This weekend, our nation will recognize its 234th birthday — celebrating the freedom we have fought for since the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in the town of Lexington, Mass., in the heart of my congressional district.
The great American experiment still has battles left to fight, freedoms we must achieve. The call of this generation is to finally achieve freedom from oil by moving to a clean energy future.
Oil giant BP has created a gaping wound in the Gulf of Mexico, dumping 3.3 million barrels of oil into America’s ocean. This is now the largest oil spill and environmental catastrophe in our nation’s history.
Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, American consumers send billions of dollars a week to pay for foreign oil, strengthening our enemies’ hand. This unsustainable transfer of wealth to OPEC and Big Oil companies threatens our economic and national security.
Please watch this short video featuring the powerful testimony of a veteran who testified before my committee regarding the dangers our troops face due to our addiction to oil:
Last year, the House of Representatives came together and said enough is enough, passing historic clean-energy legislation (the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security Act) that invests $190 billion in clean energy like wind, solar, geothermal, and other advanced technology, plus another $20 billion in advanced fuel-efficient vehicles like plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars and trucks.
When Waxman-Markey is combined with the fuel-economy and renewable-fuel standards Democrats successfully put in place, America will save more than 5 million barrels of oil a day, more than we already import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
We need a declaration of independence from foreign oil. It’s time to encourage a new generation of minutemen and -women to deploy solar, wind, and geothermal power, stamping this renewable revolution with the words “made in the USA.”
