Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar offers PES a stimulating and thought-provoking analysis of the future of the energy business throughout the US as we enter a brave new world of political development. Whereas previous generations may have been prepared to accept compromise and second-best, we now have a golden opportunity to forge ahead in the energy business, placing the US firmly at the forefront of technology and developments, he argues.
{pagebreak}
America is facing fresh and demanding challenges as we survey the new energy frontier. We are now all engaged upon the project of helping build America’s clean energy economy – a project upon which our nation’s competitiveness, our security, and our prosperity depend – a project that will help us build a strong and stable foundation for our economy to grow again.
It is also a project in which we have a powerful partner in the President of the United States, Barack Obama, and – for the first time ever – in the United States Department of the Interior (DoI). As managers of one-fifth of the nation’s land and 1.7bn acres of ocean, it is time the DoI changes how we do business and open our doors to wise, responsible renewable energy production on our public lands. For at no time in our history has the need for a new energy policy been so urgent.
We import more than two-thirds of our oil, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year.Unemployment is at eight and a half per cent, carbon emissions are rising, our national security is threatened and countries like China and India are ready to cash in by leading the global clean energy economy. With millions of new jobs at stake, this is an opportunity America can’t afford to miss. We must lead the clean energy revolution, and with the help of groups like the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), we will spark it in the coming months by passing comprehensive energy legislation that lifts our nation’s production of renewable energy and helps secure our energy future.
