"We're here today to urge our Maine delegation to do something about climate control," said Edwards, who served two-and-a-half years in Vietnam.
He said the measure is important for environmental reasons as well as for national security. "We Americans send trillions of dollars every year to states in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia, who in turn send billions of dollars a year to the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
Andrew Campbell, who served with the Maine Army National Guard in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, says he became acutely aware of America's dependence on foreign oil while providing security for oil tanker convoys in the volatile Mosul area of the country. "If you were on a convy with a fuel tanker and an IED or rocket hit that fuel tanker, the fireball it would cause would probably wipe out the whole convoy."
When Campbell came home, he says he started to notice oil prices going up. "And I started to make a connection that we're sending millions of dollars everyday overseas to state-owned oil companies, states like Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, like General Edwards mentioned, and they in turn are helping to fund terrorist activity abroad. It doesn't make any sense to me."
"Right now the best we can do is get off foreign oil," said Garret Reppenhagen, who served as a sniper in Iraq. "We can become more independent, we can become more sustainable, and we have the power and techology to do it, and we certainly have enough hard-working American people to get it done."
Reppenhagen now works for a non-profit called Veterans Green Jobs, providing job training in the green sector for military veterans. The energy bill currently before the Senate, as well as the House version, he says, both include more funding for such training programs.
"When you put a certain amount of personal investment in the security and safety of this country and its well-being, and you come home you continue that service because you want the best potential for what America can do," he said.
Among the clean energy bill's opponents is the American Farm Bureau. "The way this bill goes about it, though, is instead of energy security, it gives energy insecurity," says Rick Krause, Senior Director of Congressional Relations at the Bureau.
Krause says he agrees with the principle that the U.S. should be less reliant on foreign oil. But he says the bill - particularly the Senate version sponsored by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Barbara Boxer of California - is woefully short on detail on how fossils fuels are going to be replaced.
"There's nothing in here about what is going to take their place. Renewable energy might be a possibility at some point in the future, but it's not ready yet to fully replace fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, which might be the cleanest-burning fuel source, might be a logical candidate, but there's nothing in this bill that would promote its use.
This legislation, he says, would hit America's fuel-dependent farmers hard, which would drive up the food prices and in turn hurt consumers.