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Part 2

After four decades of talking about the need for energy independence in America, leaders of a Thursday press conference in downtown Grand Forks said it’s time to break the country’s addiction to foreign oil.

After four decades of talking about the need for energy independence in America, leaders of a Thursday press conference in downtown Grand Forks said it’s time to break the country’s addiction to foreign oil.

“With America’s $1 billion per day addiction to oil and the disaster in the Gulf, it presents us with a clear choice,” said Jason Schaefer, North Dakota representative of the National Wildlife Federation.

“We can either keep delaying or we can finally take action to become energy independent,” he said.

About 20 people gathered at the Porpoura Coffee House to see copies of the “Declaration of Energy Independence,” which explains how the country’s dependence on foreign oil has increased in the past 40 years and calls for Congress to pass a plan to change that.

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Robin Eckstein knows about U.S. dependence on foreign oil in more ways than one. She served as a truck driver with the Army’s 1st Armored Division in Iraq, ferrying fuel and water for her fellow soldiers. She left the service in 2007, but she since has found another way to serve, as a member of Operation Free.

Operation Free is a coalition of military veterans and national security groups dedicated to American energy independence. They want a sustainable national energy policy that weans the United States from dependence on oil from nations that don’t share our values and interests, mitigates damages of climate change and provides “green jobs” for young vets after service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I don’t see it as a left issue or a right issue,” Eckstein said. “I see it as an American issue.”

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(CNN) — For two years in a row, I celebrated Independence Day in the oppressive heat of Iraq along with fellow soldiers. A few nonalcoholic beers and some locally grown watermelon were our replacement for hot dogs and potato salad.

This year, as Americans across the nation celebrate July Fourth with barbecues and fireworks, those most responsible for defending our independence, the military, will continue to fight two wars. And it is a shame that we will let yet another July Fourth pass us by without making substantial progress toward ending our unnecessary dependence on oil, a dependence that is funding the bullets that our enemies fire at our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is for that reason, and many more, that the fight for energy independence is being fought here at home, a struggle I hope more Americans will join in support of those who are fighting abroad.

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Robin Eckstein has a closer relationship than most of us to the long supply chains that brings oil from the well to the wheel. In 2007 she was an Army truck driver in Iraq, shipping fuel from Baghdad International Airport to the forward bases of American operations. The U.S. military is an oil-thirsty machine, and it was the job of troops in logistics, like Eckstein, to keep the occupation fueled. That meant driving miles every day in a fuel convoy through some of the most dangerous streets in the world.

“Every day when we left the airport, I was thinking, time to roll the dice,” she said. “Would it be insurgents, an IED, something else? We were just a big, slow, vulnerable target.” (See “Oil Spill: For Now The Pressure Holds.”)

To Eckstein—who made it home OK from her tour in Iraq—the epiphany was inevitable. If gas was still cheap in America it was in part because the U.S. military was paying to keep some level of stability in the Middle East. Oil had its hidden costs for the U.S., costs that weren’t factored into the price of gas—one of which was the blood of young American soldiers. “It all really resonated with me,” the 33-year-old said. “Why weren’t we doing things in a more efficient way?”

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Excerpt:

Even before the brown pelican became the iconic image of the Deepwater explosion, the polar bear’s reign as the climate movement’s mascot was coming to an end. “The child with the inhaler or the worker in Ohio that doesn’t have a job or the mom filling up her car with $4-a-gallon gas—those are more effective symbols of what the future holds if we don’t have change in our energy policies,” says Daniel J. Weiss, the director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress. Late last year, a handful of former Iraq and Afghanistan vets established a group called Operation Free, which, with a partner group, VoteVets.org, is responsible for the most visceral climate-change ad in recent memory. Titled “Tough,” it features footage of American troop convoys in Iraq getting blown up by IEDs—some of which, the ad contends, are made in Iran—and then, over an image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Iraq vet declares, “Every time oil goes up one dollar, Iran gets another one-and-a-half-billion dollars to use against us.”

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While blame is being assigned for the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, here is a list of those who directly or indirectly contributed to the blowout, the response, and the looming eradication of uncounted life forms, lifestyles and retirement accounts:

President Obama.

Ronald Reagan.

