Iraq war veteran from Wis. hits road for clean energy

BY LARRY BIVINS • GANNETT WASHINGTON BUREAU • OCTOBER 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — As a member of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division’s main support battalion in 2003, Robin Eckstein hauled fuel and water for the military in Iraq.

Through that experience, she said, she began to think about how dangerously dependent America was on foreign oil and the need for analternative energy source.

“I ran missions every day, if not twice a day,” Eckstein said. “It was just apparent that having only one source of energy to refuel our trucks was a problem because it meant more runs, and that meant more risks.”

For Eckstein, a policy addressing clean energy and climate change became a national security issue, just as it has for scores of other current and former military personnel. But that’s not the only reason the 32-year-old Appleton native is on the road in support of energy policy legislation Congress is considering.

Eckstein also is jobless and says she believes the bill the House has passed and a Senate bill would create jobs.

“We have the manufacturing base in Wisconsin,” she said, “where I think we could really use these clean-energy jobs.”

Last weekend, Eckstein was in Washington to help make a commercial for Operation FREE, a coalition of veterans and national security organizations, on climate change and national security.

Since Monday, she has been on a bus tour as part of an Operation FREE campaign to call attention to climate change as a national security issue. The effort involves two buses, one on a northern swing, the other traveling south.

Eckstein is on the northern route, which began in Missoula, Mont., and rolls into Wisconsin today, with stops in La Crosse, Madison and Milwaukee.

“What we want to do is to raise awareness and ensure that Congress leads on this issue,” said Alex Cornell de Houx, an Iraq war veteran and Maine state legislator, who is coordinating the northern leg of the tour.

Cornell de Houx pointed out that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., talked at length about the national security angle when he and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., recently introduced their energy-climate change legislation.

Supporters of the Senate and House proposals call for a cap on the release of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is causing global warming that could have dramatic consequences. The proposals also would require that a percentage of the nation’s electrical power come from renewable energy sources.

“It really struck me how this country was so crippled by its dependence on this one source of energy,” Cornell de Houx said. “We send $1 billion a day overseas to foreign states (for oil) that frankly don’t have our interests in mind. I would rather see that money invested in the U.S.”