94% of Americans Want Solar Power; Politicians Lag Behind

Shock of the week: politicians are out of touch with the needs and desires of the people. I know, it’s hard to believe, considering what a great job they do of keeping our best interests in mind as they squabble, pocket lobbyist bribes, dive for power and eat filet mignon for a casual Wednesday lunch.

A recent poll found that 94% of Americans support the development and funding of solar energy including 91% of Republicans, 97% of Democrats and 98% of Independents. 77% of those polled feel that developing solar power should be a major priority of the federal government.

The Sietch Blog has it:

When asked which one energy source they would support if they were President, 41 percent of Americans picked solar. Solar and wind together were favored nearly 20 times more than coal (3 percent).

“These results are an undeniable signal to our elected leaders that Americans want job-creating solar power, now,” said Rhone Resch, President of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of Republicans (72 percent), Democrats (72 percent) and Independents (74 percent) favor an extension of the federal investment tax credits (ITC) as a way to encourage development of solar power and fund continued development of the technology. In contrast, only 8 percent of Americans believe the ITC should not be extended.

At the end of this year, legislation that provides incentives for the growth of renewable energy are set to expire, and in order to build momentum and have a real hope of clean forms of energy becoming mainstream we need it to be renewed long-term. Get on it, lawmakers!

Link [The Sietch Blog]
Photo credit: Flickr user Jimmy_Joe

Lawmakers in the Dark – Lightbulbs to Leadership Campaign

“How many lawmakers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They’ll sit in the dark.”

The Sierra Club just released this hilarious new video highlighting the dumb things lawmakers have done and said about environmental initiatives and activism. Among them are James Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator who said in 2003 that there is “compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax”. The Sierra Club is urging you to not just switch out your lightbulbs and sit back: we need to act on global warming, and we need to do it now. The first step? Getting these idiots out of positions of power. Watch the video below.

You can learn more at LightbulbstoLeadership.org.

Link [Lightbulbs to Leadership]

ZapRoot: Deadly Quiet Hybrids, Stupid Politicians, Towel 2.0, and Swag

ZapRoot 035 in short: silent hybrids could be slightly more dangerous to a miniscule number of blind people, so of course some stupid politician wants to require carmakers to install noisemakers in their cars; Pategonia has a new site that lets you track the entire lifecycle of shirts they sell; Zaproot is looking for Green Earth Day Videos and is giving away swag to the ones they like best, some guy has created the Towel 2.0; ReadyMade is going digital (about fifty years late eh?); and Green Energy Wastebusters are saving people money off their energy biill and using cool ass tools and gadgets doing it.