Jimmy Carter.

The Bushes, pere et fils.

British Petroleum, Transocean, Halliburton, Dick Cheney, the Mineral Management Service, Rush Limbaugh, Arianna Huffington, the Sierra Club, the National Association of Manufacturers, climate change denialists, Al Gore, drivers of 12-mpg SUVs …

Actually, all of us.

In degrees great and small, we all share responsibility for the deaths of 11 men, a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and the economic (among other) consequences of denying for so many years that a petroleum-based economy was — and is — ultimately unsustainable.

Since the Oil Embargo of 1973, when OPEC, pushed by Arab nations, clamped off petroleum exports to the U.S., we have known that crude oil was a finite resource.

Yet we ignored the warnings, we ignored the forecasts, we blithely burned as much crude as we could pump into our fuel tanks — and now we are experiencing one consequence of that foolish denial of reality.

There’s been much demanding of heads, since the Deepwater Horizon sank and its wreckage destroyed the blow-out preventer that was supposed to contain oil from what should properly be identified as the Macondo 252 well.

Problem is, there are too many heads to collect.

There’s another leak from a Gulf rig, but it’s producing such a minuscule amount of oil, compared to Macondo 252, that it’s drawing no attention at all.

Solutions to sopping up the millions of gallons now or about to wash ashore all along the Gulf coast range from the sublime to the idiotic.

Among the sublime is a technology created by Jeffrey Youngblood, an assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue University. Youngblood has created a membrane that, he said in a Purdue news release, will remove 98 percent of oil dispersed in water.

Whether production of that membrane, now being licensed through the Purdue Research Foundation’s Office of Technology Commercialization, can be deployed rapidly enough to save the Gulf’s ecology and economy is, presently, unknown.

What is known is that we cannot continue to depend on petroleum alone to power our economy. There could — and having seen a cataclysm that we were told was impossible, probably will — be further spills, perhaps as disastrous as the Macondo 252 catastrophe.

To prevent them, the federal government must immediately impose extraordinarily stringent restrictions on all off-shore oil exploration, while sponsoring a Manhattan Project-level effort to shift our economy from oil to renewable fuels.

Monday, the “American Clean Energy Now Tour” will visit Indianapolis, with a round-table discussion of U.S energy options beginning at 6 p.m. at the University Place Hotel & Conference Center, 850 W. Michigan St. The group includes veterans, labor and religious representatives; organizations participating include the Sierra Club, Pew Environment Group, National Wildlife Federation, Blue Green Alliance, Clean Energy Works, Hoosier Environmental Council and Operation Free.

It is one of the many discussions Americans must have about our energy — and environmental — future.

I’m certain that, in hundreds of university and private industry labs, engineers are looking for ways to make deep-water drilling safer, and to clean up the spill. There is, after all, money to be made from catastrophe.

There’s also money to be made from finding alternatives. And if there is only one lesson we have learned from the Gulf spill, it’s that we can’t afford another.

Rod Rose is the assistant managing editor of The Lebanon Reporter.

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf and our country spends more than a billion dollars a day on foreign oil, it has never been more important to hear from those who will benefit from clean energy – Hoosiers.

Today, as America celebrated Flag Day, Repower Indiana, a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, facilitated a conversation between Hoosiers and local veterans and national security leaders on how a transition to clean energy sources will create jobs, make our nation more secure and stimulate Indiana’s economy.

“The Deepwater Oil Disaster has shown us the devastating consequences of our reliance on oil,” said General George Buskirk, former Adjutant General of Indiana. “Worse still, we continue to spend a billion dollars a day to buy oil from abroad. It’s time to make a transition to clean, renewable energy produced in America — which will create new jobs and make our country more secure.”

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LANSING, Mich. – What do a Michigan priest, a businessman and a war veteran have in common? Their views on climate change.

Michigan proponents of the energy bill now awaiting action in the U.S. Senate have formed a coalition to encourage Congress to include provisions to address climate change. Father Charles Morris, founder of Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, a group of 300 congregations across Michigan focused on energy stewardship, believes a lack of climate change legislation will lead to more economic hardship.

