The Middle East should be a wake up call for economic freedom, clean energy independence and democracy in America

Our economic recovery is in serious jeopardy because of our dependency on foreign oil coming to the forefront now from the high price of crude oil with the turmoil in the Middle East. Even Saudia Arabia, and its immediate neighbors, are not immune to major changes from within which could lead to brutal retaliation from the top and then who knows what will ensue. We at CCLI applaud all the democracy movements there, in Egypt and the surrounding region. What we do not applaud is Administration after Administration, Congress after Congress in the US failing to learn all the writings on the wall including the lessons of the 1970s (when we had crippling stagflation, sky high interest rates and other major economic problems that were all directly tied to our dependency on oil, to the high price of oil and instability in the Middle East).

Since then we should have been, and really should be now, aggressively diversifying our energy portfolio, developing a wise US energy policy and building up our own energy self sufficient capabilities right here at home. Since then we should have been, and we really should be now, mass producing clean and abundant renewable energy resources, establishing electric vehicles as the norm, becoming energy efficient to the Nth degree and conserving like our lives depend on it - because they do. The Middle Eastern regimes and monarchies like Saudia Arabia's spawn terrorism which directly threatens our national security as we witnessed on Sept 11, 2001 (when all but one of the terrorists was from Saudi Arabia). These regimes should be thwarted by the people there and by us not propping up their undemocratic existence through our gluttonous oil dependency. Likewise human induced global climate change threatens the basic hospitality of life on earth and also greatly endangers our economy and therefore we should aggressively be weaning off all of the greenhouse gas emitting fuels - starting with foreign oil.

Unfortunately today we are more dependent of foreign and middle eastern oil then we were in the 1970s; we consume more fossil fuels per capita; we do not value the ethic and act of conservation and we emit tons more greenhouse gases than we did then. We are dangerously backtracking. The fossil fuel industry in general and oil companies in particular, along with the elected officials on both sides of the isle who do their bidding, not to mention our own complicit complacency, are to blame. They have railroaded us to be gripped on the energy status quo for decades - at the highest expense of long term peace, prosperity and sustainability.

It's high time the American people, not just the daring people in the Middle East, take over the steering wheel and lead a new democratic movement here in our country on behalf of economic freedom, national security, job creation and sustainability. America can fuel itself, we can put our people back to work and we can do so with clean energy, innovation and conservation rather than the fossil fuel economy of old which has polluted our air, poisoned our water, endangered the climate (which enables our civilization to begin with) and our people for far too long. Let’s not ever again let our economy (integrity, security and health) be hijacked by a multi-national industry and bankrupt US policy. Let's transform the use and source of our energy once and for all. Let's lead the American clean energy revolution. Our children when they come of age in the future will thank us for the self determination and character, pride & purpose we demonstrate today.

http://my.firedoglake.com/repjohngaramendi/2011/03/01/electric-curr...

http://g2bgreen.com/category/oil-dependency

http://www.onemillioncalls.org/