are clearly built into our energy future, to some extent, but their current dominance does not reflect their viability as resources that produce optimum benefit to our society or our economy. The Yellowstone spill is just the latest in a seemingly unending chain of events that demonstrate the very serious dangers inherent in depending on fossil fuels as the baseload (or “go to”) energy resource.

The combustion-based energy extraction model goes back to the days when fire was first discovered and harnessed. It has served to help human civilization achieve great advances and humanize the planet, both in terms of resource-use and the expression of ideas. But that does not mean it does not bring with it the drawbacks of a primitive technological paradigm.

The amount of waste built into the combustible fuels model of energy extraction is startling. Only 2% of the energy from burning coal reaches the lightbulb in your home. The other 98% is lost, mostly in the form of uncontained heat. But the risk of uncontrolled spills, into pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, groundwater and the food production process, is worst with oil.

The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, over several months in 2010, showed that across the entire oil industry, there is still a glaring lack of advanced strategy for doing immediate, effective and total cleanup. The Yellowstone spill appears to show that even on a much smaller scale, that lack of understanding and know-how plagues the industry and threatens the natural and human environment.

We don’t, in fact, have to rely on combustible fuels anymore, as the state of the art in clean renewable resources, like wind and solar, is now sufficient to extract enough energy to power the US economy. All that we are lacking is the state of the art energy infrastructure required to harness clean renewable energy on that scale.

That the nation is undergoing a prolonged job-creation slowdown is just one hint that the time is right for a major investment in new state of the art energy infrastructure. The emerging race with China for the global clean energy future (China is now investing an estimated $600 billion in developing, producing and acquiring advanced clean energy technology) is another.

But it is the massive externalized costs (costs passed on by industry to taxpayers and consumers) that pose an immediate and continuing threat to the economic wellbeing of the nation. The externalized costs of oil include not only the massive costs of even small spills, which are far more frequent and numerous than is widely reported, but also the impact of pollution on human health, the impact of heat-trapping emissions on the stability of climate bands on which all human civilization depends.

Wind and solar energy have no cleanup costs, no hidden human health costs, no climate-band dislocation costs, no long-term costs associated with burning and wasting the resource itself, no world-record military spending costs, and need pose no risk whatsoever to groundwater or the human food supply.

The Yellowstone spill has to be a signal to the American people, the United States Congress and to markets, that the time has come to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. The way to phase out that reliance is to incentivize a shift to the construction of state of the art smart grid infrastructure and the proliferation of technologies to harness clean, renewable energy from the environment.

As of this writing, Exxon-Mobil now says the scale of the spill could be worse than has so far been reported, but has not yet released new numbers, beyond the latest estimate of 42,000. It appears the pattern of reporting is following the customary pattern for such spills, where the company involved starts with severe underreporting and little by little increases the estimates until an eventual admission of massive, catastrophic levels of contamination of the environment.

TheHotSpring.net :: Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels. I am proud to be a member of the organization, and one who is inspired by the passion of its volunteers and fortunate to count so many good friends among its partners.

This past week, the organization took its campaign to Capitol Hill, bringing 85 volunteers to 140 office visits in the United States Congress —both houses, both parties— along with the State Department, the Department of Energy and the World Bank. The project is more than a response to fallout from excess atmospheric carbon dioxide; the CCL project involves connecting citizens with decision-makers on Capitol Hill, to take ideology out of the energy debate, and fashion policy more democratically.

CCL proposes addressing the carbon crisis in a new and different way, which in fact avoids the pitfalls of more complex and unwieldy past attempts at reducing overall emissions: the proposed Carbon Fee and Dividend Act of 2011 would put a fee on carbon-emitting fuels at the source, then deliver 100% of that money directly to American families and households.

The plan avoids the need to create burdensome new regulatory infrastructure, does not deliver any new revenue to the federal government, and turns the power to forge a brighter, more economically efficient energy future back over to the American people, the marketplace. By unmasking the massive externalized costs (not paid by industry) of fossil fuel dependency, but covering consumers so the transition is not traumatic, the fee and dividend proposal allows the virtues of a genuine market to operate.

The CCL mission is guided by the principle that when people remain open to one another, to differences of opinion and to opposing views, they can fashion a dialogue based on common vocabulary and put aside ideological biases. This, then, should allow for intelligent people, working to serve their nation in the most forthright and meaningful way possible, to work together to craft practical solutions to practical problems.

Climate destabilization has been turned into an intensely partisan issue, in which ideological assumptions and partisan strategy trump cooperative civics and negotiated problem solving. This is bad for democracy and bad for the human environment, in which impacts from inaction are mounting, and the economic fallout looks to be accelerating, certainly beyond the current window of opportunity to act.

The challenge of the political moment is to find a way around the intense partisan divide, and that is no small task.

On Capitol Hill, there is frustration on both sides of the aisle with the inability of Congress to work together in a responsible way on practical issues, and much of the gridlock is due to ideological bias interfering with sound policy judgment. But the United States now faces another moment of urgency regarding climate and energy: China is racing ahead with massive investment in clean energy resources, even as it expands at record pace its use of the dirtiest form of fuel, coal.

The Chinese agenda, to take control of the global marketplace for new technologies, not by manufacturing alone, but by developing the newest, most cutting-edge technologies that will build the future economy of the world, means the United States now sees its dominance in technological innovation and research and development threatened. If we, as a nation, do not succeed in building the foundations for the global clean energy economy of the 1st century, our ability to compete internationally, and to thrive domestically, will face constant pressure.

The most advanced intelligence work of Pentagon analysts has found that sustainability and security are now intertwined and cannot be disentangled: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, the sustainability of alliances, of political borders, of nation states, of an economic model that allows us to thrive in relative peace and security, are all linked, and the emerging national strategic narrative [pdf], capable of addressing the complexity of the global environment, needs to rethink the paradigm of threat and risk, and view such challenges as opportunities to shape and influence the landscape of human civilization, for the better.

The great success of this week of CCL lobbying on Capitol Hill was that individual volunteers, the citizen-based movement as a whole, and some of those who sat in meetings with the organization, experienced breakthroughs in terms of openness and interest in dealing with this issue as one of practical problems demanding practical solutions.

It is CCL’s mission to work with members of Congress of all variety of ideological inclinations, many of whom have never been able to share a constructive conversation about climate or energy, with one another, to build a coalition based on citizen interest and a shared vocabulary for building a vibrant and resilient, cutting-edge clean energy economy, through which sustainable American prosperity and quality of life can be secured in this century.

It will be citizens who build, manifest and deliver the political will to achieve these vital goals, and success will mean the strengthening of our democracy and our economic future.

Weekly Address: “Instead of Subsidizing Yesterday’s Energy Sources, We Need to Invest in Tomorrow’s”

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Obama laid out his plans to address rising gas prices over the short and the long term. While there is no silver bullet to bring down prices right away, there are a few things we can do. This week, the Attorney General launched a task force dedicated to rooting out fraud or manipulations in the oil markets. The President called for finally ending the $4 billion in taxpayer money that the oil and gas companies receive annually. And, we need to continue safe, responsible production of oil at home. But in the long term, we need to invest in clean, renewable energy. That is why the President strongly disagrees with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address on Gas Prices
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Washington, DC

This is a time of year when people get together with family and friends to observe Passover and to celebrate Easter. It’s a chance to give thanks for our blessings and reaffirm our faith, while spending time with the people we love. We all know how important that is – especially in hard times. And that’s what a lot of people are facing these days.

Even though the economy is growing again and we’ve seen businesses adding jobs over the past year, many are still looking for work. And even if you haven’t faced a job loss, it’s still not easy out there. Your paycheck isn’t getting bigger, while the cost of everything from college for your kids to gas for your car keeps rising. That’s something on a lot of people’s minds right now, with gas prices at $4 a gallon. It’s just another burden when things were already pretty tough.

Now, whenever gas prices shoot up, like clockwork, you see politicians racing to the cameras, waving three-point plans for two dollar gas. You see people trying to grab headlines or score a few points. The truth is, there’s no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away.

But there are a few things we can do. This includes safe and responsible production of oil at home, which we are pursuing. In fact, last year, American oil production reached its highest level since 2003. On Thursday, my Attorney General also launched a task force with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain. And another step we need to take is to finally end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies we give to the oil and gas companies each year. That’s $4 billion of your money going to these companies when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop.

Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow’s. We need to invest in clean, renewable energy. In the long term, that’s the answer. That’s the key to helping families at the pump and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We can see that promise already. Thanks to an historic agreement we secured with all the major auto companies, we’re raising the fuel economy of cars and trucks in America, using hybrid technology and other advances. As a result, if you buy a new car in the next few years, the better gas mileage is going to save you about $3,000 at the pump.

But we need to do more. We need to harness the potential I’ve seen at promising start-ups and innovative clean energy companies across America. And that’s at the heart of a debate we’re having right now in Washington about the budget.

Both Democrats and Republicans believe we need to reduce the deficit. That’s where we agree. The question we’re debating is how we do it. I’ve proposed a balanced approach that cuts spending while still investing in things like education and clean energy that are so critical to creating jobs and opportunities for the middle class. It’s a simple idea: we need to live within our means while at the same time investing in our future.

That’s why I disagree so strongly with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent. Yes, we have to get rid of wasteful spending – and make no mistake, we’re going through every line of the budget scouring for savings. But we can do that without sacrificing our future. We can do that while still investing in the technologies that will create jobs and allow the United States to lead the world in new industries. That’s how we’ll not only reduce the deficit, but also lower our dependence on foreign oil, grow the economy, and leave for our children a safer planet. And that’s what our mission has to be.

Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend.

Reports from Tokyo today have authorities telling residents water is now safe for infant consumption, even as reports from Fukushima show radiation levels may have surged to 10 million times the normal level. Readings taken 30 miles out to sea have found radiation levels in seawater at 1,850 times the normal level. More nations around the Pacific Ocean are expressing concern about the handling of the disaster.

UPDATE on DATA: By this evening, TEPCo had released a revision to its earlier reports of radiation at 10 million times normal, correcting the figure to 100,000 times normal. The reading still constitutes a major, and very worrying radiation spike, and the cause of the misreading has not been isolated.

There appears to be a rising tension between Japanese government officials and the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, TEPCo. When three plant workers were reportedly exposed to highly dangerous levels of radiation, two of them hospitalized with severe radiation burns, government officials suggested the radiation may have come from a breach of the reactor core and TEPCo officials retorted that the leak could be coming from a water-pumping system.

It is unclear whether the high levels of radiation can be confirmed, as there may be, at the moment, too much danger for workers to return to the site where the 10-million-times radiation reading was taken. Officials have said they are not concerned about the seawater radiation levels, because ocean currents will “disperse” the radiation. But concern about seafood, Japan’s seafood industry, food supply and the impact on marine life, is mounting.

As reports of the spike in radiation levels went out this morning, there have been more warnings that even the initial process of containment will last for months. It is now becoming clear that the Fukushima disaster will be similar to the Chernobyl disaster in at least one respect: there will be a need for plant workers to continue going into an environment of extreme danger, for many years after the crisis is more or less brought under control, on a daily basis, to make sure the containment operation is running smoothly.

