Jay Inslee: “We appreciate the gentlewoman from the State of Ohio. We know the State of Ohio is going to do some great work on energy…”

“We appreciate the gentlewoman from the State of Ohio. We know the State of Ohio is going to do some great work on energy under the leadership of the new governor, Ted Strickland, who is committed to this agenda. And he would have been here tonight, but he is serving as governor, or will be in about a week. I want to make two comments on the transition to a biofuels economy in the United States. First off, some people have said, well, we should not use fiber or plants for fuel. We have to use it only for food. I want to point out the fallacy of that argument. Right now we are exporting an enormous percentage of the foodstuffs we grow. We send it around the world and they send us the cash. What do we do? We take the cash and send it to Saudi Arabia. Let us cut out the middleman. Let us grow our own. This is time to grow our own. We are sending it all over the world and then sending the cash to Ridya and Saudi Arabia. Let us keep it right here. Let us grow our own fuel. By the way, this is no pie in the sky. The Department of Agriculture has concluded we could have 30 percent of our fuel easily in the next 20 years, easily, using very conservative efforts. This is a very achievable goal. The second point I want to make is that this may happen eventually without Congress's help, but it will be too late. Brazil took 30 years to make this transition to an energy independent condition using their biofuels. They use sugar cane there. They took 30 years.…”