Political Corruption vs. a Sane Energy Policy – Why We Have Hope

Did you know that 96% of Americans believe that money has too much influence on law-making, but that 91% of Americans believe nothing can be done about this?

Ah, the politics of resignation. Apparently most people believe and act as though all is lost.  But strangely, neither you nor I do.

To be candid, the situation is a bit bleak: only about 150,000 people in the U.S. make contributions large enough to move the needle re: financing our representatives’ and senators’ campaigns, and, for the most part, the interests of this extremely small minority stands in direct opposition to the things that most of us care about.  I happen to be most involved in forwarding an energy policy that proposes to phase out fossil fuels over a reasonable timeframe (or any timeframe for that matter), but others may be more concerned about healthcare, public education, social justice, etc.

Enter the fabulously interesting  story of Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School—previously a professor of law at Stanford Law School.

Do yourself a favor and take the 34 minutes required to check out Lessig’s concepts on campaign finance reform, from which you’ll understand that, if we can’t make this happen by the 2016 election in the U.S., we probably can’t make it happen at all.