“Taking courageous action to address climate change is heart-and-soul crucial to increasing our security, creating more jobs, keeping the $24 billion that leaves our state every year to pay for fossil fuel, to bring it back in. And to defend against the serious economic problems which will arise by failure to act. ”

Another member of the coalition offers an alternative to petroleum. Gary Lezarski, who operates an ethanol plant in Lake Odessa, says that in one year the plant has created 40 jobs, produced 50 million gallons of ethanol, and purchases 1.5 million bushels of corn per month.

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Motorists driving east towards Charleston on Interstate 64 are greeted by what many would view as an unwelcome sight: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s face plastered on a billboard.

The eye-catching advertisement, along with a similar one along the West Virginia Turnpike near the exit 45 rest stop, tells passersby that Iran is reaping millions of dollars in oil profits every day Congress delays passage of a proposed Senate energy bill, the American Power Act.

It also tells them they can learn more at the website PasstheAmericanPowerAct.com.

The American Power Act is one of two energy bills before Congress that, among other provisions, would limit carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Both bills are currently stalled, and both are the middle of a public relations tug-of-war between interest groups that want to either see the legislation passed or defeated.

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On Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted down a proposal that would have increased our dependence on oil and allowed oil companies and other dirty energy polluters to operate with fewer restrictions than they have now.

The proposal, authored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and her Big Oil allies would have increased our addiction to oil by 450 million barrels and Big Oil’s profits by $47 billion at a time when we need to reduce this dependence and transition to cleaner, safer sources of energy.

It’s ironic that as the worst oil catastrophe in history unfolds in the Gulf, spreading millions of gallons of oil that threaten families in Louisiana and Florida, the Senate would consider this handout to Big Oil. But it’s a tragedy when the interests of consumers and our national and economic security are hung in the balance for the sake of Big Oil’s agenda.

Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall did the right thing by opposing Murkowski’s Big Oil bailout and siding with New Mexican consumers, veterans, national security experts, environmentalists, health care professionals, faith leaders, business leaders and many others. We need more leaders like Bingaman and Udall to stop the handouts to polluters and hold them accountable for the harm they cause to our economy, our security and our health.

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The horrific Gulf oil spill makes it easy to think that switching to clean, renewable energy sources is all about the environment. Another group thinks it’s all about national security. In its report, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” 11 retired admirals and generals found that “Climate change, national security, and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges, with climate change acting as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions in the world.”

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Climate change is a national security issue, according to two Maine military veterans who served in Iraq.

Andrew Campbell of Portland was part of a group of military veterans who toured the country promoting clean, sustainable energy as a matter of national security. During his deployment in 2004 and 2005, the six-year veteran of the Army National Guard served in Mosul, Iraq as a logistics specialist with Maine’s 133 Engineer Battalion.

“As a logistics specialist in what was essentially a construction unit, I was able to pay attention to the money we were spending to support these operations over the course of a year,” Campbell said Thursday during a Portland press conference hosted by 1Sky, a national coalition urging climate change legislation in Congress. “It took several million dollars to support the unit for one year, when it came to construction supplies, water, maintenance supplies, food, and a lot of that on oil.”

Campbell noted that the United States spends over $1 billion on oil every day.

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To the editor:

I called Scott Brown a couple of weeks ago to voice my support for the American Power Act, the landmark climate and energy bill introduced by Senators Kerry and Lieberman.

He responded by saying he supported reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning to clean economy, but, “I believe that if we are going to take any dramatic actions in imposing a hard cap on carbon dioxide emissions, we must ensure participation by other high-emitting nations, such as China and India, so that well-intentioned U.S. efforts won’t just send jobs overseas where low standards could cause even greater harm to our global environment.”

I didn’t think U.S. Sen. Brown took his leadership queues from China and India. These are fast-growing economies, working to pull hundreds of millions out of poverty.

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Maine native and Vietnam veteran Maj. Gen. Don Edwards and other military leaders, veterans and local officials will host a town meeting to discuss the connection between climate change and national security and call for the passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation.

The meeting is at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square.

Adam Cote of Portland, who ran for Congress in 2008, will also be at the meeting. He served in Bosnia and Iraq in the U. S. Army.

State Rep. Alex Cornell du Houx, D-Brunswick, will moderate the forum.

