DFL

Five Questions for Al Franken

Originally posted on Maria Energia (http://mariaenergia.blogspot.com) on September 10, 2007

Comedian, satirist, and former talk show host Al Franken is running for U.S. Senate in Minnesota on the DFL ticket (in MN, the Democratic Party is called the "DFL").

Last month, Franken made an appearance at the Crow Wing County/Morrison County DFL summer picnic. I grew up in Morrison County, so I attended and was impressed with the (relatively) huge turnout. I met Al, but more importantly he took the time to answer some questions I sent him via email about renewable energy and Minnesotaâ€™s role in the clean tech revolution.

Maria Energia: What specific renewable energy legislation do you want to see implemented at the federal level?

Al Franken: On a macro level, I'd like to implement a national cap and trade for carbon dioxide. This would make the cleanest renewables cheaper than fossil fuels and reward sequestration of CO2 in the form of planting acreage.

I'd like to see more federal investment in pilot projects for renewables. Representative Collin Peterson has put in several pilot projects for cellulosic ethanol that would be conducted here in Minnesota.

When I have said I want an Apollo Program for renewable energy, I'm talking about making these kinds of investments in renewables, including things like tidal and wave power. The United States has to go back to investing in research and development. This means identifying promising technologies and investing in them.

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Who could have imagined that in the United States, with its independent judiciary, thousands of men could be rounded up in the night -- many only because of their Muslim religion or foreign nationality -- without recourse to a trial, without even an acknowledgment that they had been arrested? Who could have dared to suggest that there would ever be "desaparecidos" in America? And there it was as well, torture being discussed as a legitimate option to protect a community in peril, and then being used in Guantanamo and Afghanistan, and even obscenely photographed in Iraq -- yes, there they were again, the depressing echoes of my Chile.

But worse perhaps than all of this was the erosion of the moral compass of America, the seeming indifference of the seeming majority to the suffering of others, the casual acceptance of "collateral damage" as an unquestioned consequence of the war on "terrorism," the demonization of an ubiquitous foe who had to be destroyed without second thoughts -- and often without first ones as well; without, in fact, any thoughtfulness at all. That was far more terrifying than the criminal attacks on New York and Washington: To realize that the Chile of strongman Augusto Pinochet was not that far away, not that difficult to imitate, that it was already hovering in the future and ready to materialize if we were not vigilant.

— Ariel Dorfman, Memories of Chile in the Midst of an American Presidential Campaign
TomDispatch - Tomgram: Ariel Dorfman on the struggle for Americaâ€™s soul