With July 4th nearly here and all the Declarations of Energy Indpendence out there, it is time to ponder what American leaders of the past would have to say about energy and environmental issues confronting the nation today.
Perhaps they would like energy judged not by the color of money, but by the content of its carbon? Or maybe they would challenge us to ask not what our country could do for our cars, but what cars we could drive for our country?
Get your creative juices flowing and leave your adaptations in the comments.
Here’s what I think Lincoln might say:Seven score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new energy source, deposited in the Carboniferous, and now pumped from the ground to burn as fuel.
Now we are engaged in a great challenge, testing whether this nation, or any nation, can meet their energy needs while protecting their security and our world’s climate. We are met on a great marker of that challenge, Dependence Day. We have come to dedicate ourselves to reducing our oil dependence through solutions that also protect the climate so that nations might thrive.
The world may little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what was started here. It is for us to be dedicated here to undoing the work of big oil to block conservation which has thus far so ignobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from this day forward we pledge to reduce our oil dependence — that we here highly resolve to adopt solutions to kick the oil habit — that this nation, through clean technology, shall have a new birth of industries and jobs — and that an energy system that is secure and that is sustainable shall flourish on the earth.
(Written for the press conference announcing Environmental Action’s Dependence Day campaign.)
