Marsden for Congress

Right here in the 19th, we need to take a serious and hard look at the creation of the new economy of the future: renewable, sustainable and clean energy.  In addition to protecting and strengthening our traditional small businesses (the majority of which are small-scale agriculture) I will make it my goal to help our region plan for the economic future. And there will be no greater opportunity to strengthen the Central California economic base than by welcoming jobs-producing energy technologies.  Sustainable energy, green energy – non-polluting, clean energy.  Put simply: this is our region’s great opportunity to wrest the economic benefits of energy production away from foreign oil-producing nations.  And to strengthen our national security by becoming independent of those nations abroad.
 
The time is now: America is being rapidly outpaced by our international new-energy competitors while we cling to the ways of the past.  And there certainly is a precedent for this sort of policy in our state: a University of California study showed what we’ve done in the past.   Between 1977 and 2007 California’s energy policies created just short of 1.5 million jobs in our state.  And those policies kept our energy consumption approximately 40% lower than the average of most of America.  The California Small Business Association has recognized the fact that energy efficiency policies in California have aided our small businesses in a variety of ways – and that those savings have allowed our small businesses to actually get the edge on out-of-state competitors.
 
Congress is beginning to recognize the great value in leading America into the future.   Bills such as the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) introduced in May of 2009 have been widely lauded – even while the opposition digs in its collective heels and refuses to get off the international oil dependency that has threatened our national security and environment for so long.   But one supposes that’s why they’ve now found themselves in the minority.
 
Energy efficiency is only the beginning, as I see it.  We need to encourage and support research and development into the creation of new sustainable energy of the future.  The sort of energy production we can’t even begin to imagine today.  It wasn’t too long ago that solar energy production was unimaginable, but now it’s ubiquitous.  Solar panels are everywhere: quietly, cleanly producing energy.  A drive over the Altamont Pass provides evidence of the power of wind energy production.   We must continue to encourage such uses while discovering the next wave of clean energy.  It’s out there – waiting to be discovered and refined – and I will propose a federal research program to bring the best minds to our area, to create an energy “think tank” of sorts with a twin-fold goal: producing our next valuable, clean commodity that will put this region back on the road to economic prosperity while at the same time, providing jobs for today and tomorrow.