There are increasing calls for a long-term strategy, designed to roll back and contain the release of radiation, on a permanent basis, along with the permanent cool shut-down of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Critics of the crisis response have suggested government and power-company officials may be hoping to avoid that kind of long-term permanent shut-down, and that this reluctance may be hindering the planning for a comprehensive crisis resolution.

As of this writing, several questions remain unanswered:

1. What is the source of intensely radioactive water that hospitalized at least two plant workers last week?
2. Have one or more reactor cores been breached?
3. Are elevated levels of radiation in the Pacific Ocean a permanent contamination?
4. If so, of how wide an area?
5. Of what sort of marine life?
6. Is there any way to prevent radiation in seawater from entering the human food supply?
7. Has meltdown begun in one or more reactor cores?
8. Is there any way to contain radiation emanating from the spent-fuel cooling pools?
9. Will the Japanese government and TEPCo agree to permanently shut-down, secure and seal the Fukushima reactors and spent-fuel cooling pools?
10. Is there a plan in place to achieve long-term containment?

These are just the most urgent questions. There are others that must be asked, by extension. For instance: how is radiation reaching Tokyo in such levels that drinking water was considered no longer safe for infant consumption last week? Then: how can those radiation levels be considered safer now, as levels measured at the source of the radiation —the Fukushima Daiichi plant— soared?

These are difficult questions. No one could possibly envy the officials forced to deal with them, much less the workers who have to do the most dangerous work on the ground. But they are open questions, and tens of thousands of lives will likely hinge on how well and how swiftly they are answered. It is possible to answer these concerns directly, in a forthright manner, and with a scientifically viable crisis response. But it is not possible to do any of that, if authorities do not fully admit to the radical long-term gravity of what they are dealing with.

The president’s proposed budget for 2012 includes $36 billion in loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear power plants. The United States has still not solved the problem of where to securely store nuclear waste material for the time frame necessary. In Japan, two nuclear reactors appaer to be in meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The $36 billion would be far more wisely spent developing a clean energy economy based on advanced solar and wind technology.

At Fukushima Daiichi, a third reactor (#2) is now said to be at risk of meltdown, after all the cooling fluid evaporated, completely exposing the radioactive fuel rods. Two other plants —one at Tokai and one at Onagawa— are also reported to be experiencing potential system failures that could lead to the release of radiation.

The effort underway at Fukushima Daiichi, to restore nuclear security to the three failing reactors, is experimental, and there is no viable alternative, due to the massive flooding of key areas of the plant. According to the New York Times:

Experts called the injection of seawater and neutron-absorbing boron into the site’s three crippled reactors units a desperation move never attempted before in the industry. It amounted to sacrificing the reactors in an attempt to maintain the structural integrity of the reactor and its encasing concrete containment structure and prevent a potential uncontrolled major radiological release. Three other Fukushima Daiichi reactors had been shut down for planned work before Friday’s 8.9 earthquake and were not part of the crisis.

“I would describe this measure as a Hail Mary Pass but if they succeed, there is plenty of water in the ocean and if they have the capability to pump this water in the necessary volume and at the necessary rates … then they can stabilize the reactor,” said former Energy Department official Robert Alvarez, according to press accounts of his press conference Saturday.

For three decades, the United States has been prioritizing other forms of energy generation, but the nuclear energy has seen a surge in support over the last decade. The Bush administration was a major source of support for the industry, governors and states have begun to talk about the economic viability of nuclear power, and the Obama administration has allotted $36 billion in new loan guarantees for the development of new nuclear plants.

But there is still strong opposition in much of the country to siting any nuclear facilities near homes, schools and workplace environments where people spend the bulk of their time. Farmers have preferred installing their own wind turbines to supporting the construction of major nuclear plants near their land. Public health concerns are very real, and safety guidelines and environmental hazards make nuclear very expensive to develop.

We are now experiencing one of the first cost-relative inflection points in the green power revolution. In North Carolina, solar energy is now cheaper than nuclear power. A report, from the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network and two Duke University researchers, finds that:

Now the nuclear industry is pressing for more subsidies. This is inappropriate. Commercial nuclear power has been with us for more than forty years. If it is not a mature industry by now, consumers of electricity should ask whether it ever will be competitive without public subsidies. There are no projections that nuclear electricity costs will decline.

The United States needs to get serious about how such subsidies are measured. When an industry “matures” in such a way that it requires more subsidies, nor fewer, just to operate, with costs to consumers rising, instead of falling, there are better options available, and those better, safer, more cost effective options should be explored.

Nuclear power plants, like the one at Fukushima Daiichi, contain 1,000 times more radioactivity to leak than the Hiroshima bomb. Nuclear scientists estimate 1,000,000 people would be killed or injured in a major accident, were one to occur at the San Onofre plant in southern California. But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Monday compared the risk to a bridge collapse or a plane crash.

Alexander literally suggested that the scale by which the people of the United States should measure the potential risk of a catastrophic nuclear disaster should be according to their fear of a highway bridge collapse. A highway collapse could kill people, and is and would be tragic, but it would be very unlikely to kill more than a few dozen people. It would be tragic to lose those lives, but such a tragedy is not comparable in scale to death or severe long-term injury to a million people.

It is one of the most astonishing examples of pathological ignorance displayed by any public official in this country for years. It is a sign that Sen. Alexander is willing to put his allegiance to industry ahead of his service to the people and the nation he has sworn to serve. Only a very cynical and corrupt mind could dare to make such a comparison or be so willing to mock the tragedy experienced by victims of radiation fallout.

Sen. Alexander may have made some astonishingly ignorant remarks in the past, or he may not. By comparison, it hardly seems to matter now. He has gone on the record telling American citizens he would be as concerned about the grave need for nuclear security as he would be about highway construction.

It should be so far beyond the acceptable limit for politically motivated misstatements for any public servant to make a remark of the kind Sen. Alexander has seen fit to interject into the debate about nuclear power that no intelligent adult would ever make such an irresponsible and flagrantly offensive statement. But it is not.

Sen. Alexander clearly holds one of two views: either he views the American people as so hopelessly benighted that there will be no political backlash whatsoever to his manipulative and grossly negligent lie, or he actually is ignorant enough to believe what he said, that a nuclear catastrophe is no worse than a highway accident.

Either way, it would seem the people of Tennessee have some thinking to do about how they plan to replace this senator with an individual who is willing to use genuine intellect and moral conscience to serve the better interests of the people of his state.

Tennessee deserves better, and the people of the United States deserve better, than a senator so deeply in league with a private, for-profit interest that makes its living on taxpayer subsidies, that he would suggest the public should not have a serious discussion about whether it is safe to put the most dangerous scientific process known to man in our communities.

A fourth reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has now reportedly lost its cooling system and is on fire, while a third of the troubled reactors has suffered an explosion. The exclusion zone has been expanded to 19 miles, and international monitors now say the Fukushima nuclear emergency is officially the second worst nuclear disaster in history, after the Chernobyl disaster. 

United States service personnel on the USS Ronald Reagan were reportedly “exposed” to radiation in or near Japan,and the ship is being moved, despite already being 60 miles from the site. A BBC World Service report today cited American pilots that may have been exposed while flying over the site. 

There are now questions being raised about whether Japanese authorities or industry officials have been concealing information about what now appears to be the extreme gravity of the crisis. While worldwide news reports have spread the news that the Fukushima plant could easily be brought under control, the news now coming to light appears to show the crisis has been steadily worsening.

On Monday, much attention was devoted to a failed attempt to cool the failing reactors using a rush of cool sea water, a risky process that was expected to increase pressure and which some suspect could be responsible for the latest explosion. 

Japanese authorities now report radiation leakage beyond legal limits and dangerous enough to cause serious harm to human health. It is not known how much radiation has leaked, but a press conference delivered by the power company running the plant suggested that both the reactor core and the outer containment vessel were breached. 

A graphic shown on Japan’s NHK television, and repeated on CNN was used to illustrate the interior of the reactor that suffered yesterday’s massive explosion. While there had not been a specific admission by operators of a serious radiation leak, it was reported that pressure inside the containment vessel dropped and radiation levels outside the containment vessel reached levels a human being could not safely absorb over an entire year.

UPDATE, 10:01 am EDT: Major aftershocks rock Japan, with several registering more than 6.0 magnitude. The nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi has been elevated to a level 6 nuclear emergency, the only such disaster to reach that level other than Chernobyl. 

Radiation levels outside one of the reactors is now listed as 400 times the level a human being could withstand in one year. While authorities refraining from publishing information they fear could lead to panic, the math seems simple: 400 times 365 days, the radiation exposure at the Fukushima plant could be over 14,000 times acceptable daily limits.

As of 10:00 am EDT, there were reports from two US military bases near Tokyo that background radiation levels were elevated, and precautions might need to be taken to ensure there is no impact on human health.

The condition of the Fukushima plant now appears to be deteriorating. Authorities have confirmed the containment vessel inside at least one reactor was breached, and there are reports the fire at Reactor #4 is releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere. 

Ongoing questions about the transparency of the plant operators’ reports regarding the status of the disaster so far are leading to speculation that radiation has been leaking out since well before yesterday’s explosion and fire.

UPDATE, 10:44 am EDT: MSNBC is now reporting radiation levels in Tokyo are at ten times normal, and radiation levels at the Fukushima plant are now elevated enough to kill an adult man in just five hours. The new numbers are a sign of how rapidly the situation is deteriorating. 

The IAEA has reportedly imposed a no-fly zone across a 19 mile or 30 km radius around the plant. The IAEA also reported that the reactors are “safe and stable” and efforts are ongoing to prevent total meltdown. The power company has reportedly requested that the Japanese and US militarize assist by running air drops of water from helicopters. 

This last revelation suggests there is mounting desperation and that no other option seems viable on the ground, at the site of the nuclear release.

The Fukushima nuclear plant contains 5 nuclear reactors, which combine to produce the world’s largest concentrated power generation. At least one of the reactors is reported to have radiation levels 1,000 times normal inside one of its control rooms. Today, RussiaToday is reporting that white smoke seen rising from the plant may be due to an explosion. Authorities have warned that some radioactive material may have seeped out into the environment already. There is an ongoing concern that the plant may be vulnerable to meltdown, as plant operators have not been able to resume cooling of nuclear fuel.

Two nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, are now reported to be unable to cool the nuclear fuel in their cores, and radioactive materials may have seeped into the environment. The reactors reportedly suffered service interruption after the worst earthquake in Japanese history. The magnitude 8.9 quake unleashed a massive tsunami the pushed far inland at Sendai, northeast of Tokyo.

The tsunami pushed as far as six miles inland. Reports of catastrophic damage from debris pushed along by the massive force of the waves have been pouring in from Sendai. Major oil refineries were on fire throughout the day, and Japan’s ambassador to the US told CNN that six million people are without power. As of 10 pm EST, there were reports that Japanese authorities were concerned the affected nuclear reactors might not be able to resume cooling fuel and that if a remedy is not found, a nuclear meltdown could ensue.

