Apollo Weekly Update, 10/24/08: Six State Roll Out Finishes; New State Programs

This week Randy Swisher, the executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, notified us that his organization’s board of directors agreed to support The New Apollo Program. With its endorsement, AWEA became the 48th organization to sign on to the Apollo Alliance’s national clean energy, good jobs economic development strategy. “We view the program as incredibly compatible with our agenda and look forward to working with you to make it a reality,” wrote Swisher.

Swisher’s message came just days after the Apollo Alliance finished its six state town hall tour to roll out The New Apollo Program. Our recommendations for how to scale up clean energy tools and techniques to get America’s economy back on track were greeted enthusiastically everywhere we went.

In Detroit, Senator Debbie Stabenow captured the sentiments of nearly all the speakers who participated in the roll out events. “The New Apollo Program is the kind of bold program we need. We have to be bolder than we’ve been,” she said during a program that included our President Jerome Ringo, and representatives of the governor’s office, the state Legislature, union leaders, and business and environmental leaders. “The next Congress will take up proposals to curb global warming, to seek a system of cap and trade, to invest in biofuels and alternative energy.”

“The $50 billion a year that The New Apollo Program proposes to invest just doesn’t seem like that much money,” Stabenow continued. “It’s not a lot of money to spend on our future, especially when you consider the $700 billion that we just spent to bail out our banking system.”

In Columbus, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (with Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides, see pix right) calledThe New Apollo Program a “win, win, win, win, win strategy.” Representative Jay Inslee declared in Seattle, “To those who say over the next few months we should be passive, they’re wrong. The antidote is action. The antidote is The New Apollo Program. That’s how we solve economic doldrums in this country.”

Senator Barbara Boxer joined Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides at the first event in San Leandro, California, where he memorably declared: “We are closing a chapter on policies that didn’t work and opening a new chapter of those that do.”

You can follow the roll out tour on our New Apollo Program Web page, which links to the Apollo Blog posts from each city.  The Apollo Alliance home page displaysvideo reports from Columbus and San Leandro - and soon from Detroit - on our Apollo Video player.

This week I’ve been in New York and Washington talking to mainstream and new media journalists, editors, and producers about The New Apollo Program and the advent of the clean energy economy. “Well what about the price of oil?” one reporter asked. “It’s falling. Won’t that hurt clean energy producers?”

Our response? My Apollo Alliance colleagues and I study the data, look at the trends, and are convinced this moment is different than the other periods in our history, distant (1970s) and more recent (1990s). The four crises that prompted the formation of the Apollo Alliance – energy, climate, jobs, and security – are getting worse, not better. The solution is a dramatic change in how the United States and the world develop and use clean energy. While America’s credit and stock market crisis has drained value out of industrial stocks, including shares of clean energy companies, it’s temporary.

Policy responses reflect that. New Jersey this week completed a clean energy master plan designed to accelerate the development of a new way to power the Garden State. Hawaii this week approved a new energy policy designed to produce 70 percent of the state’s power from clean sources by 2030, the most ambitious program of its type in the country. California’s energy-efficiency policies created nearly 1.5 million jobs from 1977 to 2007. 

The missing piece is a federal commitment to investment in clean energy equivalent in scale and urgency to the original Apollo program to land a man on the moon.

If you agree sign our “Jobs, Baby, Jobs” petition.

You can follow these and other important trends in the clean energy sector on ourApollo Daily Digest. The momentum for a clean energy future is only growing.

Apollo Weekly Update, 10/10/08: New Apollo Program Introduced In 3 States

This week, in events in California, Ohio, and Washington State the Apollo Alliance rolled out its comprehensive clean energy, good jobs investment strategy.  Frankly, it’s the most cogent economic plan out there to get America out of its financial mess.
 
In Columbus on Wednesday, Governor Ted Strickland essentially said as much during our Ohio event (see pix right). “If we do what the New Apollo Program encourages the next president and Congress to do we will see a renaissance in America’s economy and in Ohio’s economy,” he said. “I am happy to do what we can as Buckeyes to facilitate this effort.”

California Senator Barbara Boxer enthusiastically supported The New Apollo Program during the kickoff event on Saturday at the IBEW Training Center in San Leandro (see pix left). Washington State Congressman Jay Inslee, who’s made a career sponsoring clean energy legislation, and who headlines our event on Friday in Seattle, told us this week: “Some may think that it’s not the time for bold ideas like this one. I say it’s exactly the right time for this plan.”

