Bernie Sanders has the potential to bring Americans together transforming the Energy Industry. It can happen if Bernie begins leading now for alternative energy and accountability for Big Oil.

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Sanders could become president if he consistently represents the values Americans are now seeking. He is clearly attuned with the tenor of the times in many ways, but fails to express this in action. He remains a US Senator running for the office of president without becoming the instrument for healing the many divisive wounds in this country

Bernie holds the potential to erase the divide between right and left to make us one people and a stronger country. Laugh if you will, but at their core, these divisions are artificial, deliberately created by public relations firms working on behalf of corporate interests to increase their profits and control.

Spontaneously across the country people are looking for solutions to the problems our partisan government (clearly controlled by corporate power) has caused. Politics has become a bad joke, populated with cookie cutter candidates who express what a Corporate world pays for you to see and hear; a world Americans have now rejected.

In communities and neighborhoods across America people are coming together. They hunger for the individual freedom, trust and connection which are the foundation of our humanity. They long for common sense solutions which benefit everyone, not just the super-rich.

We face many challenges today. Global warming is causing sea level rise and unprecedented tidal surges which NeoCon candidates have chosen to ignore. Barry Goldwater would never recognize them as Conservatives or Republicans.

Miami Florida is now referred to by some flood experts as the "Next Atlantis" because it is slowly disappearing into the ocean. It is one of the most at risk cities in the world eminently threatened by sea level rise and frequently inundated by tidal flooding. Yet government officials from the area are not allowed to address the problems due to phony science and the artificial divides created by corporate money.

Science was stripped from their consciousness by the decades of deception carried out by Big Oil.

Likewise, the victims of hydrocarbon poisoning find their health slipping away as chronic diseases invade their bodies from the long term impacts of petrochemical exposures. Ironically, in many cases these are the same poisons which are causing the seas to rise.

At the same time, toxic wastes are contaminating the water and destroying the health of children in California's Central Valley and throughout the southwest. These industries are poorly regulated and operate for the profit of extractive corporations regardless of the costs to society.

Bernie needs to be the one who discloses the tough realities we all face and bring people together to find practical, affordable solutions. No one person can change the future. That is for all of us to undertake together, but he can shine a light on the problems and solutions and by moral weight make reforms happen.

If he wants to be president, Bernie Sanders needs to understand the need people feel for social justice and individual rights. He must demonstrate equitable technological energy and health solutions. Bernie needs to make real contact with people who are suffering and adopt real solutions to the morass of bureaucracy which is destroying Americans. Bernie can't do the job alone. America needs all of us working together but he is the only candidate who can be trusted.

If there was ever a time for Bernie Sanders, a relentless man filled with a life time of experience, to demonstrate his concern for people and their problems this is it. We are poised and grasping for what is possible. Bernie already has the eyes and ears of the people through the media, but he will lose their interest and the election if he continues to rely on the same stump speeches. He needs to visibly respond to the changing times and understand these evolving technologies, celebrating the innovators who have brought these into existence.

Time is short.

The first death knell has been rung on the oil industry, according to the Dow. Yesterday, September 30, as we headed toward extreme flooding in the shadow of Hurricane Joaquin in the East and continuing drought in the West, an article appeared in Renew Economy, an Australian publication focused on energy.

The author, Giles Parkinson, also the publication's editor, noted that, "Panic selling swept major global stock-markets on Tuesday in what could be a foretaste of things to come, as investors suddenly woke up to the fact that the game has changed. Fossil fuels and their associated investments are in decline, and the world is heading rapidly towards new and cleaner technologies."

The traditional grid is ready to topple. Alternative energy solutions are becoming more economical every day, while the search for oil in harsh environments becomes ever more costly. When the petroleum subsidies dry up, the hydrocarbon era will be essentially over and a new age of renewable fuels and efficient batteries will become the standard, not the exception.

All extractive energy markets are tanking. The price of coal is sinking. The auto industry is in a grim race to get off petroleum after three generations of positioning as the major source of retail sales for the oil industry. Big Oil should have seen it coming. Perhaps they were blinded by the arrogance which has stood them in good stead for so long.

Instead, the companies who comprise the oil industry have poured money into projects which have flopped, leaving billions misspent as their production drops along with the price of oil to around $45 a barrel for crude. At these prices, the Arctic regions, the tar sands, the Bakken shale and the entire fracking industry are no longer economic and won't be in the foreseeable future. They now await the wrath of stock-holders who are looking elsewhere for profits.

Like the dinosaurs that they are, the Big Oil companies have been beaten out by the tiny, warm-blooded, mammal-like companies who give birth to live young. These start-up companies have outpaced the dinosaurs, displacing them for the consumer dollars in tiny, but explosively growing increments.

These events were not accidents but the natural progression of a Big Oil and Father Coal business plan predicated on a lack of alternatives which was a fact for nearly a century. The changes to renewables have been building for over a decade; practically unremarked by the main stream media and ignored by the petroleum industry, who believed they could continue to hold the market steady because they controlled so large a consumer segment. Big Oil through lobbies, think tanks and misleading advertising has been able to manipulate the public perception of alternative energy as the marginal toy of liberals while sucking up all the energy subsidies for themselves.

Now, change will be rapid both for the extractive industries and for financial markets and the economy generally. These events hold both promise and threat as investors and insurance underwriters are finally realizing. Today, we are deciding the future for children yet unborn.

The coming presidential campaign will become an arena where values speak to the minds and hearts of voters who hunger for security and sanity and want out of the grasp of corporate greed.

Our advice to Bernie is this. Drop the campaign speech and help the elderly when they are in need. Make your campaign a tour of congratulations to the many who have brought solar energy and other alternatives into the main stream. It has been their investment in the future which is changing today and will influence our tomorrows.

Provide the visuals which Americans still only dimly understand. Burn one barrel of Bakken with cameras blazing so all will know the shocking reality of death if and when these poisons are carried by leaking pipelines or unsafe, obsolete railcars.

By these acts you will save lives, restore America's honor, and open the floodgates for a new beginning for all of us and the world.

Authors Website: http://acpillsburyfoundation.org/image.php

Authors Bio:
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster is the author of GREED: The NeoConning of America and A Tour of Old Yosemite. The former is a novel about the lives of the NeoCons with a strong autobiographical component. The latter is a non-fiction book about her father and grandfather.

Ms. Pillsbury-Foster has been active in politics since the Goldwater Campaign. She left the Republican Party to join and become active in the Libertarian Party in 1973, working as an activist and party officer until she left the Libertarian Party in 1988 when she returned to the Republican Party and became active in the National Federation of Republican Women.

She is also the the founder of the the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation