End Our Country's Addiction to Costly Foreign Oil

It is time to end our country’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

This is no longer just an environmental issue, but an issue of critical national security.

We need to engage America’s best minds in a new “Manhattan Project” to unlock the technology and innovation that can be used to develop new sources of alternative energy. This will not only create thousands of new jobs but it will allow the US to be independent from unstable foreign energy suppliers and provide an environmentally sound way to meet our energy needs and reduce dangerous greenhouses gases.

Just imagine, if everyone in America drove a hybrid vehicle getting around 35 miles per gallon, we would no longer have to import a drop of oil from the Middle East.

In the Maine Senate I fought, and won, a two-year battle to pass a bill that would encourage the development of community wind power generators through incentive credits. These generators might be a single turbine on a farm or a small cluster of turbines owned by local residents, but they are all a step towards energy independence through a clean, renewable resource.

This country needs a multi-pronged approach to the energy crisis that includes:

• Energy Conservation. Encouraging more energy-efficient building design policies by setting green building standards. Offering tax incentives for retrofits to manufacturing plants and rewarding companies that create the best emissions-cutting technology. Applying minimum performance standards to appliances and other consumer goods. Phasing out the use of incandescent light bulbs in favor of new bulbs that require far less energy (this alone could eliminate up to 10% of the nation’s demand for electricity).
• Promote low emission, fuel-efficient cars. Setting higher fuel efficiency requirements and stricter carbon emission standards on all vehicles, including trucks and SUVs. Provide incentives to use hybrid and more efficient cars, and develop an infrastructure for alternative vehicle refueling.
• End tax subsidies for the oil industry, which reported profits last year of nearly $140 billion. This alone would save taxpayers $17 billion a year, end market distortions and make alternative energy more cost competitive.
• Improve our mass transit systems by supporting a system of regional high-speed rail. Encourage transit-oriented development by giving incentives to private companies to locate residential and commercial development near transit hubs.
• Develop alternative energy sources. Support research, market incentives, and tax credits for development and use of clean renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and tidal power.

I will fight for a national energy program that puts our people and our planet ahead of the interests of big oil. I have every confidence that a country that found the ingenuity and inventiveness to put a man on the moon can build a new alternative-energy industry to end our dependence on costly foreign oil and put us on the road to resolving the threats from global warming and climate change.