We meet at a moment when this country is facing a set of challenges
greater than any we’ve seen in generations. Right now, our brave men
and women in uniform are fighting two different wars while terrorists
plot their next attack. Our changing climate is placing our planet in
peril. Our economy is in turmoil and our families are struggling with
rising costs and falling incomes; with lost jobs and lost homes and
lost faith in the American Dream. And for too long, our leaders in
Washington have been unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
That is why this election could be the most important of our lifetime.
When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our
planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years
will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of
these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our
addiction to foreign oil.
Without a doubt, this addiction is one of the most dangerous and
urgent threats this nation has ever faced – from the gas prices that
are wiping out your paychecks and straining businesses to the jobs
that are disappearing from this state; from the instability and terror
bred in the Middle East to the rising oceans and record drought and
spreading famine that could engulf our planet.
It’s also a threat that goes to the very heart of who we are as a
nation, and who we will be. Will we be the generation that leaves our
children a planet in decline, or a world that is clean, and safe, and
thriving? Will we allow ourselves to be held hostage to the whims of
tyrants and dictators who control the world’s oil wells? Or will we
control our own energy and our own destiny? Will America watch as the
clean energy jobs and industries of the future flourish in countries
like Spain, Japan, or Germany? Or will we create them here, in the
greatest country on Earth, with the most talented, productive workers
in the world?
As Americans, we know the answers to these questions. We know that we
cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly
disappearing. Not when we purchase $700 million worth of oil every
single day from some the world’s most unstable and hostile nations –
Middle Eastern regimes that will control nearly all of the world’s oil
by 2030. Not when the rapid growth of countries like China and India
mean that we’re consuming more of this dwindling resource faster than
we ever imagined. We know that we can’t sustain this kind of future.
But we also know that we’ve been talking about this issue for decades.
We’ve heard promises about energy independence from every single
President since Richard Nixon. We’ve heard talk about curbing the use
of fossil fuels in State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo
of 1973.
Back then, we imported about a third of our oil. Now, we import more
than half. Back then, global warming was the theory of a few
scientists. Now, it is a fact that is melting our glaciers and setting
off dangerous weather patterns as we speak. Then, the technology and
innovation to create new sources of clean, affordable, renewable
energy was a generation away. Today, you can find it in the research
labs of this university and in the design centers of this state’s
legendary auto industry. It’s in the chemistry labs that are laying
the building blocks for cheaper, more efficient solar panels, and it’s
in the re-born factories that are churning out more wind turbines
every day all across this country.
Despite all this, here we are, in another election, still talking
about our oil addiction; still more dependent than ever. Why?