Obama’s new director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Melody Barnes, is likely to focus a lot of her work on health care and education. But she’s also written a bit about what a progressive president should do on energy.
While she was the executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, she wrote a hypothetical State of the Union Address last January, “What a Progressive President Might Say.” Here’s the portion on energy:
Our economic security, our national security, our health, and the future of the global environment are fundamentally linked to the choices we make about energy. The technologies necessary to dramatically transform our energy future are well within our reach. The potential for the United States to pursue a course of innovation that would create good, high-wage jobs has been largely abandoned, leaving our economy dangerously vulnerable to price shocks and upheavals that dampen economic growth and burden middle-class families with unpredictable gas and utility bills. It is time to change course.
To secure a sound and sustainable energy future, I will propose a progressive energy plan that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, diversifies and expands domestic and renewable supply options, makes smarter use of the energy sources we have today, and reduces over-reliance on energy from any particular nation or source. My plan will invest in American ingenuity and actively engage the private sector to innovate and implement technologies to help create an energy system for the 21st century. Together we can reduce the threat of global climate change and transform our energy system in ways that stimulate the economy and increase our security.
