Rudy Giuliani photo

Excerpts of Remarks in Waterloo, Iowa

July 18, 2007

"[A]nother one of my commitments that I'm spending today talking about … is to make America energy independent. That's one of the ways we can win the Terrorist War against Us, by the way. It's not just all military, it's not just all even political, it's not just all diplomatic or intelligence. Part of it's economic also. Our reliance on foreign oil, the world's reliance on oil particularly from the Middle East, creates a lot of the leverage that they have over us, particularly Iran. And if we can become energy independent or energy diversified, meaning we don't have to rely on the Middle East or rely on it as much as we do or the rest of the world does, we can defeat them. They won't have the economic power that they have today.

"[Iowans] play a big role on it. I was just at an ethanol plant – Iowa should be very proud of itself. You play a big role in how we are going to become energy independent, not the only role, but a big role. Ethanol, biodiesel, clean coal, nuclear power, more refineries, conservation … there's no one single solution, but each one of these has to be expanded 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent. … Wind, solar and hydro electric is now at … about seven percent of our source of energy. If we get that to 15 percent, 18 percent, by that much you've reduced--you bring ethanol up, bring it up to the levels for example in Brazil, that will offset the reliance on foreign oil. You get nuclear power up 20 to 25 percent, that's another big reduction. You try to rely more on coal, good clean coal. America has more coal reserves than Saudi Arabia has oil reserves. Aren't we safer and better off relying on our own coal reserves than on a part of the world that [is] a threat to us? So I'm a big, big believer in energy independence …"

Rudy Giuliani, Excerpts of Remarks in Waterloo, Iowa Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/295783

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