The United States, which has 40,000 military personnel stationed in Japan, is sending ships and troops to the Miyagi Prefecture, where the worst devastation occurred, to provide aid and possibly search and rescue assistance. CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported shortly after 10 pm EST that one or more nuclear power plants in Japan have resorted to radioactive venting —the release of radioactive steam— as an alternative means of cooling the radioactive fuel, to prevent meltdown.

The Kyoto News Agency is reporting temperatures are elevated at one of the malfunctioning nuclear plants. At the other, radiation levels are reported to be eight times normal outside the plant, as much as 1,000 times normal inside a control room inside the plant. There is no direct confirmation available from inside the plants. There are reports Japan’s government is rushing to get new power sources —possibly including generators and batteries— to the plants to resume regular cooling of the nuclear fuel.

The number of people dead or missing is not known, though official reports confirm at least 357 people have been killed. While Japan is thought to be the world’s most prepared nation for dealing with earthquakes, it is not known how thoroughly the nuclear industry there was prepared to deal with the violent aftermath of a major tsunami.

Observers have expressed confidence the industry can deal with the emergency in time to prevent a catastrophic meltdown and release of radiation. Critics, however, say the industry may be little more prepared for this kind of unforeseen disaster than BP was to deal with the unstoppable gusher released by the blowout of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last year in the Gulf of Mexico.

The scale of the human tragedy in Japan is already breathtaking, and fears of a nuclear accident have sent chills through world media, world governments and the population of Japan. The power station at Fukushima is reportedly 100 times more powerful than the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, which suffered the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history, more than 20 years ago, and the two power plants combined generate the world’s largest concentrated amount of energy.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, however:

Farzad Rahnema, a Georgia Tech professor of nuclear engineering, had been reading stories that hinted at the possibility of a meltdown at the plant, which was shaken by the massive earthquake there. But he said the details he’d gleaned from those accounts, and from industry reports, suggested that a meltdown was unlikely.

There are safety and containment measures in place that were not in place at Chernobyl, according to numerous reports, and it is possible the authorities could maintain necessary cooling of nuclear materials using substitute power generation, even if the plant cannot be brought back to full power.

At present, however, the world is watching as Japan deals with its worst natural disaster in decades, facing the prospect of thousands of lives lost and the need to rebuild an entire region, while also facing the most immediate danger of nuclear disaster seen since the 1980s. The Japanese government has requested rescue and humanitarian aid assistance from the US military and it has been granted; it is not clear whether there may be high level security contacts relating to advanced nuclear containment methods.

Conservation activist Tim DeChristopher was found guilty this week of disrupting public business and causing “financial harm” to the government and to private interests, for interfering with a public land auction later found to be inappropriately staged.

DeChristopher told the crowd of supporters gathered at the courthouse that “the sharpest rock on the wildest shore can never break that ocean apart, they can never wear that ocean down, because it’s the ocean that shapes the shore.”

The following is a transcript of the speech he gave after hearing that he had been found guilty…

What the world wanted to see was how you would react. And you have reacted with joy and resolve. You’ve shown that your power will not be intimidated by any power that they have, and that’s the most important thing that’s happened here this week.

Because everything that happened inside that building tried to convince me that I was alone and that I was weak. They tried to convince me that I was like a little finger out there on my own that could easily be broken. And all of you out here were the reminder for all of us that I wasn’t just a finger all alone in there, but that I was connected to hand with many fingers that could be united together as one fist, and that that fist could not be broken by the power that they have in there.

That fist is not a symbol of violence. That fist is a symbol that we will not be mislead into thinking that we are alone. We will not be lied to and told that we are weak. We will not be divided and we will not back down. That fist is a symbol that we are connected and that we are powerful. It’s a symbol that we hold true to our vision of a healthy and just world and that we are building the self empowering movement to make it happen. All those authorities in there wanted me to think like a finger but are children are calling to us to think like a fist.

And we know that now I’ll have to go prison, we know that now that is the reality. But that’s just the job that I have to do. That’s the role that I face. Many before me have gone to jail for justice and if we are going to achieve our vision many after me will have to join me as well.

No one ever told us that this battle would be easy. No one ever told us that we wouldn’t have to make sacrifices. We knew that when we started this fight.

Every wave on the ocean that has ever risen up and refused to lay back down has been dashed on the shore, but it is the very purpose of a wave to rise up, because once it rises up above the horizon it finally has the perspective to see that it’s not just a wave, that it’s a part of a mighty ocean. And the sharpest rock on the wildest shore can never break that ocean apart, they can never wear that ocean down, because it’s the ocean that shapes the shore.

That’s what we’re starting to do here today. That’s what we’re starting to do here this week. With wave after wave after wave crashing against that shore, we shape it to our vision. Thank you all for being a part of that.

(End transcript.)

Robert Redford has written about the verdict:

Part of the statement issued this afternoon by U.S. Atty. Carlie Christensen praising the guilty verdict, alluded to DeChristopher’s actions… “disrupting open public processes and causing financial harm to the government and other individuals.” Really?

There’s something wrong with this picture. Major financial institutions in this country brought the nation’s economy to its knees yet not one person associated with the debacle is in jail. The human consequence of their actions is indescribably profound and not one person responsible for any of it went to jail. And yet the federal government prosecuted this young activist’s act of civil disobedience and he now faces jail time.

Every day, oil, gas, mining and other energy and extractive industries are indiscriminately polluting our air, land and water as the new U.S. Congress works diligently to take away the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate their actions and protect the well-being of the nation’s people. There’s something wrong with this picture.

And when you consider that weeks after DeChristopher bid on his 13 parcels, a federal judge in essence agreed with him and blocked the sale of all the parcels, DeChristopher’s prosecution becomes even more troubling. Add to that the fact that the Obama Administration’s Dept of Interior said the overall sale was improper and pulled all the parcels from auction and DeChristopher’s prosecution borders on absurd.

Redford  is only one of many prominent voices who have expressed support for DeChristopher.

More information about the trial, the legal complications of the auction itself and the protest bid by Mr. DeChristopher, as well as ways to contribute to his defense fund, can be found at www.Bidder70.org.

Oil as a combustible fuel is a 19th-century improvement on the 18th-century paradigm of burning coal to produce steam to run industrial machinery. The efficiency and portability of carbon-based fuels, in terms of the built-in energy they can store and which is released when they are burnt, has long been the driving factor in their popularity as an energy source. But new technologies are now making it possible to produce large amounts of portable energy sustainably, with none of the atmospheric damage resulting from the burning of carbon-based fuels.

In 2008, the five most profitable companies in the world were oil companies, their annual profits ranging from $20 billion to over $45 billion. No commercial entity in the history of humanity had ever made such immense profits. In 2009, two of the top 5 were banks, largely because oil companies’ profits had fallen as prices came back down to earth. In 2010, it again looks like oil companies were the most profitable businesses on the planet. They do not need subsidies to survive.

The United States government provides over $40 billion in subsidies, in the form of direct funding and tax credits, to oil companies. This is money that is designed to make it easier for those companies to provide cheap fuel to the people of the United States, something they are basically failing to do. Prices remain high, even as the companies in question ask for more subsidies and continue to rake in record profits.

FORTY. BILLION. DOLLARS.

Only 38 countries in the world have government budgets larger than $40 billion. Argentina, one of the wealthier countries in the developing world, with a population of 40.7 million people, does not spend that much on running its entire government. In fact, there are 192 nations that spend less on running their country than the United States does in free giveaways to the most profitable companies in the world.

Does this make any sense? Supporters of the oil subsidies say the oil companies are profitable, yes, but that without these subsidies, they could not be. That is, usually, the logic of providing subsidies to businesses: they provide a needed service and so we need to support them. But let’s look more closely at this idea, with respect to oil…

What if the removal of those subsidies would mean the oil industry is not profitable? That would seem to suggest the entire logic of the industry —that it’s the cheapest, best way to produce energy— is a lie. Even if we are not concerned with that, we might argue that we could use just enough in subsidies to make oil profitable, maybe even very profitable, without having to donate tens of billions of dollars to making companies that would not know how to make a profit without getting free taxpayer money the most profitable in history.

In short:

• The $40 billion in subsidies are immensely wasteful
• 192 nations spend less running their countries than the US does funding big oil
• The industry should, by now, be mature enough to make its own money
• If it is not, there is no way to justify the record profits it takes in

If fiscal conservatives in the United States are serious about cutting the federal budget in ways that will be constructive for building long-term prosperity and eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, it seems clear that giving enough money to oil companies to fund the world’s 39th largest government is not something they should be doing.

We could save whole agencies, avoid cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, avoid cuts to home heating fuel cost assistance to underprivileged seniors, avoid depriving the infant children of low-income mothers of baby formula, avoid eliminating funding for public broadcasting (that’s media that belongs to you and me, not to multinational corporations).

We could make sure veterans’ benefits are not cut, as is proposed in the House Republicans’ “cut to grow” budget proposal. We could actually support the hard work of innovation being done by small business start-ups and entrepreneurs, instead of just telling them to fend for themselves. We could assist those entrepreneurs by making sure they have access to the best quality of publicly funded research, so they are not boxed out of the marketplace by ultra-wealthy multinationals with an interest in slowing the pace of progress.

We could expand funding for student loan programs, transportation infrastructure and the development of the much-needed renewable energy sector and smart grid, and we could do all of this without spending the $40 billion handed out to oil companies.

Where is the ideology in opposing these subsidies? What principle of American conservatism says the most profitable multinational corporations in the history of humanity should have the largest subsidies as well, even as the government plans to systematically roll back services and benefits people across the country have worked for and rely on?

Is it conservative to tell senior citizens they don’t need to have medicine, because ExxonMobil wants to add a few billion dollars more to its bloated profit statement? Is it conservative to tell working mothers they need to live in homeless shelters and spend only minutes a day with their kids, because BP wants taxpayers to fund its operations in the Gulf of Mexico?

Is it conservative to tell veterans who have put their lives at risk and possibly suffered serious wounds that they need to give up some of their benefits, or be barred from having sustained treatment for brain injury or PTSD, because the US government needs to ensure that oil companies don’t have to work too hard, diversify or innovate, to meet their quarterly profit projections?

Does any of this make any sense? Will any principled conservative come forward to explain why the United States government needs to devote $40 billion to subsidies for an outdated technology, while the recipients of those subsidies refuse to participate in building a more prosperous, more sustainable future for all Americans?

There’s one thing no one supporting the oil subsidies seems willing to discuss openly, which is that the reduction in those subsidies doesn’t have to deprive Americans of access to affordable energy: the same subsidies can be redirected to alternative energy technologies, and the same companies could participate in that contest for major innovation, and actually earn the subsidies, if they produce the best alternatives.

We need a 21st-century energy subsidy model, which considers the need to innovate, to move away from combustible fuels altogether, to achieve alternatives that, like wind and solar, allow us to dramatically increase the productive potential of the technology, as the technology advances, and leave static energy sources like fossil fuels in the past.

