|
I’m feeling a little like Mr. Rogers today. Partly, that’s because I’m
keenly aware that our youngest child is in the second half of his last year at
home, and I’m waxing a little nostalgic for when the kids were little and Big
Bird and Mr. Rogers were a permanent part of my afternoons. And partly because,
as I write this, we’re swearing in a new American President.
“The word today, children, is ‘Hope.’ Can you say ‘hope’?”
I’m keenly aware that large parts of our country and our world are hurting
right now, led into a world-wide recession by un-watched investment bankers in
New York who bundled worthless loans together into bright, shiny packages and
sold them off to retirement systems in Iceland and to ordinary people in, say,
North Carolina & Nebraska.
And when our last president got Congress to shovel money at the problem, his
financial wizards gave $350 billion to the very banks that got us into the mess
... and it looks as if those banks have decided just to sit on the money,
waiting for it to hatch into a solution, rather than use it to grease the cogs
of industry and get this country working again. Amazingly, Congress is letting
them.
But the word today is “Hope.”
Part of my hope is wrapped up in the snow I’ve been shoveling so I can get
to work and the dogs can get outside to sniff the rabbit and deer tracks that
fascinate them so. It’s the plan to get this country back to work building a
new energy policy and infrastructure that doesn’t depend on imported Middle
Eastern oil.
The proposal is to take some of the money they are so fond of throwing
around in Washington
-- our money, if you please -- and actually do something that will put
Americans back to work. I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of
U.S. dollars going to pay sheiks in Saudi Arabia and companies in China that
seem bent on poisoning children. The idea is to take $100 billion of the
proposed bailout and invest it in new energy infrastructure, federal building
retrofits, and tax credits for retrofitting private homes and businesses for
greater energy efficiency, mass transit, and freight rail, and for making our
current energy grid more efficient.
It looks like this idea -- if Congress has the sense to invest in it, rather
than just stuffing the money into the pockets of the suits on Wall Street --
will create two million jobs, most of them in construction and manufacturing
with decent pay. The construction jobs are in building new so-called “green
energy” infrastructure (the proposal so far is to double energy production from
renewable sources) and retrofitting homes, businesses, and government
buildings. The manufacturing would entail making equipment that’s needed.
That doesn’t include the whole “save money because the buildings we have will
use less energy for heating, cooling, and lighting” part of the equation. And
THAT, by the way, means less demand for Middle Eastern oil; which -- we all
noticed this Fall when the tanking economy created less demand for oil -- means
lower prices.
Let me pause to say, “Hallelujah!”
Aside from kick-starting job-creation, I think the best part of some of the
proposals that are floating around is the idea of laying a “green” foundation
under all of it. One proposal is to reverse an EPA policy from the last eight
years and allow California
and 32 other states to enact, once again, tougher car-emission standards than
the Feds have. California has a smog problem
(so does Charlotte,
of course), and they should be allowed to clean it up. Meanwhile, the parts that
enable those cars and trucks to run cleaner are “Made in the USA.” Grandpa
always said it was better to kill two birds with one stone, so this seems like
a no-brainer.
Are there actually technologies out there that can produce sizeable amounts
of energy from renewable sources? In the words of one recent politician, “You
betcha!” I’ll cite just two examples -- a small windfarm in Atlantic City, New
Jersey (with only five windmills) produces all the electricity for 2,500 homes,
and an entire town in Germany (not noted for its sunny days) powered itself off
new, thin-film solar panels.
So I’m feeling hopeful. Hopeful that we can actually save the planet we all
depend on and that we’ll put Americans back to work at the same time.
Marjory Holder is a Vice-Chair of the Watauga County
Democratic Party. She shovels snow and waxes nostalgic on 13 acres between
Boone and Blowing Rock.
|
