Just a few days into his term as president, I’d be willing to bet something is keeping President Barack Obama up at night – and I doubt it’s the White House phone ringing at 3 a.m.

Nightmares of an economy in a recession deeper than the Grand Canyon, two wars against an invisible enemy and a planet on the verge of melting faster than a birthday candle, would stir even the soundest of sleepers.

Fortunately, there is a viable solution for both the president’s sleeping woes and the grocery list of crises that have our nation and planet in an ever-tightening vice grip.

What our country and president need is a hefty dose of “green” power.

Obama must push for a significant portion of his proposed $800 billion-plus bailout plan to be spent on alternative energy and energy efficiency, and accompany this spending with some significant tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy sources.

This may sound to some like little more than reckless government spending, but such a proposal would go a long way toward slaying the three-headed dragon that has been breathing fire down our country’s back.

Significant investments in improving the energy efficiency of our nation’s buildings and revamping our archaic energy grid could create thousands – if not millions – of jobs right now.

Investment in renewable energy research would help to improve existing technologies and develop new ones so American companies can get a head start on the competition in what is already a burgeoning industry in the new millennium.

However, government spending is simply not enough to start the full-scale “green” revolution that this country so badly needs.

Tax cuts for renewable energy providers and price incentives for consumers of renewable energy would allow these providers to compete with existing “dirty” energy sources.

A bailout for the “Big Three” automakers must include a promise they will drastically improve efficiency standards and take significant steps toward actually producing electric and fuel-cell powered cars.

For too long, they have failed to grasp what has been obvious to so many of us: we no longer live in an age of plenty.

Today, using less equals more.

If we produce and drive cleaner, more efficient cars, we can end our nasty addiction to foreign oil and pull our hand slowly from the boiling pot that is the Middle East, coming closer each day to bubbling over.

Such a push toward renewable energy and efficiency would go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, so that we might – I stress might – avoid the worst consequences of the havoc we have wrought on the planet.

The costs of abiding by the bumper sticker slogan, “Don’t worry about the environment; it will go away,” will dwarf even the worst economic calamity.

This week, the rest of the world took notice as we inaugurated our first black president.

I guarantee they would pay attention to an American-led “green” revolution, too.

- Drew Kann is a junior from Decatur majoring in magazines