You can follow the national tour on the Apollo Blog, in the Data Points features we are posting that make the case for strong federal action to accelerate the clean energy economy, and on The New Apollo Program page on our Web site. Thanks so much to the IBEW for hosting our events in Columbus and San Leandro, and to the Puget Sound Industrial Excellence Center for hosting the Seattle event. In Ohio and California, our union allies took us on terrific tours of their training facilities, where workers are preparing for the career-building jobs in installation, monitoring, analysis, and the other high skill trades of the clean energy economy (see pix below). 

Next week we roll into Denver, Detroit, and Portland, Oregon. 

We’re finding strong interest everywhere we go, and for good reason. The rollout occurs in the midst of the worst domestic and global financial crisis in nearly 80 years. The New Apollo Program doesn’t talk about a bail out. It talks about a build up, what Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides calls “a sweeping investment program to put America back to work.”

We asked Elena Foshay, our research associate, to dig into the numbers and tell us how fully implementing the 10-year, $500 billion New Apollo Program would affect the three states we’ve been to so far. Elena’s calculations are based on the Perryman Group’s data cited in Apollo’s 2004 report, New Energy for America. She found that California would gain $64 billion in new clean energy investments and nearly 500,000 permanent new green-collar jobs. Ohio would gain $22 billion in investment and 156,000 green-collar jobs; Washington State would gain $10 billion in new investment and nearly 82,000 new green-collar jobs.

With joblessness climbing and the economy in turmoil, those are the kind of results that make sense for now. As Carl Zichella, the Sierra Club’s director of western renewable programs noted on Saturday: “This is not a partisan plan; it is a roadmap to unite people in a common goal.  This will build public confidence that, despite the enormous mess the country is in now, that we can emerge from it stronger, more prosperous, and in possession of a cleaner environment for future generations.  If we work together the benefits of repowering our economy to a renewable future will belong to us all.”

Apollo Weekly Update 10/3/08: Green-Collar Job Training In California; Rolling Out The New Apollo Program

Our friends at Green For All in Oakland, are preparing for the publication of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones, the group’s founder and president, and a member of the board of the Apollo Alliance. Harper Collins puts the book, Van’s first, on sale on October 7th, but you can preorder it. Green For All says The Green Collar Economy will respond to issues that couldn’t be more crucial right now, like how the next president can create millions of new green jobs. How the U.S. can lower energy prices without drilling our shorelines and burning up the planet. And how the government can help create energy independence. 

The Apollo Alliance makes the same case in The New Apollo Program, which we roll out nationally starting on Saturday with an event in San Leandro with California Senator Barbara Boxer and Phil Angelides, our chairman. Then we go to the Midwest, to the Pacific Northwest, and at the end of the month to the East Coast. You can follow our progress with dispatches from Heidi Pickman and me on the Apollo Blog.

The New Apollo Program is a national economic development strategy that calls on the federal government to be a partner in scaling up the clean energy tools, practices, and good jobs to build a safer, more secure, more prosperous America. With every passing week, the recommendations of The New Apollo Program take on more prominence and urgency. As we noted in our call this week to green the bailout, the resistance in the House to passing the Washington/Wall Street rescue package was “really the clarion call from regular Americans for investment in people and jobs and a new way of life and commerce. We assert those goals are served by aggressively pursuing the pollution-free, clean energy market principles of this century. The best plan out there to do just that is our own The New Apollo Program.”  

And this week California turned policy into law consistent with the goals of The New Apollo Program.  The state enacted a new statute, AB2855, that establishes green-collar job training academies to prepare high school students for careers in building the clean energy, good jobs economy. Among the technologies that will be taught in the new academies: energy audits, retrofitting and weatherization, energy efficiency, installation of energy conservation equipment, renewable energy design and installation, next generation vehicle maintenance, and pollution prevention. TheCalifornia Apollo Alliance and the State Building Trades Council of California co-sponsored the legislation and helped secure its passage and enactment.

By the way, take a look at the Apollo Alliance’s new Web site, designed to be more informative, graphically interesting, and easier to use. Almost every posting on the site has opportunity for you to interact, leave comments, make suggestions. If you have ideas about how to strengthen the site, please let me know. And thank you so much for being part.

