Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Join us at Netroots Nation, next Friday, room 19, 9 am, for Energizing America: Setting an Agenda for Progress. This panel will range far and wide across our energy challenges and opportunities.

On the panel, two founders of Energize America: Jerome a Paris and Devilstower; two extremely Energy Smart candidates, Debbie Cook (CA-45) and Mark Begich (AK-Senate), and myself.

Energize America

Energize America 2020 formed in late 2005, here on Daily Kos, as a community of enthused bloggers moved from discussing and dissecting concerns over energy and global warming issues to an effort to work toward a holistic set of solutions. Developed on the web with hundreds of diaries (Energize America tag), 10,000s (100,000+?) of comments, and significant interaction behind the scenes between impassioned, committed, and engaged people, the Energize America team presented this plan at Yearly Kos in Las Vegas, with Governor Richardson on the panel with us. (For the five-part annotated briefing.) This plan, in retrospect, has some tremendous strengths (efforts to be holistic, considering a range of issues and seeking to work from bumper sticker to serious policy) to weaknesses (such as not strong enough targets … but remember, this was before the 2006 elections). It represented, however, a first effort to use the blogosphere to develop substantive policy in an open-source manner.

In the year that followed, the Energize America team began to interact with members of Congress. For a fleeting moment (sigh, most of 2007), it seemed that a senior member of Congress would be taking the blogosphere developed concepts and moving them to action, to legislation. We discussed our efforts to Crash the Hill at Yearly Kos 2 in Chicago last August.

Energize America has continued to evolve (mutate, some might say) but continues to strive to work as a nexus between a broad blogosphere community and policy making on energy (and energy-related) issues. Energize America has contributed, behind the scenes, to legislative action in multiple states and team members have had the chance to comment on draft Congressional legislation, informed (educated) by the robust energy discussions at Daily Kos and elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Energize America at Netroots Nation, Austin, Texas

For the third time, Energize America team members will get together physically to discuss, face-to-face, the critical challenges we face and to propose innovative concepts to help move the nation forward toward an energy smart future.

Jerome a Paris will discuss the reality of our energy challenges, a reality that many doubted just a few years ago. He will lay out a stark statement as to where we will be if change, significant change, does not occur.

Devilstower will tackle a quite serious issue, one of framing and understanding that is literally critical to understand and master if we are going to be able to achieve the necessary change. All too often, you will hear that “the economic costs are too high” to do something about Global Warming. That renewable power is “too expensive”. Devilstower will tackle this lie, this powerful truthiness, through a discussion of how these claims have turned out when confronting past major challenges and mandates for change.

A Siegel (oops, me) will lay out Energize America’s current effort, current concepts for helping to change the nation’s course when it comes to energy issues. Discussed extensively last evening in Energize America: FESA not FISA! (please visit and comment if you have not done so already), the Freshman Energy Smart Acceleration (FESA) Act is a package of suggested programs that could provide a rallying point for the freshmen (and women) class of 2009, to join together for passage a set of legislative initiatives to help spark an Energy Smart renaissance across the United States. This $3 billion package is built around a set of core principles. The proposed elements include

• Energy Smart Community Bonds to foster energy efficiency and renewable energy in public buildings across the nation
• Additional funding for greening school buildings to both reduce energy use (save money, reduce pollution) and improve educational quality in America’s public schools
• A plug-in-hybrid electric school buses program. (Note: PHESBs are truly Energy COOL!)
• An Energy Smart Education package
• Electrification of America’s rail lines
• A package for Energy Smart Mail service

Together, these proposed acts would provide visible and positive change throughout the nation toward a cleaner, energy smart future, while providing capacity building that will help foster other change.

Energy Smart Candidates Debbie and Mark

Two exciting and thoughtful candidates will join the panel. Both are Mayors, with experience in working to help make their communities Energy Smart. They will bring that perspective to the panel to discuss their vision of how to move the nation forward and a perspective on blogosphere-legislative partnerships on energy (and other) issues.

Mayor Debbie Cook, Huntington Beach, California, on the board of directors for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA) and Post Carbon Institute, etc, and running against energy dumb Dana Rohrbacher in CA-46.

Mayor Mark Begich, Anchorage, Alaska, has taken a leadership role in the movement by Mayors and cities to help move the nation toward a better path. He almost literally saw himself in the mirror, taking a photo of himself as a youth and his son at the same location. The striking change in retreated glacier ice comparing the photos turned Begich’s tide, so to speak, in the battle on Global Warming. Begich is running against Energy Dumb Ted Stevens for the US Senate.

Join us …

Ask yourself: Are you doing your part to ENERGIZE AMERICA?

Are you ready to do your part?

Your voice can … and will make a difference.

So … SPEAK UP … NOW!!!

Join Jerome a Paris, Devilstower, Energy Smart candidates Debbie Cook (CA-45) and Mark Begich (AK-Senate), and myself for a conversation about Energizing America: Setting an Agenda for Progress next Friday morning in Austin, Texas.

And, please, take the time to read and comment on Energize America: FESA not FISA!