This is the common-sense thing to do. And we should not waste any more money trying to buy back an inefficient past from companies that will not cooperate in building the future. We are better than that. The hard working people of the United States deserve better.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting fuel sources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy and the environment.

For some people in the political arena, it would appear to make more sense to continue to support carbon-based fuels as the primary resource for energy production, for a number of practical reasons, each of which can be refuted on practical grounds: 1) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels donate to one’s campaign; 2) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels “create jobs”; 3) because burning things to release energy is easier to understand than more advanced technologies.

There are real ideologically-rooted reasons why the passions can run so deep on either side: for environmentalists, it is morally unconscionable that we continue burning dirty fuels and eroding the natural systems on which all life depends, no matter the reasons; for the pro-petroleum segment of the political spectrum, there are patriotic roots, hearkening back to two world wars and the Cold War, with oil seen as a guarantor of security.

Oil is no longer that, and passions aside, thinking people have to acknowledge that the root of those passions is really practical and not ideological anyway. It makes practical sense to be good stewards of the environment on which we depend for everything that we have, and it was a practical consideration that linked industrial production and national security to the availability of carbon-based fuels.

But now, national security has become so closely linked to energy supply issues that we can no longer rely —again, in strictly practical terms— on a commodity as volatile, finite and problematic as petroleum. The costs to society are too great, whether we are talking about war-fighting —and war-funding, for that matter—, the loss of freedom in terms of shaping our foreign policy, or our economic choices, costs in terms of human health or the destabilization of major climate systems.

And coal, while abundant in North America, is so dirty a resource that the environmental fallout alone makes it less than reasonable as a foundational resource for long-term future planning. There may come a time when carbon itself is a resource, required for its chemical properties, but not necessarily as useful as we now pretend, as a combustible fuel. Places where the coal industry has its roots may have to change focus or find technologically cutting-edge ways to justify the exploration for coal.

The reasons for this are hard to understand, if one starts from the assumption that there is something traditional or sacredly local or productive about coal. But if we step back and consider the real adaptability of human populations, we find that no community really needs the coal industry, having no chance of survival or prosperity in its absence, in the way the coal industry lobby pretends.

Communities are made up of human beings and are as adaptable as those human beings’ minds, hearts and relationships. The relationship to powerful coal interests is not always a happy one, and this alone can open doors for the development of resources that are more sustainable, more local-friendly, and respectful of future human need in ways that older technologies simply cannot be.

Even the coal industry itself could innovate, diversify, and find ways to turn its operations into major sources of clean renewable energy. At least three renewable resources come to mind: geothermal energy production, wind and solar. Mining companies in many cases own or lease land for which they have not yet devised a marketable use or long ago abandoned, and these can be converted to solar farms, wind farms or geothermal fields.

While international mining companies are outsourcing administrative jobs and moving to more “cost effective” mining sites overseas, some are beginning to use disused mining sites in the US to build part of the new clean-energy infrastructure. Across the southwest, such projects are already in development or being implemented. According to the Arizona Republic:

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency are studying the potential to put renewable-energy projects on mines, landfills and other disturbed lands.

Mines can help avoid many of the expenses solar plants face on pristine desert, experts said, such as environmental rules that require relocating saguaros and other protected plants.

There is no reason why environmentalists seeking to promote clean energy and communities steeped in a long tradition of coal mining or oil drilling cannot come together, free of ideological constraints, to craft the solutions that will make the US a global leader in efficient, profitable, mass-produced clean energy. The ideology that claims this issue is one of ideology is simply a rhetorical framework that serves the interests of the most stagnant and unimaginative coal and oil interests.

Major oil producers could easily invest billions in renewable R&D and become global pioneers in the rush to achieve a fully self-sustaining clean-energy economy. Their resistance is perhaps more linked to a short-sighted ideological prejudice than to a lack of will to be part of the future, but they do not have any real ideological framework to back up their position, and the logic that favors a transition to renewables does not require one.

From a strictly economic standpoint, it does not make sense to continue being near totally reliant upon a way of doing business that carries the wildly exorbitant potential costs of an Ixtoc, anExxon Valdez, Texaco in Ecuador, or a Deepwater Horizon disaster. If we want to be intelligent about how we achieve “energy independence”, we have to first assess and confront the real costs of doing business the way big oil does business.

It’s not a matter of “a tax on energy” or “a tax on carbon”, it’s a matter of making sure the responsible parties pay their share. Subsidies on an unprecedented scale, have made the oil business look and feel profitable in ways that it actually is not, when the health of the wider economy is considered. Were those wider costs built into the business itself, big oil would not be nearly as attractive an investment as it seemed to be until the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in April.

While an “ideology” that values the natural environment over the right of the oil industry to make profits may rejoice at the opportunity to use such a failure as BP has experienced in the Gulf of Mexico to make the case against oil, that political motive does not make it any less true that BP had no responsible or credible action plan for dealing with an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude, despite deliberately doing everything necessary —reportedly cutting corners and ordering the suppression of good information— to bring about the catastrophe.

That such risks can be avoided with a transition to clean, renewable energy resources that do not require combustion and do not require oil or coal to achieve the efficiency gains they aim to achieve, is just as honestly not a matter of ideology. It’s the way it is. And science is now demonstrating that we can produce more than enough electricity, nationally, to power our entire domestic energy consumption through wind and solar alone, if we build the infrastructure.

At the point where the renewable energy infrastructure is pervasive and functional enough to outpace carbon-based fuels in total power generation capacity, there will be no question, practically speaking, whether or not renewables are a more effective method of promoting long-term economic health and prosperity. Where is the ideology inherent in planning for such a virtuous moment of future achievement?

• Discussions on Zero-combustion Energy Research
• Economic Report: Building a Green Economy
• Futurismo Verde: debate sobre un futuro energético limpio y renovable

The following is an official White House transcript of Pres. Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, as prepared for delivery in the well of the House of Representatives, 25 January 2011:

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Tonight I want to begin by congratulating the men and women of the 112th Congress, as well as your new Speaker, John Boehner. And as we mark this occasion, we are also mindful of the empty chair in this Chamber, and pray for the health of our colleague — and our friend — Gabby Giffords.

It’s no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for our beliefs. And that’s a good thing. That’s what a robust democracy demands. That’s what helps set us apart as a nation.

But there’s a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political preference.

We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.

That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation.

Now, by itself, this simple recognition won’t usher in a new era of cooperation. What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

I believe we can. I believe we must. That’s what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they’ve determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all — for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

At stake right now is not who wins the next election — after all, we just had an election. At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It’s whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded. It’s whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world.

We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.

But we have never measured progress by these yardsticks alone. We measure progress by the success of our people. By the jobs they can find and the quality of life those jobs offer. By the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children.

That’s the project the American people want us to work on. Together.

We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans’ paychecks are a little bigger today. Every business can write off the full cost of the new investments they make this year. These steps, taken by Democrats and Republicans, will grow the economy and add to the more than one million private sector jobs created last year.

But we have more work to do. The steps we’ve taken over the last two years may have broken the back of this recession — but to win the future, we’ll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.

Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn’t always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you’d have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion. Maybe you’d even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company.

That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets. I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear — proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game.

They’re right. The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products wherever there’s an internet connection.

Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.

So yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember — for all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on Earth.

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea — the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That is why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here. It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement.” Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.

Now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. And tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there.

The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.

None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn’t know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do — what America does better than anyone — is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living.

Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.

Just think of all the good jobs — from manufacturing to retail — that have come from those breakthroughs.

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology — an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.

Already, we are seeing the promise of renewable energy. Robert and Gary Allen are brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard.

Today, with the help of a government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles that are being sold all across the country. In Robert’s words, “We reinvented ourselves.”

That’s what Americans have done for over two hundred years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we’ve begun to reinvent our energy policy. We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo Projects of our time.

At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.

Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all — and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.

Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success. But if we want to win the future — if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas — then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.

Think about it. Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the question is whether all of us — as citizens, and as parents — are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.

That responsibility begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and communities. It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair; that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline.

Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test. That’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.”

Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation. For less than one percent of what we spend on education each year, it has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning. These standards were developed, not by Washington, but by Republican and Democratic governors throughout the country. And Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that is more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids.

You see, we know what’s possible for our children when reform isn’t just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.

Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver. Three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado; located on turf between two rival gangs. But last May, 97% of the seniors received their diploma. Most will be the first in their family to go to college. And after the first year of the school’s transformation, the principal who made it possible wiped away tears when a student said “Thank you, Mrs. Waters, for showing … that we are smart and we can make it.”

Let’s also remember that after parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South Korea, teachers are known as “nation builders.” Here in America, it’s time we treated the people who educate our children with the same level of respect. We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones. And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

In fact, to every young person listening tonight who’s contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child — become a teacher. Your country needs you.

Of course, the education race doesn’t end with a high school diploma. To compete, higher education must be within reach of every American. That’s why we’ve ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went to banks, and used the savings to make college affordable for millions of students. And this year, I ask Congress to go further, and make permanent our tuition tax credit — worth $10,000 for four years of college.

Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today’s fast-changing economy, we are also revitalizing America’s community colleges. Last month, I saw the promise of these schools at Forsyth Tech in North Carolina. Many of the students there used to work in the surrounding factories that have since left town. One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.”

If we take these steps — if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they’re born until the last job they take — we will reach the goal I set two years ago: by the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.

Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration. I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows. I know that debate will be difficult and take time. But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who can staff our research labs, start new businesses, and further enrich this nation.

The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information — from high-speed rail to high-speed internet.

Our infrastructure used to be the best — but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.”

We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.

Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I’m proposing that we redouble these efforts.

We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what’s best for the economy, not politicians.

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying — without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.

Within the next five years, we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans. This isn’t just about a faster internet and fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.

All these investments — in innovation, education, and infrastructure — will make America a better place to do business and create jobs. But to help our companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success.

Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change.

So tonight, I’m asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years — without adding to our deficit.

To help businesses sell more products abroad, we set a goal of doubling our exports by 2014 — because the more we export, the more jobs we create at home. Already, our exports are up. Recently, we signed agreements with India and China that will support more than 250,000 jobs in the United States. And last month, we finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at least 70,000 American jobs. This agreement has unprecedented support from business and labor; Democrats and Republicans, and I ask this Congress to pass it as soon as possible.

Before I took office, I made it clear that we would enforce our trade agreements, and that I would only sign deals that keep faith with American workers, and promote American jobs. That’s what we did with Korea, and that’s what I intend to do as we pursue agreements with Panama and Colombia, and continue our Asia Pacific and global trade talks.

To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them. But I will not hesitate to create or enforce commonsense safeguards to protect the American people. That’s what we’ve done in this country for more than a century. It’s why our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe. It’s why we have speed limits and child labor laws. It’s why last year, we put in place consumer protections against hidden fees and penalties by credit card companies, and new rules to prevent another financial crisis. And it’s why we passed reform that finally prevents the health insurance industry from exploiting patients.

Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses.

