Dear Senate: Grow up.

It takes a singular dedication to cowardice to keep seeking America’s energy future in dark, explosive holes controlled by multinational mafiosos. But my future is not under a razed West Virginia mountain. My future is not under a mile-deep Gulf gusher. My future is not mired in Canadian tar sands, not in a Chinese coal mine’s labor camp, and not in the clenched fists of Mid-East desert warlords.
 
I’m talking, of course, about the US Senate’s decision on Thursday to give up on comprehensive climate and clean-energy leadership. “Just for now,” they say to placate those of us who aren’t Big Oil executives.
 
Is the US Senate afraid to look up at the wind and sun for America’s energy future? Afraid to build an economy that doesn’t boil our global atmosphere? Afraid to build an economy that can compete in the global race for clean-tech innovation against China, against India, against Denmark, Germany, Ireland and Spain and Portugal and Brazil and Lichtenstein? All we hear are Senators whine that it’s hard to price climate pollution; that it’s complicated to annul Big Oil’s annual billions in tax breaks; that it’s too tough an economy to create millions of jobs in energy efficiency and clean-energy ingenuity. But the rest of the world’s managing all that, and so has even the US House. So it sounds to me like the Senate’s talking points are feckless whimpering from 100 of the world’s most powerful individuals.
 
Leaders of our land, grow up: prove to me that you’re better than feckless and cowardly. I have organized students, church groups, farmers, local governments, and hundreds of business leaders to build climate solutions in their own ways and their own communities. I have led marches of hundreds across entire states to demand stronger clean-energy policies. I have led rallies in the streets of far-flung UN summits, on the summits of far-flung mountaintops, and thru the halls of Congress to help citizens make their own heartfelt cases for climate solutions, clean-energy competitiveness, and for energy security.
 
I am 24. What the hell are you doing to build America’s clean-energy prosperity today?

Bonne Frye Hemphill is our Fellow in Business Partnerships. These are her words alone, and they should not be ascribed to Climate Solutions overall.