Building
A New Energy, Economic, Environmental, Educational Future

For
Our Country and Our Planet

Democratic
candidate for California's 24th
Congressional District, Marta Jorgensen has formulated a bold new
campaign platform called E-Revolution. She believes this platform,
so named for its focus on the strong and productive reform of federal
energy, economic, environmental, and educational policies as well as
on citizen engagement, is necessary for the United States to compete
and survive in the new millennium.

The
first pillar of E-Revolution is energy reform. As our older energy
sources continue to pollute our environment, make us dependent on
foreign governments, and slowly get used up, we must adopt clean,
independent, and renewable forms of alternative energy like solar
power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, and biofuels.

Countries
like Denmark, which already gets 25% of its energy from wind power,
and Germany, which expects to get 45% of its power from renewable
energy sources by 2030, have already recognized the dangers of an
addiction to oil and coal. But Marta Jorgensen believes that the
United States can meet this challenge head on; we can take back the
mantle of energy pioneer we once held by supporting these new
technologies with tax breaks and federal mandates.

The
second pillar of this platform, economic reform, seeks to return the
American economy to the robust strength it once had and to create new
Green and higher paying jobs for American workers. This can be done
by steering our economy toward alternative energy sources, by making
our economy more efficient, by working to overcome global warming,
and by creating more favorable trade agreements.

While
the American oil and coal industries are losing jobs, renewable
alternative energies can create and support millions of new jobs.
According to studies, wind power can account for nearly 350,000 jobs,
solar power for over 260,000 jobs and $45 billion in economic
investment, tidal power for thousands of jobs per plant, geothermal
energy for over 20,000 jobs; and biofuel for over 200,000 jobs.
California is the natural home for many of these industries, and with
them our state's economy, already one of the largest in the world,
will surely grow even larger.

We
can also make our economy more efficient. For example, one study
found that an increase in fuel efficiency standards starting in 2001
could have saved drivers in upstate New York more than $2.4 billion
in gas by 2012; the savings for California, with its much bigger
economy and many more residents, could have been astronomical.
Calling for stricter fuel efficiency standards and supporting the
creation of new cars with alternative forms of power like
electricity, hydrogen, or fuel cells can make our economy more
efficient and each of us better off.

Switching
to alternative energies and making our economy more efficient as well
as working to reduce pollution and instituting a carbon tax will have
the additional and very important effect of helping to ward off the
effects of climate change. The costs of untreated global warming is
an increase in wildfires, water conservation, public health,
agriculture, and flooding could be incalculable; if we take steps now
to mitigate those effects, we will be able to sustain and grow our
economy far into the future.

In
addition, we can take steps to keep our thriving international trade
alive and growing while fixing bad trade agreements so that our only
exports are American products, not American jobs. We can also
address the issue of our crumbling dollar by reducing the federal
deficit and paying down the federal debt. These policies form an
important part of Marta Jorgensen's platform.

Such
sweeping economic reform may sound difficult, but it is nowhere near
as hard as keeping our economy beholden to the old energy sources,
old technologies, and bad trade agreements that have made our economy
so weak. But America is no weakling, and Marta Jorgensen believes
that we are strong enough and motivated enough to do what we must to
secure success for our economy.

The
third pillar of change in E-Revolution, environmental reform, is
closely related to Jorgensen's call for both energy and economic
reform. We face serious peril from the effects of global warming,
including a catastrophic rise in sea level, widespread drought, and
myriad extinctions in plant and animal species all over the planet,
effects that will change our world for the worse. But Marta
Jorgensen thinks we can change the world for the better; Marta
Jorgensen has a plan.

First,
she calls for freezing carbon emissions and instituting a carbon tax,
which will go a long way to reduce any further impact we might have
on the atmosphere. But we also need to further reduce our creation
of greenhouse gases by instituting a moratorium on coal plants not
outfitted with carbon capture features, calling for the replacement
of inefficient incandescent light bulbs, and building a more
efficient electrical grid. In concert, these changes will
drastically reduce our negative impact on the environment.

Of
course, while we in the United States bear well more than our fair
share of responsibility for global warming, we cannot address this
problem alone. That is why Marta Jorgensen will call for a new and
stronger global treaty, more effective than the Kyoto Protocol and
with a closer compliance date, and she will do all she can to make
sure that this time, we sign on and we stay on.

The
final pillar of E-Revolution, educational reform, centers on the need
to teach our children how to succeed in an E-Revolution world. We
need programs to teach them how to work on a wind farm, how to design
a better solar panel, and how to build a more efficient energy grid.
We need to make sure that they know how important our environment is
what they can do as individuals to make sure we maintain it. In
short, we need comprehensive environmental education, and we need to
do it on the national level.

The
four pillars of E-Revolution are closely related; if one of them
fails, the success of the whole project would be cast into doubt.
Without energy reform to create new jobs in alternative energies and
to make the economy more efficient, true economic reform is
impossible, and without a switch to cleaner energy sources, true
environmental reform is impossible. Without economic reform to
create and maintain alternative energies, true energy reform is
impossible, and without a more sustainable economy, true
environmental reform is impossible. Without environmental reform to
wean us off our addiction to fossil fuels, true energy reform is
impossible, and without an environmental policy that seeks to
overcome the problems of global warming, true economic reform is
impossible. And unless we have educational reform to teach our
children how to thrive in this new world, all the gains of the rest
of the project will be for naught.

Please
support Marta Jorgensen's campaign to unseat Republican Elton
Gallegly in California's 24th
Congressional District.

For
more information, visit her website at: www.jorgensenforcongress.com.

805-742-0163.

jorgensenforcongress08@gmail.com