Apollo Weekly Update, 9/26/08: Green Jobs Action Day, New Apollo Program Rollout

Tomorrow is the Green Jobs Now National Day of Action, which the Apollo Alliance has enthusiastically supported and helped to organize.  Co-Director Kate Gordon speaks tomorrow morning at a Day of Action in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  The staff from our National office and from green builders Swinerton Inc. gathered in front of the company’s LEED Gold standard building to show that we are ready for green jobs.  Swinerton is also union and community friendly and happen to be our neighbors (see pix below.)

Turn out for events in your community and let folks at home and in Washington know that bailouts aren’t the answer to what ails America. Investment is. Investment in the clean energy sources, tools, buildings, homes, communities, and practices that are producing thousands of new jobs will, with the right focus from Washington, produce millions of green-collar jobs.

By the way, the $700 billion Wall Street “rescue” has been much on our minds, as I’m sure it’s been on yours. That’s about twice the amount that we’re sending overseas each year to pay for imported oil at current prices. The Apollo Alliance has a better way to really rescue the American economy and spend taxpayer money. For a lot less — $50 billion a year; $500 billion over 10 years — we can invest in building a clean energy, good jobs economy. 

Next month, starting in California on October 4, the Apollo Alliance introduces our The New Apollo Program to citizens and leaders in eight states. Neal Peirce, in a terrificnationally syndicated article this week, described the significance of The New Apollo Program to the nation’s economy and well-being. The goal of The New Apollo Program, Pierce writes “is nothing less than making the country truly competitive, a global leader (rather than a laggard) in the clean 21st century energy products and services.”

The details of The New Apollo Program are to:

Rebuild America clean and green, with energy efficient buildings and factories, mass transit, and renewable power sources.

Make it in America – rebuild the U.S. auto industry to produce efficient cars and trucks, and create new green jobs in clean energy manufacturing.

Help America compete, by investing in American made clean energy technologies instead of falling behind countries in Asia and Europe.

We’re asking all of our supporters to support the plan, to fight for clean energy and good jobs. Sign on and add your voice to our growing movement.

Look for the Apollo Alliance’s new Web site, which is set to launch on Monday morning. We’ve posted your views on what’s occurring in the clean energy economy and policy debate in a new Apollo Feedback feature. We’re holding on to our hats here this week, as you are too, no doubt. For those of you who participate in the Green Jobs Now National Day of Action, let me know how it turned out.

Apollo Update, 9/19/08: New Apollo Program Roll Out

Hopefully by now you’ve taken a few minutes to look over The New Apollo Program, our comprehensive economic investment strategy to build America’s 21st century clean energy economy. (http://www.apolloalliance.org/endorseprogram.php)The plan, developed with the help of our allies around the country, will generate and invest $500 billion over the next ten years and create five million high quality green-collar jobs. It will accelerate the development of our nation’s vast clean energy resources and move us toward energy security, climate stability, and economic prosperity. And it will transform America into the global leader of the new green economy.

 

Starting on October 4, with a town hall meeting in Oakland, we are launching a nine-state rollout of The New Apollo Program, which also takes us to Oregon, Washington state, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York. We’ll cover the events on the Apollo Blog, and report on the outcomes across a newly redesigned Web site that we launch on October 1. Big things stirring, as usual, here.

 

In case you haven’t notice, this is the year for clean energy proposals. Earlier this month our friends at the Political Economy Research Institute and the Center For American Progress issued a plan that called for $100 billion in clean energy investment over two years, and asserted that could create four times as many jobs as investing in the oil industry.

We assert, though, that none are as comprehensive as The New Apollo Program. And with House action this week on energy legislation that promotes clean energy development, as well as opens new areas to offshore drilling, it’s clear that Congress is hearing the call for change in how we produce and use energy, not only from the Apollo Alliance but also from other organizations and the Obama campaign. (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=198) Apollo President Jerome Ringo was in Washington bearing the clean energy, good jobs message in his testimony this week before the House Ways and Means Committee. http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=189

In other doings: Co-Director Kate Gordon and Program Assistant Mac Lynch returned from the inspiring Newark’s Green Future Summit, which they planned and organized in collaboration with the City of Newark and a number of other national and local organizations. Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides joined Kate as one of the summit’s speakers. http://apolloalliance.org/greensummit.php

