Mitch Landrieu: “this is shaping up to be an auspicious time for an Energy Bill, as we begin a year long celebration of Benjamin…”

“this is shaping up to be an auspicious time for an Energy Bill, as we begin a year long celebration of Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday. Benjamin Franklin was the embodiment of a ``renaissance man.'' He was a small business owner, a diplomat, an accomplished author, a scientist, and one of our Nation's greatest Founding Fathers. It is his role as a scientist that I want to focus on today and suggest that the best birthday present we could give him would be to honor his work and pass a balanced, forward-looking and scientifically-based Energy bill this year. Americans learn from childhood the story of Franklin and his breakthrough experiment with a kite and lightening. In today's world, it is hard to imagine that a politician as accomplished as Benjamin Franklin would also make such a profound contribution to science. But, he did. Franklin's contribution to science was profound because his experiment with a kite and lightning proved that electricity was a naturally occurring phenomenon. Before that, superstition governed man's interaction with electricity. It used to be that people believed the devil hurled electric bolts from the sky. So when a lightening storm was brewing, churches sent people to ring the bells to ward them off. Tragically, this same superstition seems to often guide our policies today. Franklin's pioneering work with electricity is so instructive because it reminds us that we need to put reason and science before superstition and myth.…”