Letter to use: alternative energy sources

After Al Gore's inspiring speech yesterday about alternative energy sources, I promised a form letter you all could use to write your legislators in your state and in Washington. Below is the letter I sent off to my U.S. Rep. a little while ago; I am also sending it to both of my U.S. Senators and also my state senator and representative as well. Again, feel free to copy/paste my text below to use as a starting point. (As I mentioned earlier today, I encourage you to alter your letter somewhat - legislators tend to ignore form/chain letters, so please add some of your own thoughts and concerns, too.) If you need to find out who your federal legislators are, click Here. On to my letter:

Dear Rep. Brady,
I'm writing to you regarding energy alternatives in America, or a lack of them. In short, we need more and more of them, yesterday. I vehemently oppose additional off-shore drilling on the outer continental shelf, or in ANWR. This will only serve to threaten the environment and prolong our addiction to oil.

I urge you to support an Apollo-like program to develop multiple ways for American to kick our oil addiction, including much, much more money for mass transit (which Congress has long neglected at best. or ignored at worst - I tend to believe the latter); solar, wind, and wave technologies; and yes, better batteries like John McCain has proposed, too.

This program should also include tax incentives for companies to develop these technologies and to build them in the United States, with no loopholes (and that includes cheap labor in the Mariana Islands - the Tom DeLay loophole). If any manufacturing or R&D jobs get off-shored by a company that's received tax breaks, they should be rescinded immediately.

I also would like to see Big Oil pay more for the oil that it is already getting, courtesy of contracts from the U.S. government; the 12.5% oil companies currently pay is PATHETIC. It is OUR oil, not theirs. It should be doubled, and the revenue raised could serve as tax relief, or better yet, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and as tax incentives for development of new energy technologies.

I listened to Al Gore's speech yesterday in its entirety, and I found it inspiring. As a fellow Democrat, I hope and expect that you will be an active, forceful advocate for proposals like his.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning more about how you will support alternative energy sources. America needs to act boldly and quickly, NOW, and more drilling is not an option.

Thanks very much for your time.

Sincerely,

RJ

Again, please take just a few minutes to write your legislators. We have to demand action, and more importantly, we have to elect leaders to Congress who are going to be forceful advocates of alternative energy and change. I will share any responses I get from my legislators with you.

Photo: AP/LM Otero