Cal Cunningham: Clean Energy, Jobs and National Security

In his newest Focal Points blog post, Cal Cunningham draws upon his personal experiences and conversations across North Carolina to delve into the heart of our economic matters - by counseling with leaders across the energy and security spectrums and formulating a strong, comprehensive plan that will effectively generate the green jobs of our future. North Carolina has a lot riding on a greener economy.

“I went to Washington last week to meet with national security experts about the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act – legislation filed Wednesday in the U.S. Senate written to help create clean, green, sustainable jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas, to transition our economy to alternative and domestic energy sources and to check climate changing carbon emissions.”

As a military prosecutor in Iraq, Cunningham worked with law enforcement agents to investigate theft of U.S. resources, including the theft by Iraqi contractors of hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel – in a country where oil is at the center of the economy. Can there be a more obvious example of our addiction and dependence on this stuff?

Tackling the inextricably intertwined issues of good jobs, energy independence and climate change in a thoughtful, robust way will not only make America safer and our borders more secure, good solutions will invest in sustainable agriculture, solar/wind energy development, transportation, building and many, many more industries tied directly to our economy.

Disciplined actions, and the decisions behind them, take time in order to produce the optimal results. And I think we all agree that without a forward-thinking, progressive strategy that works for North Carolinians, we will remain economically vulnerable and miss an historic opportunity to build a stronger State.

As Cal says, this must be done right from the start, or we could dig ourselves an even deeper hole - and this one won't be bearing any oil, either!

H/T to Betsy's great post about UNC's wind power project.