What was so exceptional about the conference was how Mayor Cory A. Booker responded. He attended both days and closed the summit with a cultivated address that wove together theology, history, and heart. And Booker committed to enact many of the ideas that were discussed, the first time a predominantly African American city has comprehensively pursued a new economic strategy based on clean energy development and creating green-collar jobs. If a city of 280,000 residents confronted by some of the nation’s highest rates of unemployment, childhood poverty, asthma, and air pollution can transform itself into a clean energy, good jobs showcase, then any community anywhere can do the same. http://apolloalliance.org/summitconclusion.php

Next week we join Green For All and a number of our other partners in participating in the Green Jobs Now, a national day of action to build the new economy. http://greenjobsnow.com/

 

We’ve been busy documenting the unfolding clean energy economy all over our Web site. (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=196) Christopher Greenspan is doing a first-rate job keeping us up to date on clean energy news. (http://apolloalliance.org/digest/)

Look for the new Apollo Feedback feature early next week, (http://www.apolloalliance.org/apollofeedback.php) which will include all of the intriguing comments to last week’s question about how people are responding in your region to calls for a national energy strategy that promotes clean energy and jobs, or the competing “drill baby drill?”

Have a great week. We’re certainly making clean energy progress. 

Apollo Update, 9/12/08: An Energy Plan That Works

Congress this week took up legislation to decide America’s energy future.  The question in Washington is the same as it is in the presidential campaign — “drill baby drill” or a policy that promotes real solutions, a plan for a reasoned future that invests in clean energy and good jobs.

The Apollo Alliance is pushing back against drilling proposals that won’t  and promoting a much better one that will, our own The New Apollo Program. (LINK). The New Apollo Program is a comprehensive national economic development strategy to scale up and accelerate development of the clean energy sector and create millions of green-collar jobs.

In pursuit of those goals, this week we published a careful analysis that compares the proposals in The New Apollo Program with those put forward in Barack Obama’s New Energy For America Plan, and John McCain’s The Lexington Project. (LINK)

We also sent an email alert to you and thousands of our other supporters urging you to help alert Congress that more domestic drilling is no solution to the energy, economic, security, and climate crises buffeting the nation. Please make your views known, and pass the alert onto friends and family. (LINK)

And today we are in Newark, New Jersey for the first of the two-day Newark’s Green Future Summit, which the Apollo Alliance and Mayor Cory A. Booker organized with the help of a number of other national and local organizations. (LINK)

The idea of the summit, which was nearly a year in the making, was two fold. First, to bring Newark’s diverse talent and experience together with leaders from other communities to develop a roadmap for sustainable development. And second, to support the city in developing green urban initiatives – integrating green buildings into energy-efficient neighborhoods, developing new parks, fostering business development in clean energy that produces green-collar jobs, greening the Newark port – that create jobs, increase community welfare, and expand economic opportunity.

The Alliance’s work to help organize Newark’s Green Future Summit is a feature of The New Apollo Program. The program’s entire focus is reducing pollution, increasing efficiency, providing good jobs, and expanding opportunity for all. “Newark is a model of how older industrial cities can take the lead in moving this country toward a future of clean energy and good jobs,” said Apollo Co-Director Kate Gordon, who spent countless hours helping to plan and organize the event and is a summit speaker. Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides and President Jerome Ringo also are speaking here.

Thanks so much for being a part. The question I’d like you to consider for next week’s online Feedback feature (LINK) is how are people where you live responding to calls for a national energy strategy that promotes clean energy and jobs, or the competing “drill baby drill?” What strategy and message reaches people in this great moment to choose?

Send your responses to me at keith@apolloalliance.org, and let me know where you are writing from. We’ll post them next week in Apollo Feedback. 

Apollo Update, 8/29/08: At The DNC

DENVER Beyond what the Democrats contend is the epic misrule of the Bush administration, and beyond what the Obama campaign asserts is Senator John McCain’s obeisance to a belligerent president lies Senator Barack Obama’s new frame for the 2008 presidential election.

Here are its pieces.

America is in peril. Obama is the man to fix it. And the most powerful tool at his disposal is developing a clean energy, good jobs economy that ends America’s addiction to foreign oil, rebuilds what he called the “American promise,” and clears the sky of global warming pollutants.