What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition. I’m not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that his treatment might not be covered. I’m not willing to tell Jim Houser, a small business owner from Oregon, that he has to go back to paying $5,000 more to cover his employees. As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their parents’ coverage. So instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward.

Now, the final step — a critical step — in winning the future is to make sure we aren’t buried under a mountain of debt.

We are living with a legacy of deficit-spending that began almost a decade ago. And in the wake of the financial crisis, some of that was necessary to keep credit flowing, save jobs, and put money in people’s pockets.

But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.

So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without.

I recognize that some in this Chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. And let’s make sure what we’re cutting is really excess weight. Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact.

Now, most of the cuts and savings I’ve proposed only address annual domestic spending, which represents a little more than 12% of our budget. To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough. It won’t.

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it — in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.

This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs, which is part of why nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. Still, I’m willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year: medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.

To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break.

It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

So now is the time to act. Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress — Democrats and Republicans — to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future.

Let me take this one step further. We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and efficient. We cannot win the future with a government of the past.

We live and do business in the information age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black and white TV. There are twelve different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different entities that deal with housing policy. Then there’s my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.

Now, we have made great strides over the last two years in using technology and getting rid of waste. Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse. We’re selling acres of federal office space that hasn’t been used in years, and we will cut through red tape to get rid of more. But we need to think bigger. In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America. I will submit that proposal to Congress for a vote — and we will push to get it passed.

In the coming year, we will also work to rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you will be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history. Because you deserve to know when your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, I ask Congress to do what the White House has already done: put that information online. And because the American people deserve to know that special interests aren’t larding up legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it.

A 21st century government that’s open and competent. A government that lives within its means. An economy that’s driven by new skills and ideas. Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation. It will also require us to approach that world with a new level of engagement in our foreign affairs.

Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders, so can new threats and new challenges. No single wall separates East and West; no one rival superpower is aligned against us.

And so we must defeat determined enemies wherever they are, and build coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom, justice, and dignity. And because we have begun this work, tonight we can say that American leadership has been renewed and America’s standing has been restored.

Look to Iraq, where nearly 100,000 of our brave men and women have left with their heads held high; where American combat patrols have ended; violence has come down; and a new government has been formed. This year, our civilians will forge a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people, while we finish the job of bringing our troops out of Iraq. America’s commitment has been kept; the Iraq War is coming to an end.

Of course, as we speak, al Qaeda and their affiliates continue to plan attacks against us. Thanks to our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, we are disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies. And as extremists try to inspire acts of violence within our borders, we are responding with the strength of our communities, with respect for the rule of law, and with the conviction that American Muslims are a part of our American family.

We have also taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies abroad. In Afghanistan, our troops have taken Taliban strongholds and trained Afghan Security Forces. Our purpose is clear — by preventing the Taliban from reestablishing a stranglehold over the Afghan people, we will deny al Qaeda the safe-haven that served as a launching pad for 9/11.

Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we will work with nearly 50 countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And this July, we will begin to bring our troops home.

In Pakistan, al Qaeda’s leadership is under more pressure than at any point since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield. Their safe-havens are shrinking. And we have sent a message from the Afghan border to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.

American leadership can also be seen in the effort to secure the worst weapons of war. Because Republicans and Democrats approved the New START Treaty, far fewer nuclear weapons and launchers will be deployed. Because we rallied the world, nuclear materials are being locked down on every continent so they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before. And on the Korean peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.

This is just a part of how we are shaping a world that favors peace and prosperity. With our European allies, we revitalized NATO, and increased our cooperation on everything from counter-terrorism to missile defense. We have reset our relationship with Russia, strengthened Asian alliances, and built new partnerships with nations like India. This March, I will travel to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador to forge new alliances for progress in the Americas. Around the globe, we are standing with those who take responsibility — helping farmers grow more food; supporting doctors who care for the sick; and combating the corruption that can rot a society and rob people of opportunity.

Recent events have shown us that what sets us apart must not just be our power — it must be the purpose behind it. In South Sudan — with our assistance — the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war. Thousands lined up before dawn. People danced in the streets. One man who lost four of his brothers at war summed up the scene around him: “This was a battlefield for most of my life. Now we want to be free.”

We saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.

We must never forget that the things we’ve struggled for, and fought for, live in the hearts of people everywhere. And we must always remember that the Americans who have borne the greatest burden in this struggle are the men and women who serve our country.

Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they have served us — by giving them the equipment they need; by providing them with the care and benefits they have earned; and by enlisting our veterans in the great task of building our own nation.

Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

We should have no illusions about the work ahead of us. Reforming our schools; changing the way we use energy; reducing our deficit — none of this is easy. All of it will take time. And it will be harder because we will argue about everything. The cost. The details. The letter of every law.

Of course, some countries don’t have this problem. If the central government wants a railroad, they get a railroad — no matter how many homes are bulldozed. If they don’t want a bad story in the newspaper, it doesn’t get written.

And yet, as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth.

We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions, but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you come from.

That dream is why I can stand here before you tonight. That dream is why a working class kid from Scranton can stand behind me. That dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father’s Cincinnati bar can preside as Speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth.

That dream — that American Dream — is what drove the Allen Brothers to reinvent their roofing company for a new era. It’s what drove those students at Forsyth Tech to learn a new skill and work towards the future. And that dream is the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher.

Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania that specializes in a new kind of drilling technology. One day last summer, he saw the news that halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew how to save them.

But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.

Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000 foot hole into the ground, working three or four days at a time with no sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He had already gone home, back to work on his next project.

Later, one of his employees said of the rescue, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.”

We do big things.

From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That’s how we win the future.

We are a nation that says, “I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I’m not sure how we’ll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we’ll get there. I know we will.”

We do big things.

The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it is because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong.

Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Obama’s second State of the Union address called for investment in education and infrastructure, tax-code reform and an historic investment to achieve 80% clean energy by 2035

One seat was left vacant, in honor of Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who is currently recovering from a severe gunshot wound to the head, suffered during an assassination attempt that killed 6 people. Pres. Obama opened his remarks with a tribute to the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, a unifying gesture that won loud applause from the hall. Obama then struck a somber tone and asked everyone to consider the lessons of the tragedy in Tucson.

“Tucson reminded us,” he intoned “that no matter who we are or where we came from, each of us is a part of something greater, something more consequential… we are part of the American family… we are still bound together as one people, and we share common hopes and common dreams…” This idea would strike the tone of his address, seeking pragmatic common ground and a commitment to building a stronger future in which Americans can thrive together in a free and democratic society.

Obama noted the partisan divide and the night’s unique gesture of civility —Republicans and Democrats sitting side-by-side—, observing it was “not whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow”, that will determine if the country moves forward into a new era of prosperity, which won another standing ovation including every member of both parties.

He added that “We will move forward together, or not at all, for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.” He pledged to focus on ”whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else… whether hard work is rewarded”.

“We are poised for progress”, said Obama, then naming several key economic indicators, and suggested that we measure our progress not by those data alone, but by the wellbeing “of our people”, the ability of innovators and hard working people to build a better future.

“Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans’ paychecks are a little bigger”, he said, praising Democrats and Republicans for coming together to make that happen. He suggested this is the kind of cooperation and constructive compromise that is needed going forward, but later specified that Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy should be allowed to expire in 2012.

“To win the future,” he said, “we’ll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.” He explained that once upon a time, communities across the country offered long-term economic stability and opportunity, but that the rules have changed after decades of rapid-fire technological innovation, and it was the work of government, of educators and of private enterprise to build a nation that can compete and prosper in that global marketplace.

He warned of those challenges, specifically: “Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer, so yes, things have changed.” But he added that ”America still has the largest, most prosperous economy” and spoke of how no other nation had the dynamism or vast potential to capitalize on this century so demanding of innovation.

He praised the unique nature of America’s approach to education —the aim of cultivating an informed and active electorate— noting: “We are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea, the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny… that’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like ‘What do you think of that idea?’, ‘What would you do to change the world?’”

He reiterated what seemed to be the refrain of his address, proclaiming that “The future is ours to win.” He then declared that ”We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build” the rest of the world and detailed key areas of reform where government can help make that happen.

“We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government; that’s how we’ll win the future… and tonight, I’d like to talk about how we get there…” He said the very first step is to invest in innovation, that the government needs to believe in and defend the imagination and the ingenuity of the American people, adding that “innovation doesn’t just change our lives; it is how we make our living.”

“Throughout our history,” he said, “our government has provided cutting edge innovators and inventors with the resources they need”. He praised the virtues of government action to support innovators and entrepreneurs, to spur major innovations and usher in a period of widespread economic prosperity. He spoke of the shock experienced in the United States when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit.

“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” he declared, as he sought to inspire a Kennedy era commitment to reforming and innovating across the economy. He said his forthcoming budget will commit new resources and new incentives to spurring major new innovations in ”biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology”.

“We’re not just handing out money,” he noted, “we’re issuing a challenge… we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.” The US “can become the first nation to have a million electric cars on the road, and said he would push to ”eliminate the billions of dollars in subsidies we currently give to oil companies”. Echoing New Jersey’s Sen. Frank Lautenberg, he pointed out that the oil companies are “doing just fine on their own.”

“So, instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in the energy of tomorrow.” He pledged that by 2035, 80% of America’s energy will come from clean energy sources.” He coupled the project of building a more dynamic, more innovative America with the need to vastly improve the nation’s commitment to education at all levels.

The president observed, soberly, that “America’s fallen to 9th in terms of people with a college degree.” He called for action to promote higher education, but noted that “It’s family that first instills a love of learning in a child; it’s parents who need to turn the TV off. We need to teach our children it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who should be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.”

This line received another bipartisan standing ovation, and was in a sense the groundwork for his expression of the principle that there needs to be community-oriented social spending that will strengthen families and provide parents with the time they need to invest more energy in their children’s education.

Schools, Obama said, should places “of high expectations and high performance”. When Pres. Obama touted the virtues of the Race to the Top competition for new funding among states, his call to replace “No Child Left Behind” with a more focused, more intelligent approach to improving the actual quality of education available to the nation’s children.

“In South Korea, teachers are known as ‘nation builders’”, he observed, suggesting that “here in America, it’s time we treated the people who teach our children with the same level of respect.” He won praise for his version of education reform, and as one observer noted, made the Secretary of Education the most prominent member of his cabinet in the context of his address.

The president explained his intention to commit new resources to improving the quality of education across the country, using the best tested and proven ideas of both Republican and Democratic governors. “Over the next 10 years, with so many baby-boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers.” For young people currently in the course of study, he urged that “If you want to make a difference… become a teacher; your country needs you.”

Again, the entire room filled with the sound of a bipartisan standing ovation.

Pres. Obama went on to say that all people must have the same opportunity to go to college. He explained his administration’s major reform to the financial aid system, saying “That’s why we’ve ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went to banks”, enabling the government to devote more actual cash to loans and provide long-term repayment relief.

He said he will call on Congress to make permanent the college tuition tax credit, worth $10,000 for four years of higher education. He described these measures as necessary for reaching “the goal I set two years ago,” that “By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

He spoke of all the children who study in America’s schools but face the risk of deportation, due to their parents’ inability to get legal documentation for them, a clear reference to the still pending DREAM Act, which would allow young people who stay in school and happen to lack legal documentation for residency to get on a path to citizenship.

