A wind turbine generates power outside Boston.

The challenge is the economy; the opportunity is clean energy.

More and more Americans realize that these challenges are connected.

Our over-reliance on fossil fuels is the leading source of global warming emissions, pollutes our air and water, and exposes consumers to the price spikes of a global fuel market.

We need to repower America by shifting to 100 percent homegrown, clean electricity, cut our dependence on oil in half, and dramatically cut global warming pollution – moves that will create millions of green jobs.

With $80 billion for clean energy and public transit, the economic recovery plan signed by President Obama is a good down payment on repowering America with a clean energy economy.

Obama and those of us who supported the economic recovery plan pushed for investments in clean energy to reduce global warming pollution and oil dependence and to create jobs – far more jobs than the dirty energies of the past.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will put Americans to work in good jobs – weatherizing homes and federal buildings, installing renewable energy projects, and expanding public transit to meet growing demand.

Just one of the programs funded will weatherize more than 1 million homes of low-income Americans.

This is an enormous expansion of a program that has reduced participants’ energy use by 32 percent and saved each an average of $358 per year on energy bills.

When fully implemented, the clean energy provisions of the plan will prevent approximately 68 million tons of global warming pollution, save 14 billion barrels of oil per year, and create 1.5 million jobs.

Here in Arizona, the bill provides an estimated $54.4 million for weatherization, which will prevent 23,976 tons of global warming pollution and create 4,080 jobs.

The bill also will fund an estimated $105 million in state public transit projects that will reduce our oil dependence and create an additional 3,163 jobs.

While the economic recovery bill represents an important down payment on a clean energy future, we must do more.

The key to keep moving toward a clean energy economy is enactment of strong measures that cap global warming pollution, require polluters to reduce and pay for their pollution, set standards for clean energy generation for efficiency and renewable energy, and drive massive new investments in clean energy technologies.

America is at a crossroads on energy. We can help President Obama put millions of Americans to work building a clean energy future, or stay the course with oil companies and other polluters that favor the status quo.

We look forward to working with President Obama to realize our shared vision of a clean energy economy.

Clean energy can power Az, U.S.

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., represents the 7th Congressional District. Walter Sainsbury is program associate for the nonprofit Environment Arizona.

RAUL GRIVALVA

WALTER SAINSBURY

By Raul M. Grijalva, Walter Sainsbury

The Grand Canyon's Toroweap Overlook. To protect the canyon, it is necessary to prevent those with narrow economic interests from destroying it.

Arizona is called the Grand Canyon State for a reason. One of the world’s greatest natural wonders – the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River – happens to be here.

Grand Canyon National Park draws millions of visitors from across the world who marvel at its beautiful and twisted topography, hike its trails, run its river rapids and find solitude in a place that seems remote and removed from the hectic and confused world in which we live.

Once again, however, we face a threat to this grand place that must be fought and eliminated.

The U.S. Forest Service proposes to allow exploration for uranium on the lands and drainages adjacent to the park.

It proposes to accept the tearing and ripping at those lands because uranium’s market value has risen to the point where some stand ready to sacrifice the enduring values of this great canyon for the lure of dollars to line corporate pockets.

The Forest Service says mining companies intend only to “explore” and that this is a minimally invasive process and should not affect the values of the canyon.

I say even exploration is too much.

I ask: What if they find something of value? Are we prepared to sacrifice this global icon for a uranium mine?

The answer must be an immediate no. We must eliminate this threat and deny the opportunity to explore or to dig or rip up the land looking for minerals anywhere adjacent to the canyon.

I have introduced HR 5583, The Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act of 2008, to do just that. I join with other state, local and tribal leaders, who once again stand ready to join the fight to protect our Grand Canyon and do what is necessary to prevent those with narrow economic interests from destroying it.

Sadly, I believe that if we don’t find a better way to protect our parks, they will die of a thousand small cumulative cuts.

There are those who pursue seemingly insignificant actions on park boundaries, prying pieces from their greatness here and there – all the while denying any intention to ruin a park.

We must find ways to defeat this cumulative neglect of our National Park System and to assure they are passed unimpaired to the next generation.

I offer yet another individual piece of legislation standing for the protection of one of them – the magnificent Grand Canyon.

There is no place in the world like it. It deserves better than the assaults it seems to consistently face – as does our nation’s entire system of national parks.

Raúl M. Grijalva is a Democrat who represents southern Arizona’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Grijalva

My congressional district boasts some of our nation’s most extraordinary natural areas, including special places Congress has protected as wilderness.

I will seek to add to this rich legacy by sponsoring legislation to protect the 84,000-acre Tumacacori Highlands west of Tubac as wilderness.

Congress passed the 1964 Wilderness Act “to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas . . . leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in natural condition.”

That foresight has real meaning in fast-growing Arizona. My proposal would not seek to change the Tumacacori Highlands, but instead to protect this fragile wildlife habitat so future generations can enjoy its grandeur.

