Lately we’ve been hearing a lot of excuses: people are unemployed because they’re lazy. They’re unemployed because they have skills mismatch.
The real reason people are unemployed is that the jobs they have the skills to perform have been exported at every possible opportunity for the last thirty years. We’ve retrained and retrained and retrained while this has gone on, until now they only industries left are training ... or going further into debt funding education in the next career that will be offshored as soon as someone figures out how.
America needs a solid industrial policy. And our current Congress is woefully lacking in the skills they need to serve the American people, rather than some transnational corporation.
We believe domestic renewable energy production is the foundation for the needed changes ...
Americans are a fundamentally industrious people. But today we have a cottage industry of spin doctors helping politicians to deny the facts: they’ve sold us out for thirty long years, and it’s our fault that we’ve not adapted to change.
America was once the workshop of the world, building everything we needed and exporting extra finished goods and raw materials. Today America is the yard sale of the world, where any industry that can be stripped away so some transnational corporation can show another penny’s profit next quarter, never mind the lives and communities laid to waste in the process.
America was once a creditor nation, but today we owe, both as a nation and as individuals. History shows what happens to debtor nations and the picture is not pretty.
Energy made here must employ people here; there’s just no way around that - the labor required has to be done where the production occurs, the investments that happen will be here making property tax revenues for everything from schools to fire departments - everyone wins big.
We need to expand upon the successes that domestic energy production will have by ensuring that the machines needed to produce energy are also American made. It might make sense to trade with other countries that provide a good living wage and manage their currency sensibly; Denmark is always at the head of the pack in wind turbine science because they have strategic feed in tariffs. Countries that are not fair to their workers and safe in their environmental practices should be avoided as trading partners.
Feed in tariff? Simply put, in European countries an investor who puts up a renewable energy system is assured a stable regulatory environment. Our Congress uses the PTC (production tax credit) as a political football every two years. This leads to a boom and bust cycle in wind turbine manufacturing every single Congressional session. They lobbyists make out from these antics but the turbine manufacturers, installers, and operators face endless misery.
Politically we need long term strategy from serious thinkers, not bi-annual dog and pony shows from politicians who didn’t get the job done.
Wind turbines. Solar photovoltaic panels. Solar thermal plants. Hydroelectric power from both rivers and tides, where it can be done without causing environmental havoc. Biofuels; ethanol from corn or sorghum, biodiesel from a variety of feed stocks. Wood, but burn it in advanced, clean, safe gassifier style outdoor furnaces. Passive solar thermal panels for homes and businesses. And simplest and easiest of all, tight new windows, doors, and insulation for any building in active use.
Can you add to the list of simple, time tested solutions that we don’t use purely because we don’t have policies that foster their use? Please comment below and provide a link if there is something we’ve not thought of for our list of ‘shovel ready’ energy producing and saving applications.
When our people get to Congress they’re not going to immediately sell out to the first lobbyists they see. In fact, they’re not going to sell out at all. There are plenty of smart analysts with an energy background on this site and other energy specific discussion sites like The Oil Drum. We’ll have regular dialog with community leaders in the energy field, taking in their ideas as the basis for policy discussion, and providing regular updates on the gritty details of what we’re doing and how it will be done.
We need your energy to get this done. You’re the media now, you bloggers - take our story and run with it. If you’re in the district for one of our candidates please volunteer in such a fashion as to help the entire Democratic ticket. If you can afford to do so donate to one of our candidates listed here.
EnergizeUS is a coalition of candidates across the country talking about how we can reenergize our economy, put Americans back to work in good paying jobs and lessen our dependence on foreign oil but creating jobs in the areas of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency. Candidates of the coalition are: David Cozad (TX-06), Raul Grijalva (AZ-07),Jim Holbert (KY-05), Billy Kennedy (NC-5), David Gill (IL-15), Lance Enderle (MI-08), Rodney Glassman (AZ-Sen), Cheryl Hudspeth (KS-02),Lainey Melnick (TX-21), Kevin Bradley (CO-05),Jerry Policoff (PA St House 41), and Michael Puhr (IL St House 104).
You can learn more about the coalition at EnergizeUS.org & you can join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.
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