Of college students coming from other nations, he noted that “As soon as they obtain their degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.” He used the refrain “It makes no sense” multiple times, to point out key areas of policy where ideological opponents can agree on the need to take action to further goals commonly held by all.

He called for action to addres the very serious problem of “illegal immigration”, but pushed for respect for the rights and dignity of “talented responsible young people”, and to recognize the contributions of workers living “in the shadows”. He sought to show the value of an America bathed in sunshine, i.e. transparency, where people are able to live and work and collaborate, in the open.

He added to the need for innovation and education, the need to overhaul and reinvent the nation’s infrastructure, the hardware framework of the economy: “We need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people and information, from high-speed rail to high-speed internet. Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our leadership has slipped.” He explained that prosperous new communities don’t just spring up out of nowhere; they are built around major construction projects, train stations along new transportation routes.

“Our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail,” adding that it could be twice as fast as driving and ”For some trips it will be faster than flying, without the pat-down.” He also reminded his audience that at the moment, ”routes in California and the midwest are already underway.”

He explained that all the investment in new and improved infrastructure is about building a prosperous future that works for all Americans. Of course, there are serious obstacles to doing this built into the tax code by well paid lobbyists working for corporate interests, who have persistently bent the ear of Congress, for decades. Pres. Obama said ”a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit specific businesses or industries”, and added that he would be ”asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system, get rid of the loopholes, level the playing field.”

“Recently we signed agreements with China and India that will support at least 250,000 jobs.” Obama said he had ordered a review of all regulations and that any which pose an unnecessary burden on business will be fixed, so that job-creation can continue and expand, but that he “will not hesitate to create or enforce common-sense safeguards to protect the American people.”

For Republicans opposed to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he said “If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better, or more affordable, I’m willing to work with you.” He sought to draw a line between unserious efforts to repeal much-needed reforms that are already in place and showing results and the more constructive approach of working together to make sure those reforms perform even better for the people who most need them, while lowering costs for everyone.

Obama then detailed all of the reforms he will not go back on: he will not allow insurers to refuse care for sickness (pre-existing conditions); he will not leave small business-owners having to pay $5,000 more for insuring their employees; he will not force millions of young people off of their parents’ insurance plans.

The president then said he was “proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for five years. This will reduce our deficit by $400 billion and bring domestic discretionary spending to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” He pointed out that “annual domestic spending… represents a little more than 12% of our budget.”

“I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can legitimately afford to do without,” he said, “but let’s make sure we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable.” This was, again, a line in the sand, a strong defense of the reasoning behind and the very real need for principled regulation and constructive social spending that allows real people to live more freely and more prosperously.

Obama said that the wrong kind of cuts to social spending would be the equivalent of “lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engines: you might feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.”

The Democratic president then took the reins on an issue that has been the darling of Republicans for a generation, but has gained little traction in Washington. “The best thing we could do on taxes for all Americansis to simplify the individual tax code,” he said. This won a bemused facial expression from the Republican House Speaker behind him, and hinted at the prospect of some bipartisan progress in 2011.

“We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable,” he went on; “we should give them a government that’s more competent, more efficient.” He pointed out that ”There are 12 different agencies that deal with exports” and noted his “favorite” example of executive overlap: the Interior Department has authority over salmon when they are in fresh water, but the Commerce Department has authority over them when they are in salt water.

Obama promised to send a proposal to Congress within the next 6 months to reform the entire federal government, cutting overlap and waste. This may have been the most surprising announcement to many of his most fevered opponents. Republicans want to institute major reforms to the structure of the executive branch of government, mostly to close agencies that oversee social spending; with a Democratic president pushing this pet Republican cause in the midst of a fight to cut government, Obama may successfully defend those agencies, while actually achieving major improvements in the way of efficiency and cost.

He also decried the role of for-profit lobbyists in shaping the views and the agenda of elected officials. “You deserve to know when your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, so I ask Congress to do what the executive branch is already doing.” The administration is already publishing information about meetings with lobbyists, and the president wants Congress to make public all encounters with paid lobbyists working to promote wealthy special interests.

He said that in the interest of neutralizing the power of corporate lobbyists on Capitol Hill, he will veto any legislation of any kind that comes to his desk “with earmarks in it”. This is a very bold declaration, challenging the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to live by its words and protests and to deny itself the much loved, much maligned earmarks that give them control of federal spending.

He called for a new era of international leadership and engagement, demanding that “America’s moral example must always shine for all who year for freedom and justice and dignity.” There was full bipartisan applause for the president’s Iraq withdrawal, when he said that 100,000 soldiers had already left Iraq “with their heads held high”.

He said it was a basic American value to welcome “American muslims as part of our American family”, another line which drew a brief, bipartisan standing ovation. The president spoke about the need to build strong alliances across the world, and said the United States is standing with peoples around the world to promote democracy, cooperation and opportunity. He said his administration is ”combatting the corruption that can rot a society and rob people of opportunity” in countries around the world.

“In South Sudan,” he noted, “with our assistance, the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war”. He added, with firmness, that ”The United States stands with Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people. We must never forget that the things we’ve fought for and struggled for live in the hearts of people everywhere, and we must never forget” the sacrifice of those who have served in the military in times of war.

“Tonight let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in support of our troops and their families… and by enlisting our veterans in creating the great nation they served”, and added that ”Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving their country because of who they love, and because of that change, I call on all our college campuses to open their doors to military recruiters and ROTC.”

“None of this will be easy, all of it will take time, and it will be harder, because we will argue about everything… and yet as contentious and messy and frustrating as our democracy may be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth.” This won Obama the most resounding bipartisan cheers, and sustained standing ovation of the speech.

He spoke of the real meaning of the American dream, that any person can achieve anything he or she works for earnestly. “That dream,” he said, “is why I’m able to stand here before you tonight; that dream is why a working-class kid from Scranton can sit behind me; that dream is why someone who by sweeping the floors of his father’s Cincinnatti bar can serve as Speaker of the House of the greatest nation on Earth.”

Obama singled out the young entrepreneur whose firm’s unique new drilling process allowed for the creation of “Plan B”, the strategy that dug 2,000 feet into the ground and liberated 33 Chilean miners in 37 days, far more quickly than anyone had expected, given the challenges.

While the president was gradually departing from the chamber, CNN showed a picture of Mark Kelly, the astronaut and husband of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, holding her hand as they watched the president’s address together. Giffords was not shown, but is said to be improving and nearly ready to enter full physical rehabilitation.

With a new wave of elected officials coming to Capitol Hill next week, there is talk of a shift, at least in the House, to a so-called “all-of-the-above” or “let’s-do-everything” approach to energy policy. The idea sounds reasonable at first glance, because it suggests the maximum available energy will be made available to consumers, which should mean more choice, lower prices, less risk. The truth is: “all-of-the-above” is under-thought, ignores major costs associated with certain resources, and is, therefore, a risky economic strategy.

In the increasingly competitive, resource-strapped and volatile fuel-source markets of the globalized 21st-century economy, the risks of such an obtuse strategy are even greater. Precision is meaningful, and must be one of the aims of any strategy adopted for dealing with the daunting challenge of powering the rapidly developing global economy of our times. If we spend too much time and too much money on dirty, old and inefficient technologies, simply because we are still clinging to outmoded ways of measuring efficiency, we will suffer economic setbacks that could have serious long-term consequences.

Much of the debate surrounding the economics of fuel sources really has little to do with climate, or with the impact of carbon emissions on global climate patterns. That aspect of the issue is, in fact, one of the most complex danger zones we, as a civilization, have faced, but there are a lot of other reasons why the economics of energy sourcing needs urgently to be addressed, and adopting the policy that “we should do all of the above” means not thinking seriously or pro-actively enough to address many of those other challenges.

If we put the issue of climate aside, for a moment, and take fossil-fuels-industry propaganda out of our survey of the facts on evidence, we know that:

1. Oil, coal and natural gas, create far fewer jobs than energy efficiency and clean renewables;
2. Those same fuels happen to have very negative impacts on air quality and public health, even in their cleanest possible forms;
3. Nuclear energy is extremely costly to public coffers and we have no proven way to permanently secure radioactive waste;
4. Cropland biofuels are combustible fuels that emit CO2, and their cultivation pushes up food prices everywhere;
5. Solar and wind power have made greater efficiency gains than any other source of energy, over a shorter period of time, and will continue this trend, so long as we invest;
6. China is aggressively getting behind renewables, even as their do-it-all approach leads to catastrophic smog blanketing their country, with the attendant environmental degradation and extreme public health costs;
7. China’s investment is allowing it’s firms to take over major wind projects in Texas and elsewhere;
8. All the petroleum on Earth will not be enough to satisfy the glut of demand at home and abroad, and so will not save us from price hikes;
9. We need petroleum for other things besides energy, like the synthetic polymers that make crucial medical devices and other plastics;
10. One of the great successes in the pursuit of energy independence is Portugal, which moved from 17% to 45% renewables in just 5 years;
11. Clean energy is an investment engine that can create a real on-the-ground local economy, not just a speculation bubble…

These are a few of the crucial facts that really are not in dispute. There are many others that also weight the debate in favor of new directions on energy production. Yet we wait for some perfect moment when we are supposed to have a political green light to move beyond petroleum. Despite the unforgiving but sensible criticism of BP for so notoriously failing to live up to it’s slogan, “Beyond Petroleum”, we are asked to take seriously the idea that the smartest policy approach to fixing the energy puzzle is the least well-thought option.

As of this writing, scientists in California are developing and demonstrating a process that turns sunlight into liquid fuel, and researchers in Brooklyn have achieved 329% efficiency gains for photosynthetic bio-oil production from algae, yet these and other crucial alternative fuels cannot win adequate financial support wen government policy clearly tells the investment market that we’re still committed to spending on the high fiscal and environmental costs of 18th- and 19th-century sources of energy.

Why have California, Germany, Denmark, Portugal and Japan, made such strides in developing their clean energy sectors? For the same reason that little New Jersey is 2nd nationally in solar energy production and China is buying Texas wind farms: investment and incentives for further investment.

It is a very simple economic puzzle to solve: the simple combustion-based sources of energy that once drove the industrial revolution are not adequate to serve the complexity of the 21st-century globalized economy; devoting ourselves to a let’s-do-all-of-the-above strategy means taking a go-slow approach, or to taking the position that the smartest way to get from A to B is to wait and see. It isn’t.

The smartest way to get from where we are now —where fossil fuels are causing terrible environmental and human health consequences, degrading local economies, and undermining our long-term economic health— to where we want to be —where energy need not be thought of as a dirty word, a reference point for polluters, corruption, international calamity, the destruction of our natural environment or the volatility of markets based entirely on the momentary preferences of speculators— means building an energy economy that is free of these pitfalls.

