Happy NFL, uh, draft Thursday. Yeah, that sounds really strange. But, starting in 2010, the NFL has decided the draft is prime time entertainment. So it starts tonight with the first round and goes through Saturday. No, I don't know why.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that, outside of myself and a few other people, the audience for the NFL draft will be a little different than the worldwide audience celebrating something more far reaching and far more serious today. It is Earth Day. Admittedly, not only is this the first year I've cared, but it is the first year I've actually known what day Earth Day was on.

No, I haven't turned into a tree-hugging, flannel-wearing, weed-smoking humanist. But I do understand far more than I ever did the effects of climate change and more to the point, the economic effects of not acting on it. Investment in clean energy is paramount to our economic success. When Barack Obama says the energy will be the economic industry of this century, he is right on. Most people ignore the fact that there is no more stable, reliable, yet exploitive industry than energy. Coal employs entire states. Nuclear plants dominate regions. Washington state claims hydropower as part of its identity.

Yet, with the positives come the third thing, exploitation. Coal-fired power plants are not just contributing to climate change, but also the contamination of rivers and water supply. The nuclear site in Eastern Washington, some 70 years old is continuing to undergo clean that will stop nuclear waste, buried beneath the surface, from continuing to seep into the Columbia River. Just yesterday, news broke about an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that has left 11 missing. The accident comes just two weeks after another explosion, in a West Virginia coal mine left 29 dead.

Yes, clean energy is not only clean, but safer than being deep in an unregulated mine, or out on a rig in the middle of an ocean. Not only that, but the federal government can regulate safety from the beginning, something it hasn't been able to do with nonunion mines.

So the question that many ask me is, why can't we just do both? Well, first of all, we are going to do, for a while anyway. I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia (just love calling it that - makes me feel more patriotic for some reason), a state largely power by coal mines way down in the southwest corner. There's a town actually not too far from me called Winchester, which serves as the location in a book I am reading, Deer Hunting with Jesus. It talks about the dependency of the town on a single Rubbermaid plant where just about every works. Everyone is a Republican, because they are "hard-working people that don't believe in government handouts," and without the plant, the town would be pretty much gone. Now think of West Virginia, just next door. Every town in the state is run off of coal plants. Half the towns in Southern and Southwestern Virginia. Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Montana, the list goes on and on and on. These plants are not going to just up and close. Not when they both employ so many people and when, right now, they keep the lights on.

But here are two telling statistics. We produce the same amount of coal yearly as we did in 1946. Think about that. Yet we do this with one-fifth of the workforce. Coal mining is already losing jobs, to mechanization, at a huge clip. And let's be honest, if we could have machines mine coal, we'd do it. Anything to avoid unions and safety hazards that cost companies money. Second, while wind power was growing rapidly in 2009, not one single coal-fired power plant began construction. The future is in clean energy.

Ah, so what is the hang-up? Have you looked at your energy bill lately? Despite small increases, we here in government town are pretty good at helping to keep your energy bill down. It helps that the people who mine the coal are paid like indentured servants - and think that's what they deserve - while watching their health go to hell and their town lost to the much heralded "small business owners". These people work locals to death, play golf with the property owners that are about as good as slum lords, and drink with the politicians that turn a blind eye. And everyone gets rich, except the working class. All so your utility bill can stay down.

Thing is, that's okay. And coal is cheap. While oil is vital. Meaning it's pretty darn hard to get away from them to an undeveloped source that will need a vastly updated transmission system because it is generated in different parts of the country. Why? Because it costs money. In case you've been living under a rock (and even if you have, I suspect you noticed when other people started fighting you for the warmth of that rock) we don't have a lot of that right now. However, guess who has an unmatched ability to raise money, and from other places than just taxpayers: the federal government.

What do we do? We fight climate change. More specifically, we put a cap on carbon emissions, something that would hurt coal companies if they do not find ways to comply with it, while raising money for the government through the sale of carbon credits (which allow utilities to emit a certain amount of CO2), which is then diverted into...wait for it...clean energy. Genius, right? Opponents say it amounts to a tax and market control. In reality, we already control the energy market. We subsidize oil companies, the highest grossing companies in the history of the world, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year. Guess who's going to take it in the pocketbook when dealing with oil spills and mine disasters? Yeah, the federal government. All to keep your energy prices down.

It's time to start a transition, from dirty, 20th century fuels, to where the future lies. Fail to do that and risk losing even more manufacturing and technical expertise to countries who are ready to take the step (read China).

Here's the kicker with this whole thing. Say it doesn't work. Say climate change is a hoax (it isn't, but I can play devil's advocate). Say reduced CO2 emissions don't actually solve the problem and we just clean up our environment for nothing. Well, no. We clean up our environment. Not for nothing, that's a big deal. We will have a created a vast new energy industry, a sustainable one mind you, that will help revitalize our manufacturing sector by creating need for wind turbines and solar panels. You know who works in those factories? Veterans. We will have built a new, smart grid, the sends the right amount of power to the places it needs to go, reducing waste and costs. Individual Americans will know how much the use, from water to heat, and make cuts where they can, because Americans do that. We'll have retrofitted homes across the country, cutting energy use and cutting costs, especially in poor communities.

And we will have taken advantage of the greatest economic opportunity in this century. I plan to get that all done before the NFL draft tonight. What are you doing?

The youth part of the organization I work for created a pretty cool video to motivate youth to speak up. Watch it:


- I spent a considerable amount of time trying to contain my laughter when sent the story about Republican challenger Sue Lowden in Nevada. Lowden is running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (and winning at the moment), yet has several times in the last few days said that Americans should barter with their doctors. At one point she said chickens might cover medical costs. It's almost too good to be true.

- RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who "runs" that out of control office when not figuring out ways to pay for lesbian-themed bondage clubs (you just cannot pass up an opportunity to re-associate that with Steele), said that the GOP has given blacks absolutely no reason to vote for them. Main culprit? Michael Steele.

- The fight over immigration policy in Arizona is going to get a lot uglier before it gets any better. A bill awaiting the governors signature would force Arizona police to determine if an immigrant is illegal, something nearly impossible to do without racial profiling, and many feel it will make people less likely to report crimes. I honestly can't speak too intelligently on immigration policy and I actually tend to agree that, on the police work level, racial profiling probably does prevent crimes (black people surely populate our prisons, but we also commit lots of crimes - the two are linked), but this puts police in an impossible position. Have you been to Arizona? Everyone looks like the "type of people" this bill targets. Oh, and should it pass and the state, which has to import water, send many of these immigrants away, billions will be lost from the economy.

- Watch out for those Seattle Mariners, who just wrapped up a sweep of the worst team in baseball (Baltimore), thanks to a complete game from King Felix.