Leading by Example
How We Can Inspire an Energy and Security Revolution
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Global climate change?
We can stop it.
Addiction to oil?We can replace it.
Technological innovation?
We can create it.
But we can't wait twenty, thirty, or fifty years.
Bill Richardson launched his campaign for the presidency to remind the American people--and their representatives in Washington--that we know how to get things done. We need to end our dependence on oil, and we need to do it yesterday.
This isn't something that's going to happen only in Washington, or Detroit, or even Hollywood or Tokyo. It's going to take all of us, a united United States. We have the opportunity, perhaps for only a few years, to make dramatic but beneficial changes in the way we run America.
As Leading by Example makes clear, if we succeed, with strong presidential leadership and the support of the American people, we will restore America's role in the world--a source of moral leadership, a source of astonishing technology, and a source of optimism to be admired.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Coinciding with Governor Richardson's campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for president, his proposals for reducing our dependence on foreign oil is substantial, despite their transparent vote-getting tenor. Drawing on his 15 years in the U.S. Congress, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as energy secretary in the Clinton administration, as well as his New Mexico governorship, Richardson provides useful insights into the resistance of powerful entities such as the automobile industry, coal industry and, of course, the oil industry to alternative energy sources. Writing in a folksy style, with personal anecdotes that leaven his wonkishness, Richardson is not shy about trumpeting the breadth and depth of his experience; at times he's almost insufferable, but his battles with those who care more about quick profit than about clean air, clean water and energy-related national security suggest he has earned the right to say, "I told you so." Richardson is critical of Republicans, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, yet manages to lift portions of the book above partisan politics. Knowing that Congress will often be inhibited by powerful special interests, Richardson would use the bully pulpit of the White House to initiate change, hoping, for example, that calling for automakers to produce plug-in electric cars will drive private markets to do right by the environment.