“For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President,” Obama declared during an acceptance speech last night that was tempered and specific. “In ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=157)

Obama added moments later: “I’ll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced. America, now is not the time for small plans.”

Last week was exciting, satisfying, and daunting for the Apollo Alliance, which had board and staff members in abundance at the Democratic National Convention.(http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=151) Never before has a presidential candidate or a party so powerfully pursued a new economic development strategy founded on the development of clean energy and millions of family-supporting jobs.

That idea started with the Apollo Alliance in 2004 and has grown and expanded and elevated until it became a priority of the 2008 presidential campaign. This week we introduced in Denver The New Apollo Program (http://www.apolloalliance.org/endorseprogram.php), which updates and implements the 2004 New Energy For America report that first put the clean energy, good jobs strategy before America.

Our week in Denver began on Sunday night with a reception at the downtown law offices of Holland & Hart that was hosted by our Chairman Phil Angelides, President Jerome Ringo, and our other board members. (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=137) Nearly 400 people attended, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, and leaders of the clean energy business, nonprofit, and social justice sectors, as well as 11 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Many thanks to Holland & Hart for having us.

We met with T. Boone Pickens (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=145), briefed five state delegations, and conducted dozens of interviews. (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/147023.asp?from=blog_last3) Phil did 10 radio interviews on Monday and appeared on a national Fox TV program Tuesday night. We also spoke in meetings and panels, including Jerome’s prime time national television appearance before the full convention on Tuesday night. (http://gallery1.demconvention.com/Default.html?VideoID=491)

The New Apollo Program and the entire organization – board, staff, state affiliates, Alliance members, and supporters – are helping to advance the most important new economic development strategy of our lifetimes. With jobs on the line, rising gas prices, falling incomes, and a nation mainlining foreign oil, the Obama campaign is risking the presidency on a calculated bet that a majority of Americans will join the pursuit of a clean energy, good jobs strategy. He and the nation may well be surprised at how solid that bet really is.

Some of us are now off to the Republican National Convention, where we hope to make the same impact.

We posted your comments from my question about Apollo’s role as a pragmatist. (http://apolloalliance.org/energyrally.php) We have new feature pieces on biofuels (http://apolloalliance.org/gallon.php) and California utilities pursuing a renewable strategy (http://apolloalliance.org/cautilities.php). Our Apollo Blog closely covered the events in Denver. (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/) Keep watch on the Apollo Digest, which resumes its daily email dissemination this week, for ongoing news about the clean energy, good jobs sector. (http://apolloalliance.org/digest/)

Apollo Update, 8/14/08: Is Energy Pragmatism Sensible?

A copy of USAction’s “Invest in America’s Future,” which calls for a new era of national mobilization around health care, education, clean energy, and the economy came through the Apollo Alliance office this week here in San Francisco.  (http://www.usaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=eiJPJ5OVF&b=71216)

The plan prescribed a reasoned approach to make America better. The section on energy was prepared with the help of Apollo’s program assistant, Mac Lynch, and made public in Washington in mid-July. It pays close heed to all of the clean energy ideas the Apollo Alliance has advocated since our founding in 2004 – development of wind, solar, biomass, energy efficiency, conservation, research and technology, and the millions of green-collar jobs that will result.

Yet in urging Washington to address the energy crisis, as well as take up the hard work of developing affordable health care, guaranteeing access to college, and managing government more responsibly “Invest in America’s Future” makes an even larger statement. The group’s carefully considered development strategy reflects the national consensus on achieving solutions to big problems that public opinion polls consistently say has emerged in the United States. 

So you can imagine the dyspepsia around here when a crisis as formidable as the supply and price of energy has evolved into questions of manhood – Drill or no drill? Nuke or no nuke?

Drilling and new nukes serve just two purposes. For Senator John McCain, who’s staked the election on these two issues, it’s an attempt to command the real politik of the moment and put Senator Barack Obama on the defensive. For carbon producers, it keeps America tied up in an ideological debate that prevents anything useful from happening.

Outer continental shelf exploration is expensive, technically uncertain, environmentally risky, and socially divisive. California and other coastal states say they will oppose more drilling. The soonest any new supplies would reach American shores could be a decade, and probably two decades away says the U.S. Department of Energy.

