Last week in Washington you hosted the National Clean Energy Project. Tell us who attended.
We had everyone. We had Democrats. We had Republicans. We had Speaker Pelosi, the Secretary of Energy, and the Secretary of the Interior. We had Vice President Gore, President Clinton, and T. Boone Pickens. The academic world was represented. The financial world was represented. It was a great conference.

From what you saw and heard, do you get the idea that Americans are starting to understand how important it is to end our addiction to foreign oil?
I think it’s starting to sink in. America can never be a secure, safe nation either from an economic standpoint or from a military standpoint until we fully develop our own abundant energy resources. Right now we’re importing 70 percent of the oil we use. Think about that. Last year we spent half a trillion dollars buying foreign oil, and a considerable portion of that went to unstable countries in the Middle East and to Chavez in Venezuela.

What conclusions emerged from the Energy Forum?
We need to build a bridge to get us where we need to go with renewable energies, but we can’t do it immediately. It’s at least a 10-year process. So I was so happy to hear Vice President Gore and Boone Pickens singing from the same hymnal. For small vehicles, that’s going to be batteries. And for the big trucks that’s going to be natural gas. We have 6½ million big trucks on the road in America today, and we need to get them running on natural gas. We just need to give incentives for companies to buy these new engines that will be powered by natural gas. The sooner we start doing this, the quicker we stop using imported diesel oil.

Tell us about the legislation you announced to develop the country’s energy transmission lines.
More than a century ago, this country needed to build a rail line across America, and the federal government stepped in to help. In the 1950s, during the Eisenhower administration, we decided we needed to build an interstate highway system. Again the federal government stepped in to help. Now we need the federal government to build a new super highway, one that will allow America to produce energy all over this country and then take it where it’s needed. We can reduce our dependence on foreign oil by transforming our energy policy. In the process we can create millions of jobs. There’s no reason we can’t have a clean environment and create lots of jobs. So why shouldn’t the federal government help? That’s the purpose of my legislation.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED, AND EDITED BY ERIC O’KEEFE