Environment

We recently wrote Illinois Senator Dick Durbin urging his support of legislation to address our energy policy by supporting clean energy generation with renewable energy technologies while reducing the environmental impact and climate disruption caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The added benefit is creating clean energy jobs.

Below is Senator Durbin’s response - we appreciate Senator Durbin’s support!

Today the White House released the fiscal year 2011 Budget. The numbers call for a $3.8 Trillion dollar budget that projects an estimated $1.2 Trillion dollar deficit.

Some key areas getting financial attention are: Job Creation; Small Business tax credits; support of  our Educational system, the military and clean energy. We agree that addressing each of these will begin to put a fix on issues that have all too long been ignored. Not much being said about Health Care as it relates to this budget - we wonder why.

Now the real question - What will Congress do to, and with this budget?

Mired in the most significant economic downturn since the 1930’s, we have an opportunity that can put people to work and create a new era of economic prosperity.

Each time we have had an economic crisis, there has been a development (private and/or governmental) that gave us new life. Examples of this were the New Deal and World War II preparation; building the interstate highway system; and the proliferation of the Internet and the resultant dot com technology boom. The aforementioned developments turned an economic crisis into a new era of prosperity creating jobs.

We hear that 70% of our economy is based upon consumer spending. When people don’t have, or are concerned about having a job, they don’t spend. We have reached a point in our country’s life cycle that calls for a paradigm shift away from the 70% consumer spending model. We need to begin building the foundation of a new model based less on consumer spending and more on consumer conservation.

Every single day, 8,000 people are turning 60 years old – the baby boomers – the largest segment of the population that has shaped our economic profile since the end of World War II. When people enter, what I call the “conservation stage” of their life, they are not spending as in the prime earning years of their life cycle. The children and grand children of the baby boomers do not appreciate the greed and waste exhibited by past generations – the deficits and debt with which they will have to deal.

This new model is about how we consume, conserve and create energy with renewable, clean resources. This is the single most significant development that can lift our economy out of the tank and usher in a new era of prosperity and job growth.

This will take a cooperative effort by government and the private sector to stimulate (economic incentives) an energy strategy based upon the reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuel based energy. Every individual, business and government entity will economically benefit from a comprehensive strategy of energy conservation and the generation of clean, renewable energy. The added benefit of this strategy is the massive reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide we have been emitting into our environment that may be the cause of the disruption in our climate - I won’t call it “global warming” yet.

Let’s all get on board and together revitalize our economy based upon our new found energy resources, like the sun and the wind.