Clean Energy Victory Bonds

The mid-term elections are over. The results are in: gridlock and stalemate for the next two years. Perhaps the best thing we can expect is politicians with great biceps from all the futile arm-wrestling they do.

Here's one suggestion for getting through the next two years: furlough Congress. With all the money we save, we could pay for retrofitting our homes with energy efficient insulation, high efficiency heaters and green appliances .

No need to pay our elected officials for what they aren't going to do anyway. Let them stay home, be with their families, garden a bit and bake home-made bread. Meanwhile, it will let us keep our money. That way, we will all take a much-needed national time-out and come back and try again in another two years.

Since that is not likely to happen, here is an even better, if chimerical, idea put forward by Green America: Clean Energy Victory Bonds.

Green America is a dynamic organization dedicated to "advancing social justice and environmental responsibility through economic action."

These folks know that money talks, money guides and money gets the attention of politicians, business-folk and plain-folk alike. That, at least, is something we can all agree on.

They are all about using that common interest to create a more just, equitable, cleaner, healthier world.

This past September, cleverly capitalizing on the pervasive patriotic trope in today's public discourse, they launched what just might be a fabulous idea: Clean Energy Victory Bonds.

This, they explain, is a way to "finance the next big wave of solar and wind -- without one penny of taxpayer dollars."

It would work like the Victory Bonds that helped finance World War II. If 85 million Americans bought bonds back then, when our population was but 132,122,000, leveraging $185 billion, think of what we could do today, of the jobs we would create, the energy - both human and electrical - we would generate, and of the healing we would bring.

And they are suggesting making the bonds available in denominations almost all of us could afford.

Not a bad idea to help us dream big during these hard times.