Just a quick message to tell you that Draft 5 of
Energize America - A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security, a
Kossack-generated strategic energy plan designed to provide the United States with energy security by 2020 and energy independence by 2040 will be posted tomorrow or Thursday (under my name).
As was announced recently, Energize America will be the main focus of the energy panel over at YearlyKos next month, and that occasion is likely to be the time when it stands in the full glare of public exposure. We count on you to help us eliminate the latest wrinkles and improve it one last time before we go sell it outside of dKos.
As you may remember, I started this process with
Building together an effective Dem energy policy (I), which came after a number of energy diaries where lots of great ideas and proposals had been brought forward by the Kossack community. The project quickly blossomed into an effort to draft a comprehensive and coherent U.S. energy policy that could be used by Democrats and other energy security advocates. Subsequent versions included diaries by
Meteor Blades (Timothy Lange) (
Reenergize America ? A Democratic Blueprint (Second Draft)) and
devilstower (Mark Sumner) (
Energize America? A Democratic Blueprint (Third Draft)), culminating in the draft that was posted at the end of last year (
Energize America - A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security (Fourth Draft)). The effort to draft Draft 5 has been led by
Doolittle Sothere (George Karayannis).
Now, after the careful reading of more than ten thousand comments and lengthy discussions, we will be proposing an updated version of the legislative programme, which includes 20 Acts and is meant to be taken as a whole.
Energize America will be posted as a diary but will be available as a pdf document to be downloaded. After posting it in its integrality as first, we will post smaller parts of it to discuss these more specifically (transport, power generation, funding issues, the impact on the average American).
In forthcoming diaries, we will also provide updated proposals for bumper stickers, "elevator pitch", "credit card" or flyer versions of Energize America for further discussion and roll out.
It is our hope that the programme will be embraced by as many kossacks as possible and brought to Democrats, whether elected politicians or candidates, as a ready, realistic and politically winning energy plan. This means, of course, that there is widespread support for the plan itself and for the idea of netroot-generated policy proposals to be "pushed" to the political world.
Draft 5 will be the final test of whether this can be achieved. Your opinion will be paramount for us to decide how ambitious we are beyond this document, and thus I hope that as many of you as possible will participate in the discussion.
We will be counting on Kossacks to build nationwide support for a long-overdue progressive solution to this country's evolving energy crisis.