Shooting for the sun.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Political Eye - Energy policy

President Bush strapped on his safety goggles and toured the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, on February 21. It was part of his tour to promote energy proposals that are supposed to end our "addiction to oil," as the President put it in his State of the Union address. Just before Bush's photo-op at the lab, the Energy Department quickly restored $5 million in funding the Administration had cut from the very programs the President was there to tout.

The lab rehired the thirty-two workers it had laid off the day after the State of the Union speech. But as Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, told the Associated Press, the $5 million represented only a fraction of the lab's $28 million shortfall. Bush's budget cuts have brought much of the nation's renewable energy research to a halt.

What do you expect from the guy who let oil industry lobbyists write the nation's energy policy in the first place?

If Americans are serious about getting on a program to break our oil addiction, there are better places to go for rehab.

Take the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor, environmental, business, and community organizations dedicated to energy independence within the next ten years.

Named after JFK's Apollo Project, which put a man on the moon in less than a decade, "an Apollo project for energy freedom must be big, bold, and fast," the group's website declares.

Like the moon landing, Apollo aims to bring together American industry, educational institutions, technological know-how, and public investment to make a giant leap for mankind.

The group's president, Jerome Ringo, was the first African American board chairman of a major environmental organization--the National Wildlife Federation. He became an advocate for environmental justice during his many years as a union worker in Louisiana's petrochemical industry.

One of the interesting things about Apollo is how it brings people together. In state and local chapters, labor and environmental leaders are moving beyond the jobs-versus-environment debate.

The group released a study by Noble Prize-nominated economist Ray Perryman that shows how tax credits and investments in alternative fuel technology would create more than three million new high-wage jobs and clean up air quality.

Apollo has been involved in progressive efforts in the states that are a blueprint for a big, national push for energy independence.

California, for example...