I have followed the development, on Daily Kos, of a comprehensive energy plan called Energize America--An Energy Plan for America's Future, or EA 2020, for short. I am the Democratic Candidate for TX 10, a "Delay District" runing from the Houston suburbs to the Austin suburbs, and I accept the EA 2020 Plan as my own. I have what might be the most comprehensive energy background and experience of any Congressional candidate and I think EA 2020 is a sensible and valuable path forward, which I pledge to support and try to implement, if elected.
I claim a degree of experience that requires some justification. Beginning in 1966, I was one of the Navy officers personally selected by Admiral Rickover for the Navy's Nuclear Power Program (as was Jimmy Carter). I became a qualified two-reactor powerplant supervisory operator. I was a reactor engineer on the Liquid Metal fast Breeder Reactor at the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Chief of Commercial Operations and Capacity Expansion for the Dept of Energy Uranium Enrichment Enterprise. Leaving that job, I became Chief of Program evaluation for the DOE Assistant Secretary in charge of Government-owned energy resources and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I later was Wind Energy Resource Manager for the DOE and I have a letter on my wall from Jimmy Carter thanking me for getting the "Wind Energy Systems Act of 1980" through Congress. This is the mother of today's wind energy businesses. I moved up to be the Director of Conservation and Renewable Energy Commercialization in the DOE. We of the DOE, in those days, put in place the energy conservation standards that have been responsible for doubling of US Energy Efficiency since 1980 and such things as what is, today, known as the EPA "Energy Star" program for new home construction. When Ronald Reagan became President, and his political appointee abolished my job, I moved to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be the Chief Quality Inspector and Director/co-author of a Congressionally-mandated "Report to Congress on What Went Wrong with the Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Construction Process, with Recommendations for Corrections". I filed the report, which was critical of the NRC; but I lost the inspector job when I gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal critical of Brown & Root (now part of Halliburton) for harassing quality control inspectors during the construction of the Commanche Peak nuclear power plant near Dallas.
I filled several jobs at NASA, after that; including Chief of Environmental Compliance, Deputy Director of Facilities Engineering, and Special Assistant to the Head of NASA. I had an interesting run-in with Tom Delay in one of those jobs, which I described in my first KOS Diary post. Before I went to the "Head Shed" in NASA, VADM Richard Truly, the only astronaut ever to be head of NASA, loaned me to EPA to fill in as Deputy Head of the EPA Superfund program to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites, while a new Presidential appointee was sought and confirmed by the Senate.
We have spent the last 25 years ignoring energy independence. Now, it's not only an energy problem. It is a huge environmental problem, economic problem and national security problem. I first met Jim Hansen, NASA's foremost authority on Global Warming, in 1987. He took me through his research, which was using NASA's supercomputers and Earth-Observing satellite data, to construct a "model" of the Earth's response to CO2 buildup. He described what his model predicted, and even that model, which would be considered crude, today, predicted exactly the phenomena that are currently being observed. Global Warming is real, it is happening, and Jim Hansen says we only have 10 years to take corrective action before it is too late. I believe him. Because I believe him, we need to address our energy needs in a comprehensive way which is mindful of the need to reduce the CO2 burden on the atmosphere. EA 2020 does that, and I am happy to adopt it as the foundation of my own enery platform and campaign on it. I thank the authors of this plan, and the many people that have contributed to it's formation. I have been a member of the ASME National Consensus Codes and Standards Committee, and I understand and appreciate the rigor and value of a consensus process. EA 2020 is a consensus document, and as such, it will be invaluable. Ted Ankrum
You may learn more about me and my PROGRESSIVE positions at my website Here.
As a second-tier Challenger, I am not getting any help from the DCCC, so any contributions will be gratefully acceptedHere.