Green jobs economy -- and the future of America

Improving the economy, bettering the environment, reducing American dependency on foreign oil, and making sure America remains as one of the world leaders are all connected.

They are all connected by the strands of renewable energy and conservation. If the U.S. doesn't invest significantly in renewable energy and really commit to energy conservation -- we will continue to be a major world polluter, a huge contributor to greenhouse gases, and repeatedly find ourselves in wars over oil around the world. We will also fall behind the true innovators and leaders -- Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, etc. --who are already deeply committed to building a renewable energy economy, and thereby disproving the myth that environmentalism is "bad" for the economy.

McCain's record on environmental issues is highly questionable -- for example, he has consistently voted against higher fuel economy standards for trucks and cars. McCain gives lip service to wind and solar energy, and supports an in-direct, free-market, tax rebate approach, but he has not outlined specifically what he would do with respect to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

Worse, in my view, he wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants in the U.S. in the next 20 years. You can say what you will about the safety of nuclear power plants -- McCain, of course, claims they're 100% safe -- but the problem of radiocative waste won't ever go away.

The life of radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants is literally 100,000s of thousands of years. Why we should leave the next 1,500 generations of Americans a legacy of radioactive waste, when we can tap the most powerful "nuclear power" source -- the sun itself -- without producing dangerous waste is beyond me. (Actually, it's not beyond me -- it's about money and power, and there are powerful people who will make lots of money if 45 nuclear power plants go up in the U.S. in the next 20 years).

Also, as you increase the number of nuclear power plants, and the waste they produce, you introduce additional targets for terrorists, and more raw materials for them as well. But, of course, these issues are not on McCain's radar screen at all.

Obama has put forward many, many specific plans for the economy, for health care, for American foreign policy, and for renewable energy. You can find the specifics on his plans on barackobama.com. In relation to renewable energy, in contrast to McCain -- who's offered a smattering of what I consider to be weak tax rebates, Obama has committed specifically to investing $150 billion dollars in renewable energy over the next 10 years. This is a lot, but a drop in the bucket compare to what we spend on our military annually (more than $500 billion), or what we've spent on the war in Iraq (approach $1 trillion! -- imagine if some of this money had gone to developing solar and wind, geothermal, energy etc.!)

If Obama succeeds in putting forward his specific renewable energy plan -- and I sincerely hope he does (of course, first he needs to get elected) -- rather than being a follower with old ideas, many of which are harmful to the environment and global humanity, America will be a leader on what, to me, is the most important issue in this election: energy and the environment. These are, again, fundamentally tied to the global economy and America's economic future.

I wish more Americans were more in tune with the rest of the world -- which clearly views energy and environment issues as crucial to the future of global humanity. The Pew Global Attitudes Projects surveys show that, for example, while 90 percent of Brazilians and 70 percent of Germans view global warming as an important issue, only 42 percent of Americans do. Depressing...