Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The American Clean Energy Party

Earlier this month, Eban Goodstein shared an idea to create the American Clean Energy party - ACE - in this article on grist.org.

The entire article is worth the read, as it's a compelling idea.  Goodstein lays out 3 main components that the ACE party would be built around:
1) The American Permanent Fund: Every year, each American family receives a check for $1,000, and rising. The source? A fee on big polluters
2) Clean energy leadership: Thirty billion a year to capture global leadership in the clean energy technologies that will rewire the world.
3) Green collar jobs, today: A large-scale loan guarantee program to finance energy efficiency retrofits of state, city, and federal buildings -- putting millions of Americans to work.

The aim of the party would be to run ACE-endorsed candidates in the primaries of both major parties, with the intention of shifting the debate to the most critical issue of our time - the climate crisis.

I like the concept for a lot of reasons - it will work to engage more people in the political process; it would be built around a positive vision for an energy-independent, safe, secure, clean-energy future; and it holds promise to provide the common ground needed to move past the counter-productive, divisive, partisan stalemates that are so common in our political culture these days.

ACE isn't a party yet - just an idea.  But it is an idea that has legs.  So stay tuned, and share the idea --hopefully, the right people with the necessary resources will come together to make something like ACE a reality soon.

Stay going.



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