This is possible, but it requires thinking in new ways about what energy is, how we get it, how we move it from place to place, and what methods should be adopted for valuing it appropriately. And doing that means learning to speak more honestly about what words like carbon, combustion, nuclear, clean and renewable, really do mean, in economic, human and environmental terms. It means talking seriously about why we need a paradigm shift in our energy landscape, and how to achieve it.

We know that burning petroleum or refined petroleum byproducts can extract energy efficiently from a source that was at one time defined by its abundance and relative ease of access. We also know that that resource is not nearly as abundant as was once thought, that rapidly escalating demand has radically diminished the viability of the supply that does exist for long-term sustenance of economic prosperity. And, we know that the cost of extracting that resource itself is rising, perhaps irrevocably.

We know also that clean renewable resources are seeing a dramatic reduction in costs of both energy extraction and delivery, and that the “storage problem” is being solved by unexpectedly extreme leaps forward in battery technology and the potential for a truly workable “smart grid”. We know that the process of building and maintaining the infrastructure for the most-efficient-of-all-options clean renewables-based energy sector will spur unprecedented job creation, and that these jobs will be local in nature and not disappear over time.

We know that oil, coal and natural gas, benefit as industries from massive tax credits and direct subsidies that help defray the costs of exploration and development, and that many interests, both commercial and financial, would no longer view these resources as highly “competitive” in terms of return on investment (ROI) without the benefit of those subsidies and incentives. Knowing this, how can we continue to pretend that our best policy is the go-slow, averse-to-complexity, under-thought and inadequately supplied fossil-fuels-first “all-of-the-above” strategy?

In 2011, the United States Congress should begin moving decisively toward prioritizing new, renewable sources of energy with little to no carbon footprint. Tap into American ingenuity; harness the collaborative potential of the nation’s diverse and dynamic economy; build clean. This is the smartest, most innovative way to get ahead of the curve in the age of technologically sophisticated localized renewable energy sources, and will lay the groundwork for a new American boom century. It may be the only way.

The Economics of Carbon Pricing & the Transition to Clean, Renewable Fuels

Whenever legislation to price carbon starts to gain traction, the fossil fuel industry trots out this talking point: “It will kill jobs and ruin the economy.” In this paper, however, HotSpring Network founder and Citizens Climate Lobby volunteer Joseph Robertson ties together numerous reports and case studies to present a different picture, one in which the transition to clean energy will produce new jobs and provide a stimulus to the economy.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Putting a price on carbon creates a contextual incentive for diversification and innovation in the energy economy. When Germany shifted its tax-base from income to energy, it spurred a decade of aggressive public and private investment in renewable resources. In just four years, it became the world leader in clean energy export, taking 70% of the world market just eight years after the initial policy shift.

German firms are driving investments of €400 billion in the Desertec solar project in North Africa, part of a plan to connect two continents via multi-gigawatt undersea transmission cables and advanced smart-grid technology. The project will revolutionize the energy sector in Europe and Africa, creating wealth for businesses and communities large and small. Morocco, for instance, plans to use its desert and mountain terrain, as well as its wind-intensive coastal areas, to generate enough renewable energy to become an export leader for the European market. This model can be duplicated in mountainous, desert-rich and coastal states across the U.S.

Concerns that coal country will be adversely affected by a price on carbon are understandable but somewhat unfounded. Communities dependent on coal for employment are not generally more prosperous than the national average, so a transition to clean renewable resources can help to overcome problems of endemic persistent poverty. Studies comparing cost-benefit analysis for mountaintop removal mining and wind energy show wind is more effective at generating prosperity over the long term, for all but a narrow group of interests.

The regional disparity in impact from a carbon tax is projected to be negligible, starting at just two-thirds of one percent and moving to just one-third of one percent over time. If revenue from a carbon fee is returned to all households, any wider regional disparity might be reduced by targeted dividend adjustments. Communities in remote areas, or which rely on coal for cheap energy or for employment, can benefit economically from diversifying into and taking ownership of clean renewable-energy technologies.

Job creation will be the hallmark of the clean energy revolution. Studies show the potential for millions of new jobs in industries ranging from manufacturing to installation and maintenance, as well as administration, marketing, energy efficiency and other related fields. The potential for efficiency gains from clean energy and smart-grid technologies will free up massive amounts of consumer spending over time and relieve dependence on fossil fuels from hostile states.

• Summary + Conclusions
• Download the full report here in PDF form

Former Pres. Bill Clinton told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, in an interview before a live audience this week at the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York City, that a commitment to clean energy is required to drive job growth, cut unemployment and boost the economy. He noted that the four countries who are projected to beat their clean energy targets under the Kyoto Protocol —Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the U.K.— all have lower unemployment, and less economic inequality than the U.S., due to the green tech boom.

The United States has committed more resources than ever before, under Pres. Obama, to promoting clean energy, but there is still significant pressure from powerful corporate interests tied to oil, coal and natural gas, to slow the transition to a clean-energy economy. Those interests might lose out, if subsidies are shifted from carbon-based fuels to clean energy, but only if they refuse to innovate along with the rest of the economy. The cost-effectiveness of subsidizing clean energy, however, far outstrips the cost-effectiveness of subsidizing the burning of carbon-based fuels.

The fact is: there is no single area of near-term economic development with as much potential to heal the economic wounds that afflict our nation or to create new jobs and make for vibrant thriving communities than clean energy innovation. In part, this is because the job is so big. In part, it is owing to the fact that energy is everywhere; there is no corner of the society that can ably do without it in at least some small dose for very long. The interconnectedness and fast pace of 21st century America requires a booming energy sector, and the energy sector has critical weaknesses.

Among these are: the finite nature of carbon-based fuels and the geologic time-scales required to create new reserves; the intense fallout to human and environmental health from pollution; the massive, ongoing and still growing contribution to destabilization of global climate patterns, from the burning of fossil fuels; negative externalities of even local impact: where coal-intensive communities suffer chronic endemic poverty and an over-dependence on one industry; the cost transport will impose on our economic activity if we don’t innovate away from combustible fuels.

Pres. Clinton’s announcement comes at a crucial time, as electoral battles over how to solve the jobs crisis raise not just ideological points of contention but serious confusion over what the cost implications would be for a transition to clean energy. The standard retort, for decades, has been that clean energy “is just too expensive”, that renewable resources like wind and solar energy are “intermittent” and so unreliable, that we cannot afford to stop using oil, despite our mounting dependence on nations whose interests may be in direct conflict with our own.

The fact is, rapid and widespread innovations in energy technology mean solar power is expanding its productive capacity more rapidly than any other resource. Wind is now capable, were the infrastructure already built, to supply more than 100% of the entire energy demand of the United States, and innovations in biofuel planning mean new strains of algae are now potentially 3x more efficient at turning light into energy.

Building the infrastructure for a truly efficient, clean and low-cost renewable energy economy will take time, and resources. The fossil fuel industry continually seeks to paint this fact as a sign that doing so would be prohibitively expensive, but precisely the contrary is true. In fact, not aggressively investing in this infrastructure overhaul, technological innovation and job-training, will render many of our basic economic underpinnings prohibitively expensive, within a generation. The fallout across our economy could be devastating.

Compare to that the effect of heavily investing in the clean energy transition: a relatively small but stable (year-after-year) commitment of resources from the federal government would spur over $100 billion in private-sector clean-energy investment, which would in turn create millions of new jobs, reforming local and regional economies, cleaning the air, stabilizing climate patterns around which our entire civilization is organized, and building resilience, knowledge, innovation and economic vibrancy into communities large and small.

Not only is it eminently affordable for the United States to make this transition now, in a committed and robust way, it is in fact an issue of far-reaching implications for national security. The Pentagon views the destabilization of global climate patterns and rival nations’ out-competing us on clean energy as potentially threatening our political and economic security in the coming decades, and so has embarked on a program to transform its use of energy; the nation would be wise to do the same, so we can get on the road to real, prolonged recovery, and build a stable, clean, sustainable energy future.

Well integrity test on new cap for Deepwater Horizon well shows no oil escaping. At 3:25 pm EDT, BP announced there was no more oil leaking from the well. But as BP, local politicians and Pres. Obama all noted, this is just the beginning of the test. They were able to successfully close the well without leakage, but they now need to do more substantive pressure testing inside the well to determine if there might be any oil escaping from the wellb0re beneath the sea floor.

This success does not mean a definitive end to the crisis. There is still need to confirm structural integrity, using pressure measurements to verify that there is no oil escaping elsewhere in the structure of the well. BP has warned it may have to open the valves again this week as part of the testing of the new capping system.

There has been speculation about the political effects of the well finally being closed, with some analysts remarking that Pres. Obama’s approval ratings seemed to be slipping in proportion to the volume of oil leaking from the well. The tentative moment of relief also corresponds with the president winning a heated legislative battle over financial regulatory reform.

The president expressed cautious optimism but said only that it was a positive sign and that further testing would need to be done before anyone could know if the cap is an effective seal.

The well’s temporary closure will stop the flow of oil adding to the worst oil spill in US history, but the environmental catastrophe is ongoing, and emergency clean-up and recovery efforts will persist for years, even if not another drop of oil flows from the well.

Testing continues, as 24 hours have now passed since the valves were successfully closed, and there is talk about how BP can now work with states and communities to help restore economic activity and to deal, with after-effects of the 3 month spill.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) this week called for a move toward building consensus for a scaled back version of the climate legislation pending in the United States Senate. Two possible models, given the nature of the Kerry-Lieberman proposal, as written, would be to either establish at the federal level the kind of cooperative emissions reduction strategy already adopted by a coalition of states across the northeast or a limit on total carbon emissions from power plants only.

25 states, plus the District of Columbia, have renewable electricity standards, a requirement that a certain percentage of power generation come from clean renewable resources, by a certain year. 3 more states have voluntary RES goals, and there are incentives both at the state and federal level for power utilities to develop expanded renewable generating capacity. The state of New Jersey has quickly risen to 2nd nationwide in solar power generation, behind California, despite having no sun-scorched deserts and little eligible open space which is not protected.

New Jersey is also rapidly expanding its commitment to solar energy, incentivizing installations on private homes, factory and warehouse roof-space and corporate complexes, as with the new 4.1 MW solar power installation slated to go online early next year at Dow Jones’ South Brunswick site. Technology innovation —including R&D, manufacturing, energy efficiency improvements, and local renewable generation schemes— is driving New Jersey’s response to the carbon emissions question.

This model could be translated into something that allows for an array of public-private partnerships and aggressive incentives for enterprises, small and large, to commit to energy innovation and to clean renewables. If Sen. Snowe’s push for a utility-focused emissions protocol is built around the northeastern efficiency and renewables standards, a new round of Recovery Act funding for R&D could help speed the transition to clean energy.

Coal-heavy states consistently face the problem of how carbon-pricing (whether by tax or by cap and trade) will affect people reliant on the coal industry for their livelihoods and for affordable energy. Accelerating the pace of technological innovation for improved alternative energy performance is key to lessening the impact of a transition away from coal, but whatever emissions-reduction strategy becomes law, something will likely have to be done to insulate consumers and protect jobs in coal-dependent states.

