Richard Ojeda Quotes

As a member of both the energy and environment committees, I am constantly astounded by how many of my colleagues prefer to focus on what the government can do for the nuclear or coal industries rather than why the government should support clean and sustainable energy.

Much of the U.S. Midwest is already running on bitumen. Do we want to extend this addiction? And at what cost? Or should we set other goals and say one to two million barrels of oil a day from the tar sands is all we really need to make the transition?

We must shift the energy policy debate in America with an increased focus on alternative and renewable fuels and Congress must pass meaningful alternative fuels and incentive programs to help move the U.S. away from dependence on foreign oil.

I think that the world is in the middle of a huge transition that we have to make to renewable energy. We have to transition away from fossil fuels very, very quickly.

There are two perspectives on the oil sands. You have companies that want to make it the next Saudi Arabia. The other is that it's a transitional resource to a low-carbon economy, and to regard it as anything else is to drain the continent's financial resources.

In the world of energy politics, the sudden vanishing of the word 'coal' is a remarkable and unprecedented event.

Natural gas is the future. It is here.

Many anti-energy groups display little appreciation of the extent to which modern economies depend pervasively on the use of fossil fuels and petrochemical products.

It seems the EPA has worked hard to devise new regulations that are designed to eliminate coal mining, coal burning, usage of coal.

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

I don't believe that a hydrogen economy depends on a carbon economy at all.

We are launching a campaign called Wind, Not War, which is about the alternatives to a fossil-fuels-based economy and looking at wind, an alternative energy, as key to that in terms of issues of global climate change as well as issues of democracy.

Natural gas is the one fuel that we have that's affordable, it's scaleable, it can replace coal over time, it can replace imported oil, can create American jobs.

Americans increasingly understand that clean energy is more than just an environmental issue. It is crucial to reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign countries.

Bloomberg's $50 million is not going to revolutionize the electric power industry. But his willingness to fight is already inspiring others to see Big Coal differently.

Even the biggest coal boosters have long admitted that coal is a dying industry - the fight has always been over how fast and how hard the industry will fall.

President Obama and our all-of-the-above energy strategy is the real deal. We are proud of the fact that we are importing less oil than at any time in modern history, and it has been because of the president's vision and courage.

Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.

Now we've got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future - especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That's why I'm going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.

America's industrial strength was built on burning coal. No politician wanted to mess with coal.

Why would we build a thousand mile pipeline taking almost a million barrels of oil from the most carbon intensive fuel source on the planet when wind energy is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot cleaner.

I think the fossil fuel industry is genuinely freaked out by the combination of the price collapse, the divestment movement, and that fact that renewable energy is getting so cheap so fast.

We need to replace coal with gas. We need to leave oil in the ground.

To shut off coal, or to say you can't have further coal development, I think is the wrong way to go.

Fracking locks the U.K. into an industry that is based on fossil fuels long after our country needs to have moved to renewables.