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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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The Apollo Alliance Strikes Back
Tuesday 27 January @ 21:57:06 |
 by Joel Haskard
On January 14, 2004, a powerful group of labor, environmental, civil rights, business and political leaders, called The Apollo Alliance, laid out a vision for a “New Apollo Project” to create 3.3 million new jobs and achieve energy independence in ten years. The Apollo Alliance aims to unify the country behind a 10-year program of strategic investment for clean energy technology and new infrastructure.
“One of the keys to America’s energy security — and therefore our national security — lies in rebuilding our cities. We need strategic investments to retrofit old buildings, expand transportation alternatives, restore our infrastructure, and create solar, wind and hydrogen technology. Apollo will rebuild our country in a way that benefits all Americans and reestablishes our global economic competitiveness.”
Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. (D-IL) in an issued a statement in support of the Apollo Alliance
Recently there has been so much talk about Mars you might think Ray Bradbury was calling the shots. The little robotic rover Spirit is sending back pictures of red Martian dirt, and George W. Bush, trying to show he has that “vision thing,” is telling the nation how great it would be to send a manned mission to the Moon and eventually Mars.
It must make perfect sense to the Administration and its supporters: Saddam’s capture means that Saudi terrorists responsible for 9/11 have been defeated; the tax cuts for the rich mean that the economy is where it ought to be (in their bank accounts); and unemployment, rising health care costs, crumbling public schools … those are problems worlds away from their reality. Seeing an American flag on Mars (and a few little military perks, too?) seems like a real good way to spend billions of federal dollars.
Now, imagine a program that created 3 million new jobs, incalculable health benefits, gave the United States freedom from foreign oil, and made our country the leader in sustainable energy and infrastructure. Whose “vision thing” do you like better?
Under the cover of war, some in Congress will push for more coal, more nukes and more oil drilling at home.
They will claim that we can drill our way to energy independence. We can’t. The United States has a mere 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves. These dark energy boosters lack not only credibility but imagination as well.
Here’s some background. Over the last four years America lost 11 percent of its manufacturing jobs. During that same period we lost clean-energy market share to foreign companies. Japan increased its market share of solar manufacturing from 25 to 50 percent, and Europe controls 90 percent of the world’s wind-turbine production.
Wars have traditionally been the time America has decided to make large, strategic investments in infrastructure and emerging industries. The obvious precedents include:
• The government’s construction of the interstate highway system at a cost of $1.2 trillion between 1958 and 1991.
• The Department of Defense’s creation of the computer network that later became the Internet.
• The Pentagon’s purchase of computer microchips in the 1960s that spurred the electronics revolution.
We should begin by tackling our reliance on foreign oil, but we must go further to rebuild the way we use energy throughout the economy. We must:
• Guarantee the market for safer and cleaner technologies like wind, solar and biomass.
• Go whole hog with hybrid cars by providing tax breaks for people who buy them and incentives for the companies that make them —if they agree to keep most of the new jobs in the United States.
• Up the investment in public transit and rail.
• Support hydrogen by investing not just in more research but also in an infrastructure for refueling fuel cell cars at existing gas stations.
• Elevate efficiency by offering tax breaks to families and businesses that buy efficient appliances and retrofit their facilities and factories.
The Apollo Alliance has received support from 17 of America’s largest labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers and Machinists, as well as a broad cross section of the environmental movement, including the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Greenpeace.
Dr. Ray Perryman, a corporate economist from Texas who prepared a detailed economic analysis of the proposal for a New Apollo Project said, “If economists agree on anything, it’s that inventing new technologies and creating whole new industries is what America does best. We are a creative economy, not a commodity economy. The New Apollo Project would keep us on the cutting edge of manufacturing emerging technologies and secure our long-term prosperity.”
Perryman concluded that the proposed tax credits and investments would create 3.3 million new, high-wage jobs for manufacturing, construction, transportation, high-tech and public sector workers while reducing dependence on imported oil and cleaning the air.
Perryman’s analysis shows that a New Apollo Project would also position the United States to take the lead in fast-growing markets, dramatically reduce the trade deficit and more than pay for itself in energy savings and returns to the U.S. Treasury. Perryman’s study was based on an input-output analysis of impacts on key industry sectors, using a highly regarded economic model and extensive survey data.
Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. (D-IL) issued a statement in support of the release saying, “One of the keys to America’s energy security—and therefore our national security—lies in rebuilding our cities. We need strategic investments to retrofit old buildings, expand transportation alternatives, restore our infrastructure, and create solar, wind and hydrogen technology. Apollo will rebuild our country in a way that benefits all Americans and reestablishes our global economic competitiveness.”
According to Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, one of the country’s oldest and largest environmental groups, “A New Apollo Project will help accelerate the transition away from our dependence on imported oil and other polluting fossil fuels, and toward clean energy like solar and wind. Apollo stands in marked contrast to the Bush Administration’s damaging energy agenda, which hurts job creation and the environment. An Apollo Project can simultaneously address the threats of manufacturing job loss, global warming and our diminishing national energy security.”
The price tag is estimated at $30 billion a year for 10 years. Isn’t $30 billion a year more than the country can afford at a time when next year’s budget deficit will be $450 billion? Not when you consider the huge dividends. More than three million high value added jobs, lower utility bills, increased productivity and competitiveness, cleaner air and water, and improved public health. It will produce substantial energy savings across the economy and cut our current Persian Gulf oil imports nearly in half.
The recent econometric analysis shows investments in clean energy create over four times as many jobs as tax cuts and generate large returns on investment. In fact, Apollo is a strategic investment that will both pay for itself and help reduce the deficit.
Or we could go to Mars.
For more information please visit http://www.apolloalliance.org
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