Shooting for the sun.

President Bush strapped on his safety goggles and toured the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, on February 21. It was part of his tour to promote energy proposals that are supposed to end our "addiction to oil," as the President put it in his State of the Union address. Just before Bush's photo-op at the lab, the Energy Department quickly restored $5 million in funding the Administration had cut from the very programs the President was there to tout.

The lab rehired the thirty-two workers it had laid off the day after the State of the Union speech. But as Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, told the Associated Press, the $5 million represented only a fraction of the lab's $28 million shortfall. Bush's budget cuts have brought much of the nation's renewable energy research to a halt.

What do you expect from the guy who let oil industry lobbyists write the nation's energy policy in the first place?

If Americans are serious about getting on a program to break our oil addiction, there are better places to go for rehab.

Take the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor, environmental, business, and community organizations dedicated to energy independence within the next ten years.

Named after JFK's Apollo Project, which put a man on the moon in less than a decade, "an Apollo project for energy freedom must be big, bold, and fast," the group's website declares.

Like the moon landing, Apollo aims to bring together American industry, educational institutions, technological know-how, and public investment to make a giant leap for mankind.

The group's president, Jerome Ringo, was the first African American board chairman of a major environmental organization--the National Wildlife Federation. He became an advocate for environmental justice during his many years as a union worker in Louisiana's petrochemical industry.

One of the interesting things about Apollo is how it brings people together. In state and local chapters, labor and environmental leaders are moving beyond the jobs-versus-environment debate.

The group released a study by Noble Prize-nominated economist Ray Perryman that shows how tax credits and investments in alternative fuel technology would create more than three million new high-wage jobs and clean up air quality.

Apollo has been involved in progressive efforts in the states that are a blueprint for a big, national push for energy independence.

California, for example, passed a law mandating that 20 percent of its electricity must come from renewable sources like wind and solar power by 2017. Other states, from New York to Kansas to North Dakota, are using tax credits to encourage hybrid cars and help farms run on wind and even manure power.

In a TomPaine.com piece he wrote right before Bush's State of the Union address, Ringo conceded that a "patchwork of state initiatives isn't enough to move our nation to energy independence." We need national leadership, Ringo said. And that leadership is not likely to come from George W. Bush, or, as Ringo put it, "a White House beholden to big oil and gas producers" that has done nothing to address our looming energy crisis. But he held out a flicker of hope, entitling his column "Bush's Moonshot Moment."

Lo and behold, the President used his State of the Union to call for energy independence, in Carteresque language that surprised members of his own Administration.

If nothing else, Bush's rhetoric shows how much demand there is in the public for a bold energy plan.

"America needs to dream big again," says Toby Chaudhuri, Apollo's communications director. Investing in energy efficiency and clean energy can generate good jobs, reduce our trade deficit, clean up the air, and address global warming, he points out. "But we're constrained by a lack of imagination, and an unwillingness to roll back subsidies to companies that are already enjoying record profits."

The President is missing his "moonshot" opportunity. "He needs to do more than study the problem," Chaudhuri says. "He needs a bold plan to unite the country behind an Apollo-style program."

Instead, Bush is talking up ethanol, another program whose funding he has cut. As Representative Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, told AP, the 2005 budget funded only a third of the paltry renewable energy provisions of Bush's energy plan.

So for now, the seventeen million people in Apollo's member organizations are looking to the states, producing research, pushing petition drives, and reaching out to local legislators to help craft forward-looking policy in four major areas: renewable electricity, oil savings, appliance efficiency standards, and public funding for clean energy. The group also works with members of Congress to push its ten-point plan for energy independence within the next ten years.

"Clean energy is no longer just 'an environmental program.' It is the best way for America to revitalize its economy and make us a safer nation," says Apollo steering committee member Andrew Beebe, president of Energy Innovations.

Chaudhuri points out that the Apollo Alliance drive for energy independence helps answer all the major problems of the day: an American economy that is losing good jobs, a crumbling infrastructure, and, internationally, rising inequality and extremist anger. "We're calling for a movement fueled by moral outrage, but animated by hope," he says.

As the President continues his ridiculous act, promoting conservation programs even as he cuts their funding, and decrying our addiction to oil while continuing to coddle the oil industry, Apollo's message is more compelling than ever. Citizens can get involved by contacting their local chapters.

And candidates who hitch their stars to the Apollo idea in 2006 and 2008 may just find a winning political platform--not to mention a truly hopeful program for dramatic, positive change.

Ruth Conniff is the political editor of The Progressive.