10/24/06 Making 25x25 a Reality

Making 25x25 a reality. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Read Smith is a passionate man. Just listening to him can get you excited. He's hoping that a lot more people will get excited too. Smith is the 25x25 committee co-chair. 25x25 is a renewable energy initiative backed by organizations and individuals committed to providing 25% of the total U.S. energy consumed renewable energy by the year 2025. Smith says what started out as a couple of meetings has evolved. SMITH: We then struck the vision of 25x25, this group did with some help and that is by the year 2025 that 25% of the total energy consumed in our country will come from renewables, from the land. So that being done and we thought maybe our jobs done now we can all go home but that was not the case at all. In fact the energy future coalition was so excited about how far we'd come is such a short amount of time with so little that they asked us if we'd be willing to continue to try to work on this vision to refine it and implement it. The group Smith refers to is the key to making 25x25 happen. SMITH: Our game plan was to assemble a steering committee of national leaders with a cross section both geographically and by occupation of leaders around the country sit around the table and talk about it. What can we do if any? So, that's what we did. We hand picked originally about 12 national leaders. Asked them if they'd be willing to get involved in this initiative and every single one of them said "yes" and an enthusiastic "yes." And these were not people that had time, these were busy people. These were former presidents of major corporations. They are the former president of Kansas State University; major corporate presidents, so; former members of Congress. Busy people. For more information visit the 25x25 website at www.25x25.org. More tomorrow with Read Smith. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.