Senator Kennedy, Dead at 77, Was Champion for Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency
Above: President Barack Obama and Senator Ted Kennedy walk on the grounds of the White House. White House Photo, Pete Souza, 4/28/09
Related action: Complete Kennedy's Unfinished Work -- Pass Health Reform
Senator Edward Kennedy died late last night, at age 77, after a 15-month bout with brain cancer.
The "lion of the Senate" is justly being praised today for his decades of effort to improving health care for all Americans -- not a surprise, given that his Democratic colleagues in Congress and President Obama, his chosen torch bearer for the future of Kennedy-brand American liberal reform, are locked in a battle to overhaul America's health care system.
But Senator Kennedy was also a strong, influential advocate for the environment, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy industry reform. Just a few of his long list of accomplishments include:
Cosponsoring the first law to establish fuel economy standards over 30 years ago, and in 2007, supporting stronger fuel economy standards, which will in turn help cut the nation's greenhouse gas pollution.
Sponsoring the "Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act of 2000," to compensate men and women who, while working on national defense, were often unknowingly exposed to radiation and other toxic substances, as well as their survivors.
In 1975, pushing to end an "oil depletion allowance," which for several decades had allowed oil producers to exclude 22 percent of their enormous revenues from any taxes. Kennedy’s initiative lowered the allowance for independent producers, and ended it for the major oil companies.
Sponsoring the “America COMPETES Act of 2007,” which established an Advanced Research Projects Authority at the Department of Energy to be the focal point of federal efforts to support breakthrough research on new clean energy technologies.
Long-time support of renewable energy funding and programs, including the weatherization assistance program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps low-income families reduce their energy bills by improving home energy efficiency.
Ted Kennedy is a singular example of someone who could have kicked back and coasted through life, but chose instead to help others. He was born into a position of social and financial privilege. The violent deaths of his brothers Jack and Robert gave them center stage in America's Kennedy mythology, and could have sucked a lesser character forever into stasis and regret.
Kennedy focused outward instead, on serving those who had less than he did, and needed help more. Publicly, he moved through his own disappointments, personal mistakes, and his family's terrible losses, to achieve a 46-year Senate career of steady liberal accomplishment and constructive leadership.
(Compare Kennedy's lifelong class act and embrace of responsibility for others, under intense public scrutiny and personal loss, to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's regular offloadings of blame onto anyone and anything for her political and personal setbacks, her extremist us-vs-them political philosophy, and her cynical political gaming with the nation's energy policy and climate future.)
Senator Kennedy took his advantages, and perhaps the tragedies as well, and turned them toward being one person who could change the lives of many for the better. Losing him is surely an incalculable grief for his family. But hopefully it will move a new generation, equally devoted to changing the world for the better, to fill the void he's left in American politics.
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