By Nesdon and Deena Booth

Today, we are finally at a place, technologically, economically and we’re hoping politically, to finally escape from the disaster that has become of our petroleum economy. It is no longer the pie-in-the-sky dream of some tree hugger. Virtually all scientists and policy analysts working in the renewable energy field agree that it is possible for the USA to shift production of electricity from coal, gas, oil, and nuclear energy to clean safe renewables like solar, wind and geo thermal within the next few years.

Make no mistake, such a transition will result in a shift of wealth and resources away from oil companies, coal mines and other entrenched energy providers to upstart industries and forward looking entrepreneurs. Many of our politicians and policy makers whose campaign war chests and personal fortunes are funded by these industries are understandably resistant to the change.

But the costs we are now facing, including the impact of climate change, our dependence on unstable regimes for oil, the health consequence of air and water pollution among other costs, are truly unsustainable. We can no longer stand by and watch the prosperity, heath and safety of our country be sold out to maintain a status quo that can not persist into the distant future in any event.

T Boone Pickens, the quintessential oil man, is using the fortune he made in oil futures by predicting the huge spike in oil prices, to support wind energy and other renewables (http://www.pickensplan.com). Al Gore is pressing hard for a 10 year plan (http://www.wecansolveit.org) with a campaign similar to the “moral equivalent of war” that JFK waged to take us to the moon.

Right now, private funding for 1.6 gigawatts of solar power contracted and ready to proceed to construction for Califonia’s PG&E, is being held up by some in the US Senate threatening a filibuster of the extension of the current tax incentives under which these contracts were negotiated. These same Senators stand and demand that we give the oil companies a gigantic windfall by allow them to lay waste to our last fragile wild places at the same time that they block this renewable legislation.

The costs of this outdated energy policy to our liberty, our health and our safety, not to mention our economy, is almost incalculable. We have seen unprecedented flood, storm and fire losses in the last few years, and these are just the tip of the iceberg we have been warned about for decades by scientists and politicians like Gore. Had we taken his challenge to develop renewables when it was made to us by Jimmy Carter, might we today not have our sons and daughters bleeding and dying in Irag? Might we have saved the trillions of dollars those conflicts are bound to cost, might we still be the prosperous and proud nation we once were?

Please, enough is enough! Join us in demanding that the US Senate pass HR 6049 before the August recess. Let your voice be heard in support of all the plans and proposals that will see us achieve energy independence and a reversal of greenhouse warming in this generation. We can do this, we just need to make our politicians know we will not stand for any more obstruction by them.

Contact your Senators