Same for new nuclear power plants. The cost of Progress Energy’s proposed new 2,000- megawatt nuclear plant in Florida, for example, is already $17 billion and rising. To pay for it, customers in the St. Petersburg region would see substantial rate hikes in their monthly bills, possibly as soon as next year, though the amount is being kept hidden by the state and the utility. The developers say the plant could come online by 2016, though that date is a wild guess at best. (http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/article701322.ece)

But we all live in the here and now. And our reality – rising gas prices, melting ice caps, the shrinking middle class, hundreds of billions of oil dollars sent to foreign nations that don’t like us — mandates that we insist that our leaders pursue the clean energy, good jobs strategy that America already agrees on. And we should start by demanding that Congress pass the renewable energy tax credits that clean energy developers and their financial backers depend on. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin)

Here at the Apollo Alliance we’re making the case for those ideas. We’ve also started to consider a new role, in partnership with our national alliance of business, environmental, labor, social justice organizations, and our state and local affiliates. That role is to be pragmatic.

If drilling and nuclear power are on the table, what does the public get in return? In exchange for reaching some sort of pact on two energy sources that will make no difference in our lives for years, we join with USAction and many other public interest organizations in mobilizing and scaling up new clean energy sectors that are already producing immediate and long-term job, energy, and climate benefits.  In exchange for old ideas that hold America back, we call on you to help pursue the new ones that move us forward.

Is pragmatism sensible here? Love to hear what you think. 

Apollo Update, 7/10/08: Gas Prices at $4.21 a Gallon

I spent July 4 in northern Michigan, near Traverse City, where I’ve lived since 1993. Gasoline is $4.21 a gallon. A good job in the region pays $10 to $13 an hour without benefits. People commute in pickups and old SUVs to jobs that lie 30 or more miles away. Energy costs are a big deal to workers whose weekly paycheck is around $300, but who spend $12 to $16 a day for gas — $60 to $80 a week — to earn their keep.

Here in Michigan, and I suspect the rest of the spread out and economically distressed Midwest, the price of gasoline is either the dominant civic priority or very close to it. The presidential campaigns certainly think so. The few sports events I watched on television featured opposing ads about how Senator McCain or Senator Obama plan to respond to the high price of gasoline.

The political chattering class and both campaigns see gasoline prices as a wedge issue, even as both candidates promise to accelerate development of alternative fuels. Senator McCain’s message, though, promotes “action,” despite the fact that two of the three steps he proposes - suspending the gas tax and “more production at home” - will have no significant consequence on supply or price this year, or next year, or the year after that. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55OMCI_AWxU)

Senator Obama meanwhile wants to raise mileage standards and provide a $1,000 tax cut. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OK8-8oLjtk)

It seems plainly apparent that this debate is going to get sharper and much more penetrating. With every dime increase in price, gasoline is steadily drawing closer to being the issue in this year’s campaign. Why? First, the price of gas affects every American, and especially those in the swing states - Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and a few others - where people spend a lot of time behind the wheel. Second, Americans grasp the basics of gas and its price structure in a way that they don’t understand health care, or climate change, or even the Iraq War. And third, the rising price of gasoline is a powerful metaphor for the distress Americans feel about their capable country, now blundering, enfeebled, and off course.

Our role at the Apollo Alliance, and yours as partners and supporters, is this: Insist  that both presidential candidates clarify the dimensions of the deepening energy crisis, and be truthful with voters. And demand that the next president enact a clean energy development strategy within the first 100 days that will keep energy prices affordable, strengthen the economy, rebuild the middle class, and improve national security.

We’re not talking quick fixes and gimmicks. The federal government has a huge role in promoting, regulating, and leveraging its resources to produce electricity with wind, solar, geo-thermal, and other clean sources of energy, as well as the modern transmission systems to move electricity more efficiently. The government can accelerate conservation measures and energy efficiency practices and tools. It can work with states and local governments to foster new designs for growth that are compact, beautiful and accessible. It can help build rapid transit and regional high-speed rail systems that provide low cost alternatives to the rising expense of car ownership and driving. And the government can help with training the millions of workers who can earn family-supporting wages to build, manage, service, and maintain the clean energy sectors.