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Watching tens of thousands of gallons spew daily into the Gulf of Mexico, wreaking economic havoc and environmental catastrophe on the Gulf Coast, is only latest — and the largest — shock to our country courtesy of our addiction to and dependence on oil. Conservative estimates by both the government and independent scientists indicate that, to date, anywhere between 18 to 28 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf since this disaster started.

When it comes to the U.S. and oil, however, here is the number that really scares me: Americans send one billion dollars a day overseas to pay for oil, most of it flooding a global oil market that enriches hostile governments, funds terrorist organizations, and props up repressive regimes. I can tell you one thing for certain–this is not in our national security interest.

America’s reliance on oil is our Achilles heel. We desperately need a comprehensive energy strategy–one that cuts our addiction to fossil fuels, boosts clean energy technology, and moves our nation dramatically towards energy independence. It is vital to our national security, to the safety of our men and women in uniform, and to the fight against terrorism. The bottom line is this–we must put America in control of its energy future.

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Senators in both parties considered swing votes on climate change legislation are under pressure from a $3 million advertising campaign launched this week.

The television ads press lawmakers in more than a dozen states to end Capitol Hill “bickering” and approve the sweeping climate change and energy bill unveiled last month by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

The advertisements stress that the U.S. is losing out to other countries by delaying further investment in green energy jobs. It also warns that delay makes the U.S. continually dependent on foreign oil producers.

“The Chinese are kicking our butts in clean energy investment. The Europeans are taking our new energy jobs, and countries who hate us are getting rich selling us oil while Washington just bickers,” states the first ad in the campaign, which the groups say will also include online spots, direct mail and field work.

Republicans for Environmental Protection and the Truman National Security Project — which counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on its advisory board —began airing the first in a series of television ads Tuesday.

The ad campaign — which a spokesman for the Truman National Security Project said is expected to continue for weeks — includes TV ads in Washington, New Mexico, North Dakota, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts, Florida and New Hampshire.

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Our reliance on imported energy is making our country less safe. As an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam era, I’m troubled by how we continue to expend resources and manpower to purchase and protect oil in the Middle East. Much of the money we send over there ends up in the hands of terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I recently attended a conference in Washington, D.C., with more than 50 other military veterans who agree that our energy policy must be changed. We heard from former CIA Director James Woolsey, who emphasized the destabilizing effects of climate change on countries and economies around the world. While there, I had an opportunity to visit about these issues with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. North Dakota may have vast reserves of oil and coal, but those valuable assets aren’t enough. We also need to further capitalize on our potential for production of fuel and electricity from sources like wind and solar

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JONATHAN GENSLER :: RANK: Captain, U.S. Army; AGE: 32; HOMETOWN: Huntington, West Virginia; THEN: Tank and mortar platoon leader, Kuwait and Iraq; NOW: Graduate student in business at MIT and government at Harvard; plans to start a clean-energy business; GENSLER SAYS: “I buried a fellow West Virginian who was killed when his Humvee was struck by an IED that was probably financed by Iran. In my mind, he was killed by a regime propped up by our oil demands.”

We sent them into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. What they saw there has sparked their next mission — to end our dependence on fossil fuels.

Ten years ago, Robin Eckstein was a college student in Appleton, Wisconsin, struggling to pay her bills with bartending and waitressing jobs. Her credit card debt was mounting. Out of the blue, a National Guard recruiter e-mailed her, offering a free college education in exchange for her military service. She enlisted, and reported for active duty in October 2000. Three years later, she was driving supply trucks across the Iraqi desert.

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Using paid advertising combined with media events, activists this week have been targeting Maine’s Republican senators, trying to earn their votes a key climate change vote slated for today (Thursday).

But the national political agenda will not end with the vote. On Saturday, a coalition of veterans and national security organizations will host a town hall meeting here to call for passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation.

A flurry of advocacy ads will try to affect a vote today on what’s called the “Murkowski amendment.”

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Beyond today’s vote on the Murkowski amendment, groups are looking long-range at clean-energy legislation.

At 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the Portland Public Library, Operation Free will host a town hall meeting with top retired military leaders and veterans, along with local elected officials, “to discuss the connection between climate change and national security, and call for passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation.”

Read the full article here.