Here are 21 ideas I sent to Barack Obama. You can add to the list by going to: www.change.org Let;s make this a brand new era as well as a Brand New Year!!! Sincerely, Tom Kruzen

Transportation, energy:

1) Increase gas-electric hybrids and subsidize so ordinary people can afford them.

 2) Set up sharing programs for hybrids and heavy hauling trucks and vehicles. Not everyone needs one everyday. Groups of farmers could share trucks. Groups of neighbors could share hybrids.

 3) Lot's of local traffic could be handled by solar recharged electric golf carts-at least in smaller towns and cities. Large cities need New York, Washington and Chicago-style mass transit systems.

4) New people-powered vehicles (bicycle, of course as well as multi-passenger hand-pumped cars) could help us lose weight, gain health and prevent disease.

5) Stay away from burning fuels except hydrogen. Burning got us into the global warming business and burning cannot get us out.

6) Seriously incorporate all of or elements of the Pickens Plan for short-term and long-term solutions on energy independence and global climate change.

7) Forget "clean coal". We are blowing up the Appalachians and Cumberland Mountains, digging big holes in Western States and creating messes like Harriman, Tennessee. Clean coal is a diversion and doesn' t exist. Factor in all the environmental costs and it isn't so cheap and it is anything but clean!!!!

 8) Decentralizing the power generators such as solar panels on mant rooftops and wind generators in countryside as well as urban areas can provide cheap local power, not easily prone to terrorist attack or natural disaster.

9) Nuclear power is expensive and indeterminate. Where are we going to store the waste??? Stop uranium exploration that has the potential to pollute food-producing areas such as Missouri's Mississippi County. The only nuclear reactor we truly need to harness is the sun and God had the wisdom to put it 93 million miles from humans!!!!!!!!!

Environment:

 1) Reinstate the "Polluter pays" Superfund tax.

2) Rescind the rule on deposition of mountaintop removal detritus into streams. Stop the practice of Mountaintop Removal all together!

3) Get serious about lead poisoning. The industry's sloppy housekeeping and greed have created a national nightmare, in housing, along transportation routes and in production areas such as Herculaneum, Missouri. LEAD causes multiple health problems and kills the intellectual potential in our children-our future. Listen to researchers like Dr. Herbert Needleman, Dr Phillip Landrigan and Dr. Bruce Lanphear. They are at the cutting edge of reseach on lead poisoning and have been demonized by the previous admininstration.

4) Faithfully strengthen the Clean Water Act and fully enforce it. Listen to and utilize the myriad of riverkeeper and watershed protection groups throughout the nation. They are already doing great work in a hostile political environment and no one is making anymore clean water!

 5) Strengthen the Clean Air Act; we all must breathe clean air! Hold industries' feet to the fire. We can produce products cleanly like Ray Anderson of Interface. Listen to the likes of Paul Hawken.

6) Start converting our agriculture over to organic methods. Cuba had to do it when the Soviet Union collapsed and could no longer supply them with petro-chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We can produced higher quality food closer to our population centers, have healthier people, reduce health care costs. We also need to encourage "victory" gardens like we had in WWII. I'm disabled and I grow lots of fresh food. It is my exercise and gives us superior food.

7) Abandon the industrial scale "farming" known as CAFOs. They are highly polluting, highly dependent on the petrol economy and no one wants to have one in their county or area. Support family farmers instead and more sustainable ways of raising livestock.

8) Approach bio-engineering with extreme caution. Biotech escapees are out there already, waiting to wreak havoc on the natural ecosystems. We have been entirely too frivolous and cavilier with "bio-tech" solutions. Companies like Monsanto have weedled their way into our regulating agencies and rendered them useless in cases involving bio-engineered crops.

9) Strengthen environmental and health agencies such as EPA, OSHA, ATSDR, MSHA, The FDA. Fully staff and fund them so they can offer the American public a modicum of protection. Keep the lines of communication open to environmental and health advocates instead of trying to persecute, prosecute and worse, ignore, them. We might all learn something if we talk to the people closest to the problem!!!

10) Make the environmental sciences requisite courses in our schools and start kids early on such studies and solutions to our problems. Enlist their help. Children are incredibly creative and often see solutions before we adults do.

11) Create and Environmental Peace Corps, where post high-schoolers and "retirees" can serve the country for two years and work on grassroots environmental and health problems. Society and the kids will be better for this type of service.