President of the Future

Barack Obama's energy plan outlined below is one of the most important proposals any presidential candidate has offered in a generation. It is essentially an outline for the American future.

Look at it closely. Not only does it respond in meaningful ways to the end of the oil age heralded in part by today's high prices (which have causes other than dwindling supply, but that's a factor.) Not only does it outline realistic ways of attaining energy independence and meeting future energy needs, but does so in ways that will not add to the Climate Crisis, and will reduce the causes of that crisis for the far future, avoiding catastrophe for our descendants. It provides a blueprint for combining development and use of clean energy technologies while recognizing the immense role that ending energy waste can play, not only in the future but right now.

But the brilliance of it is that it recognizes the federal government's role in leading the necessary and sweeping changes necessary for the American economy of the future. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt fought the Depression by investing in infrastructure--in roads, bridges, parks, public buildings, as well as planting three billion trees--that enabled economic expansion; just as Dwight Eisenhower promoted the prosperity of the 50s and 60s by building the federal highway system; just as JFK invested in the new technology of the space program that supports today's high tech industries, so too does Barack Obama propose to create the energy infrastructure for the economy of the future.

Just his proposals for updating America's system of generating and distributing electricity will create jobs in the short term and will build infrastructure to enable economic growth, while increasing energy efficiency, so we can actually do more with less fuel.

Add to that proposals for weatherization and energy conservation, that will boost private as well as public spending in the short term, with almost immediate dividends.

And that's before you even get to the proposals to jump-start whole new clean energy technology enterprises, transforming the way we power everything in our lives, including our vehicles. There are vast new businesses here, and everyone in the industrialized world knows this is where we are heading, if we want to have a healthy economic and a healthy civilization in the rest of the 21st century and beyond.

This is an American vision, for America. Because we're going to be buying these technologies in the near future. Are we going to be buying them from China, like just about everything we're buying now? Or India? Or Europe? They are all moving in this direction. America has only a short time to mobilize its vast resources to seize global leadership in the new growth industries of the future: solar power, wind power, biofuels, generations of new and progressively cleaner and more efficient cars and other transportation systems. Plus energy, conservation and anti-global heating technologies beyond our current knowledge.

Look at these proposals. You could be looking at an outline of a bright and exciting future.