The Green Real Deal realizes that our electric grid ought to be a platform, not a bottleneck, to clean energy innovation and supremacy. We could also harness the 640 million acres of federally owned land. Why not extract more renewable energy from this repository and allow the bounties of our beautiful land to contribute to their own continued preservation? Reps. Paul Gosar and Raúl Grijalva have suggested as much, and it is a bipartisan no-brainer.
I’ve often described the Green Real Deal as a love letter to the American innovator. And I am proud to say that the innovative approach favored by the Green Real Deal would drastically reduce one of the most environmentally unfriendly materials known to man—RED TAPE.
Today’s cheapest, cleanest energy is hydropower. A pro-hydro agenda should cut through the red tape, reducing costs for consumers along with carbon emissions. No longer should local concerns override national interest. The hydropower belongs to all of us.
The Green Real Deal would reduce the constraints on zero-emissions nuclear innovation, particularly where it can replace dirty coal. Currently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission favors big, expensive light-water reactors that cost billions of dollars. Instead, the NRC ought to consider smaller, reliable modular reactors that can be built at a fraction of the cost, which would expand the availability of nuclear power to disadvantaged rural communities while using spent nuclear rods.
Modular nuclear power would also be invaluable to our military bases. By taking bases off the grid, the electric grid would become a less attractive target to hackers. Why can’t we power San Diego or Honolulu with the nuclear reactors of the docked fleet?
Nuclear energy is clean, effective, and safe. Chernobyl is often cited as a reason to fear nuclear. To be fair, I wouldn’t trust a toothbrush made in Russia in the early ’80s, much less a nuclear plant. The technology has gotten better and better, though—and its absence from AOC’s Green New Deal is as conspicuous as it is curious. In France, they’ve built massive nuclear reactors because their socialists correctly found them essential.
President Trump made history by addressing the needs of the forgotten man in rural America—and it is up to us to build on this achievement, to democratize nuclear use in our rural communities, and to ensure American companies capture the global modular nuclear market.
The ideas I put forth in the Green Real Deal are but the beginning of something interesting, but they are an important and necessary step toward an innovative, realistic solution to the real problem of climate change.
As with so many of the most important challenges we face, the stale political dogmas and divisions of the past do not help us see, much less solve, climate change. Young people of all ideological persuasions understand the importance of getting it right on climate change because their futures are at stake.
Protecting our environment is not an issue of Left versus Right—it is an issue of clean versus dirty, healthy versus sick, the beautiful against the ugly.
It is conservative in that most essential, nonpartisan sense—the sense of conserving the resources and splendor of our natural world. It is time to free the creative genius of this country to protect our natural treasures, and in so doing secure America’s greatness, prosperity, and beauty for generations yet to come.
America is not just an idea. It is our skies, our oceans, our forests, and our home. Most of all, it is ours. And ours to lose.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Firstly, I want to acknowledge my constituents in Northwest Florida. Thank you for placing your faith in me, for sending me to Washington to fight for you. In all I do, I put America, Florida, and our community above all else.
To President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump—Washington wouldn’t be the same without you. I can’t fathom being in Congress under any other president. I couldn’t ask for better leaders, allies, and friends.
To my parents, Don and Vicky—I wouldn’t be the Firebrand I am today without your unconditional love, support, drive, and occasional patience. Thank you for the sacrifices you have made to give me a cherished life and every opportunity to make a difference. My sister, Erin, who has always been there for me no matter what—our blood runs thick. My son, Nestor—you bring me life’s best moments; you have unlimited potential and I know you will go far. We are all behind you!
To my great friends—Donald Trump Jr, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Tiffany Trump, Michael Boulos, Ron and Casey DeSantis, Chris and Rebekah Dorworth, Jason Pirozzolo and Savara Hastings, Mike Fischer, Brianna Garcia, Charles Johnson, Suzanne Harris, Larry Keefe, Andy Biggs, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Thomas Massie, Nick Teman, James Parker, Harry and Allison Clayton, Tristan Tyler, Todd Purdy, the Bear family, Collier Merrill, Jay Odom, Joe Farrell, May Mendez, Kip Talley, Neal and Leah Dunn, Brian Ballard, Samantha Sullivan, Dawn McArdle, Jim Rimes, Ryan Smith, Rich Heffley, Charlie Kirk, and the many others I am forgetting as I rush this book to print. Life is more exciting with each and every one of you in it!
To Sergio Gor, whose energy was the spark for Project Firebrand. Thanks for always being there, much more to come.
To those who take a chance on me on a daily basis in the media—Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham, Mike Huckabee, Chris Cuomo, Martha MacCallum, Steve Hilton, Lou Dobbs, Jesse Watters, and Hallie Jackson. Thank you for allowing me to speak up and defend America.
Thanks to my publishing team including Adam Bellow at Post Hill Press and his entire team, and to Todd Seavey who assisted from the conception of the project.
Finally, to my amazing congressional team led by Jillian Lane-Wyant—we work harder than anyone else. We demand excellence. We are in the thick of things on a daily basis and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We have won many battles, and we will continue
