Recently I was rereading a portion of Thomas L. Friedman’s important book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, when I came across a paragraph I had highlighted because of its power and significance.  Permit me to begin this newsletter by quoting that paragraph.

“Up until 9/11, America treated the Arab world basically as a collection of big gas stations – the Saudi station, the Libyan Station, the Kuwaiti station. “Guys,” we told them – it was only guys we talked to – “here’s the deal: Keep your pumps open, keep your prices low, and don’t bother the Jews too much, and you can do what ever you want out back.  You can treat your women badly.  You can deprive your people of whatever civil rights you like.  You can print whatever conspiracy theories about us you like.  You can educate your children to be intolerant of other faiths as much as you like.  You can preach from your mosques any venom you care to…Just keep the pumps open, your prices low, don’t hassle the Israelis too much – and do whatever you want out back.”

Those attitudes that were so true before 9/11/01 seem to me essentially the same in January 2010.  Our nation still functions on an arrangement where oil is the essential ingredient that moves our cars, runs our factories, lights and heats our homes and therefore maintains our standard of living.  Take away the oil and this country immediately retreats to the dark ages.  Without oil we would, in a matter of hours, cease to be the world’s most powerful nation, becoming instead a people with third world status, vulnerable from abroad and subject to chaos and massive civil unrest.

One of my great hopes for our country when President Obama took office was that this issue would be a prime focus of his administration.  Finally, I thought, after eight years in which both the president and vice president were “oil men” with close, personal ties to Saudi Arabia, we have a leader who sees the need for a new national energy grid, powered by massive wind farms and solar fields.  I envisioned a stimulus program where tens of thousands would be put to work on this innovative idea.  I saw idle car plants quickly retooled to build wind turbines and solar panels.  I saw thousands employed constructing the new grid on, most likely, the millions of acres already owned by the national government in areas where both wind and sun are readily available. It would solve so many problems, I dreamed. This could be the spark that would ignite a new era of innovation and entrepreneurship for which this nation has always been known. No more dependence on petro-dictators who hate us. No more American money used to fund terrorist groups.  Instead, a clean source of cheap energy brought about by the creation of millions of green jobs. Yes, I thought, finally we will see our country move forward after a generation of stagnation.

Alas, I was wrong.  One year into the Obama administration I hear nothing of a new energy grid.  I see no American factories converted to the production of wind turbines and solar panels.  Rather I see massive government spending on tired, old legislation filled with the usual useless and wasteful earmarks.  The president who promised that the old era had ended, that he would check the federal budget “page by page and line by line” now signs bills that he admits contain the same waste as before.

Let’s face it.  Our government is dysfunctional.  Both parties are incapable of solving basic problems.  We don’t need more Republicans and we don’t need more Democrats.  We need more leaders; leaders who are more interested in the nation’s future than the next election cycle; leaders who are willing to put aside partisan rhetoric, seek common ground and, in a spirit of unity, common sense and civic responsibility, actually solve basic problems.  I urge you to demand from your representatives, senators and president a real change of course on energy issues.  I urge that you demand it immediately, for I fear that the time for solving this problem is winding down.