Failing to take these steps puts the country in more jeopardy. This week, 80-year-old Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, essentially made the same case in announcing his Pickens Plan for energy security, which includes a big stake in wind energy. (http://apolloalliance.org/blog/?p=104) Our own Kate Gordon, the Apollo Alliance interim co-director, eloquently described the benefits of the clean energy economy to The New Republic. (http://www.tnr.com/environmentenergy/story.html?id=e95ca531-e809-4c0d-8ccb-4d376a3af2e0). And many of you have great ideas and passion for this issue, eagerly expressed in the three-part Apollo Feedback we posted this week here,  (http://www.apolloalliance.org/shelffeedback.php) here,(http://www.apolloalliance.org/shelffeedback2.php) and here. (http://www.apolloalliance.org/shelffeedback3.php)

Our Daily Digest writer, Chris Greenspan, is doing a terrific job keeping us up to date on what’s happening in the clean energy and good jobs realm. You can see his dispatches here (http://apolloalliance.org/digest/) or subscribe here and we’ll email it to you every day. 

Apollo Update, 8/1/08: Teamsters Sign on to Clean Energy Economy

When he declared last week in Oakland that “we’re not going to participate any longer in any ANWR coalition. We are out of that and out of it forever,” Teamsters President James P. Hoffa added two more cars to the gathering freight train of popular support for a new clean energy, good jobs national economic strategy. 

The first car, of course, is packed with the 1.4 million members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, now much greener than they’ve ever been. And the second is occupied by Hoffa himself.  

In his widely-watched speech he called for a comprehensive energy policy – “What about solar power, what about wind power?” he asked. Hoffa joins Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Al Gore, T. Boone Pickens, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Pawlenty and others who are closing in on an astonishing bipartisan consensus about how to respond to the most critical issues of our time – energy, the economy, developing and retaining good jobs, and climate change. 

If you remove the hot button outliers — like outer continental shelf drilling, which really has no relevance in the short-term because it’s expensive, politically divisive, and likely decades away from producing useful amounts of energy — the agreement on the rest is striking.
 
1. America can’t drill its way out of addiction to oil.
2. Efficiency and conservation are consequential pieces of a comprehensive energy strategy.
3. Scaling up wind, solar, geothermal, clean fuel made from grass, and other renewables reduces the triple-barreled risk to our security, economy, and environment.
4. New technology – especially in the development of clean next-generation vehicles, and in dramatically reducing CO2 pollution from burning coal for electricity – is essential.
5. These steps will produce a blossoming economy and millions of good jobs that people can count on, reduce the risk of climate change, curb the $700 billion a year bill for foreign oil, and dramatically improve national security. 

Arguably, not since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 has America reached such formidable agreement on what to do about a major threat to its well-being. What a challenge and an opportunity. I’ve been in 20 states this year as a journalist and an advocate, talking to people about the transition we confront. My conclusion is that Americans are more than ready to take up the challenge. They are eager to engage. The much larger problem is whether lawmakers in the states and in Washington, D.C. will be there for them. 

This week Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides was in Washington with Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley and a group of Democratic Senators who asked him to help sort through the issues and the solutions. Energy is issue number one in the nation’s capital, as it is in the presidential election. The question come January, when the new president takes office and a new Congress is seated, is: What comes first? A grimy ideological debate about offshore drilling that does nothing about supply or price? Or something that matters, like investment in efficiency and renewable energy that can make a difference immediately? 

Afterwards, Phil told a news conference that America was mobilizing around a new national purpose and was ready to support a new national energy and economic strategy. Ours is called The New Apollo Program. 

“We need to renew our can-do spirit and enact a new Apollo program for America that gets us off oil, makes us energy independent, invests in clean energy, and creates a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs,” Phil said. “America has an extraordinary opportunity to embrace bold action, take charge of our destiny, and put people to work to secure a more prosperous future.” 

You all heard about T. Boone Pickens, who is causing a sensation nationally with his prominent support for wind energy. You can read about another oilman in the same mold in the Midwest. He’s Martin Lagina, who earned a fortune drilling for natural gas in northern Michigan in the 1990s, and is now building wind farms in his home region. 

If you haven’t already, please consider signing our petitionopposing outer continental shelf drilling and supporting investment in clean energy and green-collar jobs.  

Keep in touch with clean energy, good jobs news on our Apollo Daily Digest. And look for upcoming articles on our Web site on how cities are leading the pack on developing clean, green economic strategies, and more about grass gas development. 

Hope your summer is going well. Here in northern Michigan, after a slow and cold start it’s been warm, shimmering, clear, and magnificent. Feels good. Talk to you next week and have fun.

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