IN CONGRESS, July 4, 2010
The unanimous Declaration of the fifty United States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a dirty, deadly energy source, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and the right to a secure and unpolluted future for their offspring.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Energy becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute an Energy [R]evolution, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing their power sources in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Energy Sources long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Energy Sources, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Energy Production. The history of the present Fossil Fuel Economy is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
British Petroleum and the Fossil Fuel Industry have refused Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for establishing environmental protection.
They have made judges and elected official dependent on their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
They affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving their Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
They have quartered large bodies of armed troops on foreign soil, and protected them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of those States
They have used those troops for cutting off Trade with parts of the world,
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
They have plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, and destroyed the lives of our people.
They are at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of a civilized nation.
They have constrained our fellow Citizens to bear Arms, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. An Energy Source whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the fueler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British Petroleum brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Energy-Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Fossil Fuel Economy, and that all polluting connections between them and Big Oil, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Energy Independent States, they have full Power to shift to Renewable Energy Sources, to catch up with such investments in Wind, Wave, Solar, and other forms of clean renewable energy as other foreign nations have done, and to aggressively accelerate the transition to clean energy.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
