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We need a massive increase in energy to create the future our country and its people deserve, and LaRouchePAC’s Project Prometheus can deliver that future via a full-scale commitment to nuclear fission and fusion technology.

Many recognize that the United States desperately needs a new economic vision: ending our participation in globalism and reshoring advanced production; creating well-paying manufacturing jobs; building advanced new infrastructure throughout the nation; contributing to the world economy by production of needed capital goods, not endless wars; and providing a sense of optimism and pride in creating a better nation and future for the next generations. 

In his announcement speech for his 2024 presidential run, President Trump focused on this growing sentiment, 

"We will bring [back] our supply chains, which are a disaster right now, you can’t get anything... We will bring our supply chains and manufacturing base back home as we were strongly doing during the Trump administration. And we will systematically bring back wealth, health, and success to the American middle class and to America itself." 

This would be a monumental, generational shift, requiring (among other things) a massive expansion of our energy supply, led by nuclear fission and fusion power. To better understand this, let’s take a look at what has happened to the US economy, and what will be needed to reverse things. 

Start by comparing the energy composition of the Chinese economy to ours. 

In 2019 China (pre-pandemic) industry accounted for two-thirds of their total energy consumption, and manufacturing accounted for 55 percent.  In the United States, industry now accounts for less than a third of total energy consumption (whereas it was nearly half a couple generations ago). 

Despite population growth, total energy consumption for industry is no greater today than it was in the 1970s (US EIA, Energy Consumption by Sector). When population growth is factored in, per capita energy consumption for industry has steadily declined since the 1970s, down one third from its peak. 

Despite claims by some quackademics, this collapse of US industry and manufacturing was not some natural evolution of a modern economy, it was the result of treasonous policy decisions that left our nation weak and vulnerable to the globalist cartels and financiers who run global supply lines. 

We used to think differently.

In the early 1960s—before the radical environmental zero growth ideology took hold, and before Wall Street and DC elites sold out the American people to globalization—the John F Kennedy administration estimated that US energy consumption by 2020 would be 210 quadrillion BTUs per year (“Civilian Nuclear Power—A Report to the President,” U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Glenn Seaborg, 1962). In actuality, today we're consuming less than half of what was expected (about 100 quadrillion BTUs per year). Some of the discrepancy is due to a collapse in US population growth (leaving us with a smaller total population than was expected), but, when population is factored in, we're still consuming a quarter to a third less energy per capita than was expected for today. 

There is a myth that this lower energy use is because things have become more energy efficient. In reality, per capita energy consumption has increased in the commercial sector, increased in the residential sector, and increased in the transportation sector.  The only sector where per capita energy consumption has declined is industry.  

Where would we be if we hadn’t gone down the road of globalist insanity? If we assume energy consumption in industry should have grown at the same rate as it has grown in the commercial sector, today total energy consumption would be at the level forecast by the Kennedy administration. 

Said in another way, we're consuming far less energy than was expected because we've shut down industry and manufacturing, choosing to become reliant on foreign production and global supply lines. The goal of our globalist enemies is to shrink our energy consumption and industrial base even further, using programs like the Green New Deal to try to destroy what’s left of the US economy. 

Reversing this mistaken surrender of sovereignty and power to our enemies will require a massive increase in our energy supply, together with significant lowering of the cost of energy and improving the reliability and quality of energy supplied. 

This will require a focus on the most efficient, advanced, and capable power source available to mankind: nuclear fission and fusion power. Simply getting our domestic production up to where it should already be today would require 500 large (one gigawatt) nuclear power plants to provide the needed electricity, plus a comparable expansion of thermal energy for industrial use. In reality, we’ll need more than that, as Brian Lantz states in his article, “Project Prometheus: Building Hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants to Make America Great Again.” Beyond getting to where we should have been yesterday, we have to think about tomorrow, and account for additional growth, for creating new advanced transportation systems, for creating new large-scale water transfer systems in the west, and for a major expansion in space exploration and colonization. 

We will continue to fill out the details of our vision of the future. Only a thoroughly composed vision which allows each individual American to find his or her place in a bright future can unite the needed political alliance to take back control of our nation from the globalists and their uniparty cronies. The big fight centers on the economy; the cultural degradation our enemy has imposed is used to distract us from building the foundation for a thriving culture in a thriving and technologically advancing economy. Returning to American “think big” technological optimism based on nuclear power assures their defeat.