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Our energy choices have been mostly limited to coal, oil, propane and gas for the past 150 years of the Industrialized Revolution, during which these energy dense fossil fuels powered the most rapid progress in the history of humankind.
To maintain the resulting present day level of comfort and convenience people expect, we are now drilling, fracking and scraping these ancient resources out of the earth at a colossal scale, causing unprecedented damage to the natural environment through their extraction, transportation and combustion.
An historical lack of viable energy options, and increasingly monopolistic industry business practices, have led to the concentration of trillions of dollars of wealth in the hands of the global fossil fuel industry. This goes back to oil barons like the Rockefellers and continues to this day with the Koch Brothers and their $83 billion net worth.
Today that accumulated wealth is being actively used to suppress, delay, thwart and otherwise prevent at all costs the necessary transition to a sustainable, renewable energy based economy.
Technology innovations and plummeting costs for solar, wind and battery storage have created an array of clean energy choices that were largely unavailable and/or inaccessible until now. The good news is that cost-competitive renewable energy options have finally arrived in the marketplace. The bad news is that we continue to be shackled to fossil fuels through the intentional anti-renewable actions of those who want to protect the unsustainable status quo.
To unleash the tremendous potential of renewable energy to create jobs, grow the economy and stop our over-reliance on polluting, finite fossil fuels, we need to democratize energy choice. How?
On November 8 we have the choice to vote for candidates who understand the gravity of the problems before us, as well as the opportunity. Renewable energy represents one of the greatest jobs and economic development opportunities since FDR’s New Deal put millions of Americans to work building energy and transportation infrastructure. If you want a more sustainable future, vote for pro-renewable energy candidates, thereby democratizing energy choice.
– Phil Coupe, Managing Partner, ReVision Energy