Bernie Sanders Rolls Out Ambitious New Energy Plan

April 1, 2016

Presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders (I–Vermont) is amping up his message on energy and climate change in what may be a last-ditch effort to win over voters in remaining primary states, including Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania.

“We will reclaim the White House from the billionaire fossil fuel lobby,” Sanders said today at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, with “practical, common-sense solutions to energy costs that are going through the roof—literally.“

Button Up 1600 is a 1,600-point plan for air sealing, insulating, and improving thermal comfort in the neoclassical presidential residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Sanders said he would begin implementing the plan immediately after his inauguration in January 2017. Some of the initiatives announced today:

• Sanders says he will fill gaps in the historic White House building envelope with old copies of The Nation, unwanted delivery menus left on the doorstep of his current D.C. residence, and unsold bound editions of his 2010 filibuster speech. He plans to fill smaller gaps from his basket of old woolens he is “no longer able to darn—unless I want to knit a whole damned sock.”
• Hazardous icicles and ice dams will be removed, according to the campaign, with Sanders’ signature combination of “Yankee elbow grease and Brooklyn hot air.”
• The candidate has also promised to “personally install” thousands of roll-down window quilts, which he says he acquired secondhand last Saturday at a dump swap in Waterbury, Vermont. “Most are only slightly stained,” claims Sanders, as a result of flooding that destroyed the Vermont State Office Complex during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
• If the White House residence proves too chilly, Sanders plans to install a deluxe pellet stove with the 200-pound hopper extension. He said, “I don’t like having to wear a winter hat inside the house; it makes my hair all staticky.”

BuildingGreen caught up with the senator at the Agway in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Sanders was ordering seed potatoes he intends to plant in old five-gallon paint buckets on the balcony outside the Oval Office next year. “We live in the richest country in the history of the world,” Sanders told BuildingGreen, “yet we continue to do nothing about the acceleration of climate change. That will not continue in a Sanders White House.”

Sanders added, “No bank is too big to fail, and no building is too big to caulk.”