YOUR LIGHT BULBS

(jk)

Never in my life have I felt so patriotic.

To be a witness to history, to be poised at the beginning of something new, to be so hopeful for our country; I am an American and proud of it.

There was a moment after September 11th when President Bush had the empathy of the world in his hands. Instead of calling for shared national sacrifice, he took all that good will and threw it away on a war that will not end. I think often about where we would be as a country if Bush had taken Thomas Friedman’s advice and had set a floor to the price of gasoline with the excess going towards maintaining our aging infrastructure and developing new energy technologies. Instead, we had a housing bubble and dopey magazines like In Style a magazine about shopping.

I am certain that America is poised at another such moment, a moment when President Obama can call on us, and the world, to make the hard choices and the prudent investments, that will bring us peace and prosperity and a sustainable society.  Can we do it?  YES.  WE.  CAN.

I think the best line of President Obama’s speech was about “returning science to its rightful place”.

I would like to think this means that our scientists will again be able to guide and shape public policy, and to help us to do, as a country, what we need to do: lead the world toward a more sustainable future.

We will need to make sacrifices and hard decisions and I know I speak for many when I say,

We are fired up and ready to go!