The hope of those pushing for a tech-centered bill is that renewable electricity standards and incentives to assist in the transition from carbon-based to clean energy will allow coal-dependent communities to diversify their energy supply and their job markets in meaningful ways that make for a more vibrant local economy.

An alternative proposal is the fee/dividend model —proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby*, and with the support of leading scientists like NASA’s Dr. James Hansen—, which would place a fee on carbon dioxide at the point of entry into the US economy (well, mine or port) and return 100% of the revenues to every American household. This model puts the reins of the marketplace back in the hands of the consumer, by allowing families to cover any additional costs that filter through from the carbon fee.

Whether by technological innovation and direct incentives for investment and retooling or by contextual incentives like the fee/dividend proposal, one key focus for honest policymakers must be planning for the rapid diversification of energy supplies and labor markets in regions and communities that are currently reliant on coal or oil production for their economic sustenance.

The famously oil-driven state of Texas is another good example —like New Jersey, where oil importation and refinery have long been key players in the energy sector— where a transition to renewables has not only been recognized as necessary and potentially lucrative, but where the pace of the transition has been accelerating at a surprising rate. Texas is now the national leader in wind-based power generation, with 9,000 MW installed and plans to install another 40,000 MW.

With 49,000 MW of wind-based power generation, Texas would be producing enough power from wind to replace 41 coal-fired power plants. Oil money is now shifting into wind as oil becomes harder to find and harder to extract and investors recognize that yields from wind don’t decline over time, because the resource is renewable, or rather: constantly flowing.

Such energy innovations are helping to provide new sources of wealth to rural communities, as 1 acre of corn can yield roughly $800 at harvest, and 1 acre with 1 wind turbine installed can produce $300,000 worth of electricity. The efficiency in such a shift in power generation is enhanced by the new technologies’ ability to subsidize farming communities, potentially reducing the need for overall government spending relating to agriculture and energy as a combined total.

Sen. Snowe’s office has been keeping any definitive aim or strategy under wraps, while the senator seeks to rally wavering senators in both parties to the cause of emissions reduction, by one means or another. Her coalition building effort will win favor, many policy analysts and activists believe, as soon as it is clear that the technological transition will be rapid and effective and will allow carbon-reliant communities to prosper in ways they presently cannot.

* NOTE: This reporter is a group leader and citizen volunteer for Citizens Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit national organization working to build the political will for a sustainable climate. Read more about CCL’s efforts on Capitol Hill, on The Hot Spring Network

Sen. Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, is known for being a moderate, a pragmatist, and often the key to determining what gets done in a hotly divided partisan environment. She has consistently sought to take responsible positions on environmental policy, but has supported her party in many key votes. Now, she is pledging to push for a broader coalition of support for a scaled-back climate bill. Her approach is being called “utility-only”, focusing carbon emissions capping on power generation utilities, something supporters say will make the pending legislation more viable economically and administratively.

Her office released the following statement, on 29 June 2010, after a bipartisan Senate meeting with Pres. Obama to discuss pending climate legislation:

“As I have long advocated, working toward energy independence is an imperative for our economic and national security.  Which is why today I urged the President to seize control of our own energy destiny and, for the first time, establish clearly defined national timetables for clean energy production, benchmarks for oil consumption reduction, and goals for game-changing research – which no other president has ever done, to ensure we actually attain that independence.  Central to this is moving forward with an aggressive energy bill that reorients our nation toward renewable and energy efficiency. This cannot be underestimated in literally transforming our energy supply and yielding tremendous environmental and economic benefits.  Just last year, the U.S. was a global leader in wind with 10,000 Megawatts of facilities constructed at 39 percent growth – and yet, we are in danger of losing that competitive and technological edge to China which grew its wind capacity by 100 percent last year.

“And that is why I have co-authored legislation sponsored by Senator Klobuchar that would establish a strong Renewable Energy Standard of 25 percent by 2025 and worked on the Home Star proposal with Senators Bingaman and Warner, which would provide energy efficiency rebates and long-term tax credits to build an entirely new industry in performance-based efficiency.  While there is consensus among us on energy, on the complex and difficult question of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no consensus at this time. From my perspective, I’ve long asserted that placing a price on carbon will send the appropriate signals to entrepreneurs that would unleash the innovation to position America as a global clean energy industry leader.  However, today we are in different and perilous economic times with last week’s new jobless claims actually increasing by 12,000, to a total of 472,000 Americans, and the full impact of the BP spill is yet unknown.  So it’s essential that we carefully weigh the costs of action versus inaction to avoid unintended consequences that cost us jobs, as well as the distributional effects of any policy we apply and how we mitigate and equalize those effects.”

“At the same time simply we cannot afford economy-wide approaches to carbon reduction that could cost consumers another 18 cents per gallon of gasoline in this struggling economy or subject our manufacturing sector to unnecessary regulations when they’ve already reduced their emissions by five percent below 1990 levels.  And yet, we also recognize the threat of blanket and ad hoc EPA regulations that would threaten at least 1,600 major employers should we fail to act. Which is why I believe that one possibility is to more narrowly target a carbon pricing program through a uniform nationwide system solely on the power sector which is the sector with the most to lose from the EPA regulations and it’s also the sector in which businesses actually make decisions today based on prices 20 to 30 years in the future.

“The bottom line is that this should be an era of practicality given our economic situation – and whatever Congress pursues should be viewed through that prism, to develop legislation that is pragmatic, reduces uncertainty, and creates business opportunities for a carbon-free economy of the future, without further harming our economy of today.”

Senator Snowe has been a longtime advocate for advancing policies to combat global warming, with her record beginning as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives when she cosponsored the Global Warming Prevention Act more than 20 years ago.  In 2007, Senators Snowe and Feinstein spearheaded the Ten-in-Ten fuel economy standards, landmark legislation to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which is the single most effective US law that has addressed climate change.  The regulations based on Senator Snowe’s law were finalized this spring and will eliminate a metric Gigaton of CO2 emissions by saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil.  This Congress, Senator Snowe co-hosted the “U.S. Climate Action: A Global Economic Perspective” symposium on Capitol Hill with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair, as well as the leaders in the business community to discuss the formulation of U.S. policy on climate change.

Snowe clearly seeks a pragmatic approach, and wants to rescue future generations from the potentially grave side-effects of political intransigence and the refusal to accept universally defined scientific findings on carbon-induced climate destabilization. Her task, of course, is complex, because many in her party are sensitive to the concerns of coal-heavy states, where fears about energy prices are closely linked to the sometimes narrow business plan of coal interests.

Technological innovation and efficiency standards could afford a way to persuade skeptics about the economic viability and civilizational imperatives of carbon emissions reduction. A coalition of northeastern states has already begun implementing emissions reduction schemes for power utilities, and this could serve as a model for national policy, without requiring a massive new bureaucracy or complex trading market.

Between June 21 and 25, Citizens Climate Lobby took its message to Capitol Hill, meeting with 52 different members of Congress, or their energy and climate staff, in both the House and the Senate. The first CCL national conference was fortuitously timed, as the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has brought into stark relief the nature of the carbon-fuel problem and the urgent need for action to achieve a civilization-wide overhaul of energy infrastructure, and the climate bill pending in the Senate may not have the votes to override a filibuster.

The “Lobby Day” experience was part of the first annual CCL National Conference, in the nation’s capital. The landmark event brought together climate scientists, oceanographers, environmental engineers, economists, activists, community leaders, small business owners and concerned citizens, to deliver the message to members of both parties that citizens from the community, their own constituents, will support them if they take meaningful, comprehensive action to combat climate destabilization.

Citizens Climate Lobby is a national non-partisan, non-profit organization, working to organize citizen volunteers, by state, county or Congressional district, to lobby elected officials for a strong emissions reduction plan that will prevent catastrophic climate change and speed the transition to clean energy. The group aims to motivate political support, across the political spectrum, for a pragmatic approach to emissions reduction and to speeding the transition to clean energy.

The CCL strategy entails reaching out to all members of Congress, in both parties, regardless of their specific views or past staunch opposition to carbon-reduction legislation. The aim is to listen, to understand what specific elected officials and their constituencies most value and how they prioritize issues of energy and climate, and to work with them to help them achieve their goals in a way that is consistent with establishing a sustainable, responsible climate policy.

As part of the Citizens Climate Lobby myself, I can say it is integral to the organization’s mission to work to transition the United States from a legislative climate of full-time professional lobbyists to a new paradigm wherein ordinary citizens speaking for their communities and for the well-being and rights of future generations, are the preferred interlocutors for shaping the nation’s laws.

The conference was a three-day event, in conjunction with the RESULTS National Conference, from June 20 through 22, where citizen volunteer lobbyists gather to push Congress to act to combat poverty at home and around the world. Sunday and Monday were training and informational days, in which the CCL volunteers heard directly from established scientists presenting the latest science regarding climate destabilization and carbon emissions, and participated in workshops designed to prepare the teams for meetings with members of Congress and their staff.

The specific focus of Citizens Climate Lobby’s efforts on Capitol Hill is to promote proposed language for a fee/dividend approach to limiting and reducing carbon emissions and promoting the transition to a world-leading clean energy economy. The proposed legislation would:

1. fee: place a direct and steadily increasing (year on year) cost on CO2 at the point of entry into the economy (well, mine or port);
2. dividend: return 100% of revenues collected to the American people directly, an equal amount per capita to every household;
3. clean energy: set a price that will make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels within 10 years;
4. level playing field: apply a border adjustment to balance carbon pricing for products from nations that do nothing to increase cost of carbon emissions;
5. pollution: stop construction of all new coal-fired power plants and phase out all existing plants, starting with the dirtiest…

The plan is supported by Dr. James Hansen (NASA’s leading climate scientist), by numerous retired military leaders and by leading members of the faith community. It is designed to relocate the hidden costs of carbon-based fuels (‘negative externalities’, in economics-speak) from the citizen, the community and the small business, back to the interests that seek to profit from the resources that generate those negative externalities for which the rest of us pay.

The CCL approach is intended not to be punitive, but to be clear and transparent. It does not discriminate, and it does not in any way limit the freedom of carbon-based enterprises to join the clean energy revolution. Over time, as the cost of producing energy from carbon-based fuels goes up, investment will move toward clean energy resources, technology and infrastructure, which will allow private enterprise to profit more readily and more consistently than the more costly carbon-based alternative, with its tendency to extreme volatility in pricing.

This method allows citizens, communities and small businesses to pay for any increase in costs that might come from utilities or other industrial enterprises passing along carbon fee costs to the consumer, and to drive demand for a clean energy alternative. The plan allows the American people to build the clean energy future they would prefer, and to drive a new wave of investment in innovation and ingenuity to secure the nation’s energy independence and protect the natural environment against progressive global climate destabilization.

Having met with and listened to so many members of Congress and/or their climate and energy policy advisers, CCL has begun the process of working to find areas of mutual interest and shared principle that can build a fabric of common understanding and common interest between rival political parties, rival community interests, rival ideological camps and even rival industries, to forge the political will to achieve the clean energy revolution this nation needs for its future economic, environmental and military security.