energy policy reform Quotes

Subsidies for the oil, gas and coal industries are projected to cost taxpayers more than $135 billion in the coming decade. At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies' already enormous profits.

I think in the end, you know, we're just addicted to oil. We've got to overcome that addiction, and we need some serious accountability of big oil, because big oil, like so much of big businesses, has just colonized our government, colonized the regulatory agencies so we can't impose any kind of accountability on them.

You know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and the need to deal with global warming, and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation, and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people.

We continue to go from crisis to crisis, whether it is electricity or whether it is gas prices. We need comprehensive solutions, not patchwork crisis management. We wouldn't be in this situation today if Senate Democrats weren't holding up the national energy plan that the president proposed back in May of 2001.

And we need a full affront on an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country if we don't move quickly.

We need to inject some old-fashioned American values and common-sense, practical thinking into our energy policy.

It is extremely disappointing to me to see that even now when leading Democrats and even military veterans try to make our energy future an area of common ground and not a battleground, they are still being rebuffed by dirty energy devotees in both parties and undermined overall by the polluter lobby.

I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster.