Excerpted from the 2077 State of the Union Address

(Excerpted from the 2077 State of the Union Address, the first such by President Joseph Franklin.)

... Almost seventy years ago, in the time of President Barack Obama, this nation undertook a collection of research and engineering projects which — it must be admitted — were successful in their endeavor: to free us from our dependence on importation of fossil fuels from foreign powers. The old infrastructure of coal-burning energy centers and internal-combustion engines has now been almost completely dismantled, replaced by heliothermal plants and cheap, replaceable transkews*.

Ironically, this goal was once known as “energy independence”. Instead, it has had the exact contrary effect: to tie us far more strongly to a power more foreign, and more intrinsically and fundamentally hostile, than any nation of this Earth.

It is therefore imperative, and vital to the security of our country, that this Congress act immediately to fund alternative energy sources, and thereby break our current crippling dependence on foreign energy. America is not safe unless she is independent; and she is not independent while she relies on the Sun.

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* transkew /ˌtʃɹæns.kjuː/ n. common term for any photovoltaic cell with efficiency exceeding the Shockley-Queisser limit [< contraction of trans-SQ < trans`{::}^{1}` + Shockley-Queisser; fpc. 2021]