Congress this week took up legislation to decide America’s energy future. The question in Washington is the same as it is in the presidential campaign – “drill baby drill†or a policy that promotes real solutions, a plan for a reasoned future that invests in clean energy and good jobs.
The Apollo Alliance is pushing back against drilling proposals that won’t solve our energy crisis and promoting a much better one that will, The New Apollo Program. The New Apollo Program is a comprehensive national economic development strategy to scale up and accelerate development of the clean energy sector and create millions of green-collar jobs.
In pursuit of those goals, this week we published a careful analysis that compares the proposals in The New Apollo Program with those put forward in Barack Obama’s New Energy For America Plan, and John McCain’s The Lexington Project.
We also sent an email alert to you and thousands of our other supporters urging you to help alert Congress that more domestic drilling is no solution to the energy, economic, security, and climate crises buffeting the nation. Please make your views known, and pass the alert onto friends and family.
And today we are in Newark, New Jersey for the first of the two-day Newark’s Green Future Summit, which the Apollo Alliance and Mayor Cory A. Booker (pix right with Phil Angelides) organized with the help of a number of other national and local organizations.
The idea of the summit, which was nearly a year in the making, was twofold. First, to bring Newark’s diverse talent and experience together with leaders from other communities to develop a roadmap for sustainable development. And second, to support the city in developing green urban initiatives – integrating green buildings into energy-efficient neighborhoods, developing new parks, fostering business development in clean energy that produces green-collar jobs, greening the Newark port – that create jobs, increase community welfare, and expand economic opportunity.
The Alliance’s work to help organize Newark’s Green Future Summit is a feature of The New Apollo Program. The program’s entire focus is reducing pollution, increasing efficiency, providing good jobs, and expanding opportunity for all. “Newark is a model of how older industrial cities can take the lead in moving this country toward a future of clean energy and good jobs,†said Apollo Co-Director Kate Gordon, who spent countless hours helping to plan and organize the event and is a summit speaker. Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides and President Jerome Ringo also are speaking here.
Thanks so much for being a part. The question I’d like you to consider for next week’s online Feedback feature is how are people where you live responding to calls for a national energy strategy that promotes clean energy and jobs, or the competing “drill baby drill?†What strategy and message reaches people in this great moment to choose?