Bill Nelson: “I have stated that each day we are in session I am going to try to rise in the Senate to speak about the dependent…”

“I have stated that each day we are in session I am going to try to rise in the Senate to speak about the dependent condition we find ourselves in on foreign oil. Some 58 to 60 percent of our daily consumption of oil comes from foreign shores. This is not a good position for the United States. No matter how much we sounded the alarm bells over the past several years, it is hard to shake the powers that be out of our collective lethargy, to break this stranglehold that oil has running through our economy. And it has led us to our dependence on oil for well over a majority of our daily consumption. That is not a good position to be in for the defense of our country's interests where we have to protect the free flow of oil to all of the very oil-thirsty world. A lot of those sealanes coming out of the Persian Gulf region look to the United States for the military protection to keep those lanes open so oil can flow. Clearly, we ought to, after the reminder of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, be on the journey quickly to weaning ourselves from the dependence on this oil. That means the collective will of this Nation to come together in a major project, like a Manhattan Project or an Apollo Project. In other words, the moonshot of this decade ought to be weaning ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, as going to the Moon as a result of the Apollo Project was to the decade of the 1960s. Each day I am going to try to chronicle a new technology so that we can do that.…”