view from NRDC The U.S. can become a 100-Percent clean energy nation over the past 40 years? Here are some hints: it’s not coal, not oil, not natural gas, not nuclear power. Give up? The answer: efficiency. Americans have found so many innovative ways to save energy that we have more than doubled the economic productivity we get out of the fuels we do use. Indeed, efficiency has done more to meet our energy needs than oil, gas, and nuclear combined. The United States achieved these savings in part because NRDC has made advocating for efficiency the centerpiece of our energy strategy for more than three decades. This quiet energy revolution has vast potential. We have enormous reserves of efficiency still waiting to be tapped—not to mention huge stores of wind, geothermal, and solar energy. Indeed, the United States has enough resources to rely on 100 percent clean energy, and NRDC is committed to reaching that goal. But we can’t build this sustainable future if we insist on using the fossil fuels of the past. Fracking for gas in people’s backyards, dynamiting mountains in Appalachia for coal, strip-mining Alberta’s boreal wilderness to dig up tar sands—all scar the landscape and leave toxic We have enormous reserves remnants. All culminate in burnof energy efficiency still waiting to be ing fossil fuels that wreak havoc on the planet, releasing the globaltapped—not to mention huge stores of warming emissions that lead to wind, geothermal, and solar energy extreme storms, drought, and heat waves, as well as the pollution that contributes to respiratory illness, heart disease, and cancer. We don’t have to continue down this road, creating a grim legacy for our children. Instead, we can become a clean energy nation. How? First, demand that your elected officials say no to the dirtiest fossil fuels threatening our communities—no to power plants that fail to control their carbon pollution; no to destructive fracking operations and coal mining; no to the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry dirty tar sands oil through the American heartland to the Gulf of Mexico for export to other countries. And second, demand that your elected officials say yes to measures that encourage clean energy—like the policies that have enabled Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas to get roughly 20 percent of their electricity from wind. Or the Obama administration’s proposed carbon limits for power plants. Or the fuel economy standards that will require new cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon on average by 2025—and save consumers $1.7 trillion at the gas pump. You can add your voice to the chorus by going to our new site, DemandCleanPower.org. There you can take action and hear from NRDC trustees Robert Redford and Van Jones, as well as NRDC friends, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Carole King, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who are standing up for a sustainable energy future. Together we can get America on track to become a 100-percent clean energy nation.
francEs beinecke, President
1 0 onearth
Winter 2013/2014
Matt Greenslade/photo-nyc.com
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an you guess what our LARGEST SINGLE source of energy haS BEEN