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No one does a better, cleaner, or environmental friendlier, than the United States, when it comes to drilling for oil, gas, coal, oil refineries and fish friendly hydroelectric.

In any crass political calculation, drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class, we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.

The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows.

So we in Congress have a very clear choice. We can take largely symbolic action and sit back and fiddle while Americans burn more gasoline. Or we can pass concrete, effective legislation that will save consumers money while significantly reducing U.S. oil consumption.

Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.

One of my top priorities in Congress is to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.

I've voted in some cases to remove and reduce tax breaks for the oil industry in other cases I've voted not to because I felt that the proposals covered too much.

We should start by allowing drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge. It can provide billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

I tell my environmental friends that they have won. Every issue we look at from an energy perspective is now also looked at from an environmental perspective.