Maybe we should be a little bit more tender-hearted.

We need to aim high - in the area of 20-25 percent - to create the urgent demand for new technologies, manufacturing plants and green jobs.

The disaster in the gulf shows: relying on dangerous, dirty fuels can at times impose incalculable costs. I have never heard of a wind farm collapsing and causing a massive wind-slick. I have never heard of a solar farm collapsing and leaving behind a catastrophic sun-spill.

The more we deploy the technologies to capture wind and solar power, the cheaper those technologies become.

The message is going to be the same. It's very simple. We're either going to turn to each other or on each other.

Part of what you need to understand is that we're forced to look back. You had the importation of third world or developing world conditions into the United States because of a bipartisan elite consensus for neo-liberalism. In other words, you had both political parties, the smarty-pants in both political parties said, hey, let's do these crazy trade deals.

It's a tremendous challenge now: to make sure the green economy is big enough that there is enough labor demand that people who've been thrown out of work can be re-employed AND people who are new to the workforce can be employed. And that is going to be very difficult.