Among leaders of both political parties who stood beside President Lyndon Johnson as he signed the Wilderness Act were two prominent Arizonans. They were Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and his brother, Mo Udall, my predecessor in this congressional seat.

In following years, Mo led the way as Congress designated wilderness in Arizona. His efforts were bipartisan, in collaboration with Sens. Barry Goldwater and John McCain.

In 1984, his leadership established lasting protection for places such as Mount Wrightson, Rincon Mountain and Pusch Ridge, even as development mushroomed across our desert landscape.

As chairman of the House subcommittee that handles wilderness legislation, I will proceed with the Tumacacori Wilderness legislation under the guiding light of Udall’s legacy, eager to work across party lines.

For three years, my staff and I, with wilderness advocates, have consulted with stakeholders to assure this proposal will serve diverse interests.

The boundaries ensure plentiful road access for recreation. We emphasize protection of habitat, which is vital to increasing numbers of sportsmen who seek true wilderness hunting. This has earned strong support from the Arizona Wildlife Federation and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

As a result of this collaborative and inclusive process, my proposal enjoys broad support from university scientists, homeowners’ associations, conservation groups, the Arizona Ecumenical Council and more than 150 small businesses in Santa Cruz and Pima counties.

They know preserving wilderness makes good economic sense and is the best way to protect southern Arizona’s scenic beauty and quality of life.

This broad-based support has not, however, closed my ears to those who still have concerns.

As this bill moves through Congress, I pledge to work with all federal agencies, the delegation, nearby communities, recreationists and ranchers to ensure that the Tumacacori wilderness proposal is the best bill it can be.

The Tumacacori Highlands Wilderness represents an important addition to southern Arizona’s protected landscapes – the original Arizona landscape that has so shaped our lives, our values and our national destiny.

Today it is treasured by those who hike, ride horseback, hunt, photograph or paint, go birding or enjoy the wild scenery.

If we have the foresight to protect it, it will be treasured and enjoyed for years to come by our children, grandchildren and future generations.

U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva represents Arizona Congressional District 7.

June 8 was the 100th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, an obscure law adopted by Congress in 1906, giving the president authority to permanently reserve as national monuments federal sites with significant prehistoric, historic or natural features.

Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, presidents have used the act to protect more than 160 of America’s best-known and beloved landscapes.

Many have become national parks with poetic names including Zion, Bryce Canyon, Olympic, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Glacier Bay, Rainbow Bridge, Dinosaur, Katmai, Carlsbad Caverns, Bandelier, Arches and Chaco Canyon.

The act has special significance for Arizona. One of Teddy Roosevelt’s first monuments was at the Grand Canyon, and he followed that by designating Petrified Forest, Tonto and Tumacacori.

Woodrow Wilson protected Casa Grande and Walnut Canyon near Flagstaff.

It’s a long list: Calvin Coolidge, Chiricahua National Monument. Herbert Hoover, Saguaro National Monument and Sunset Crater, and enlarging Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest. Franklin Roosevelt, Organ Pipe Cactus and Montezuma Castle. Dwight Eisenhower, enlarging Bandelier.

Nixon was the first president not to use the act. But Jimmy Carter used it to protect 56 million acres in Alaska.

Reagan and George H. Bush followed Nixon’s precedent. But President Clinton used the act extensively, creating, in Arizona alone, Sonoran Desert, Vermillion Cliffs, Grand Canyon-Parashant, Agua Fria and, in Tucson, Ironwood Forest National Monument.

His willingness to use this authority led to Congress enacting legislation to create Las Cienegas National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson.

All Americans, especially Arizonans, can be proud and grateful that Congress has bestowed this authority on the president and that a succession of visionary presidents has used the power wisely, with foresight, to protect lands for the enjoyment of future generations.

Think of how Tucson’s quality of life would be if these wonderful areas were not protected as open space, preserving part of our natural heritage for the enjoyment of present and future generations.

Some of those presidential proclamations were controversial at the time. And the tendency in modern times to view the act through partisan lenses is worrisome.

But the Antiquities Act should not be shelved, for many more landscapes and features of historic, cultural and scientific interest on federal land deserve its protection.

President Bush recently invoked the Antiquities Act to designate a new national monument off the coast of Hawaii, and I applaud the protection of this special place.

In the excitement following the creation of this monument, we must also redouble our efforts to safeguard existing monuments, as well as encourage the president to consider designating more in other places needing protection.

Congress should step up to deal with serious funding shortages faced at many national monuments.

The Bush administration has been relentlessly working to open sensitive lands to oil and gas drilling, threatening places such as Colorado’s Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, home to more than 6,000 recorded archaeological sites.

At Arizona’s monuments, off-roading, vandalism and illegal shooting are threatening these special places.

Ordinary citizens can help by becoming active defenders of our protected public lands and holding their elected officials accountable.

Even today, despite the act’s marvelous centurylong record, some members of Congress want to repeal or cripple it.

The proper response is paraphrasing the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt, describing the Grand Canyon:

“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. You can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you.”

Raúl M. Grijalva is a Democratic congressman representing Arizona District 7.