When it comes to America's financial crisis, there's plenty of blame to go around. You don't have to dig far into the toxic sludge of bad credit, soaring deficits, fiscal mismanagement and deregulation to see that all of it blends together to form a really big mess. And you don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know that the financial market meltdown is a warning sign that America's economy is in desperate need of an overhaul.

Leaders of nations, just like executives of financial institutions, are responsible for understanding and responding to new market signals. And when they don't, the economies of great nations – just like the creditworthiness of corporate giants – can crumble with frightening speed.

Which brings me to the biggest emerging market opportunity of our lifetime. That is the opportunity to galvanize American technology, workers, ingenuity and courage to do something truly great – building a clean-energy, good-jobs, made-in-America economy that will power our nation in the 21st century.

Clean energy isn't a mirage. It's the fastest growing industrial sector in the United States. It is already generating $25 billion a year in sales and revenue, is growing at 30 percent a year and has produced more than 500,000 new American jobs over the last three years. And that's happened with almost no support from the federal government.

Imagine the growth in jobs, technology, equipment, suppliers and productivity if the United States actually treated the development of clean energy as a national economic priority. And consider just as seriously the remarkable benefits to America's security, environment, economic stability and communities that would be realized by keeping at home the nearly $400 billion that we send each year to foreign nations, many hostile to our interests, to import their oil.

It's time for America to quit bailing and to start building. That's why the Apollo Alliance this month unveiled the New Apollo Program, a comprehensive clean energy, job-generating strategy to restore America's economic strength. This 10-year, $500 billion investment plan aims to create 5 million jobs while helping to solve the climate crisis, the energy crisis and the economic crisis facing our nation. Recalling President John F. Kennedy's bold commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, the alliance is taking its plan to town hall meetings across the nation to build the popular support that will help President-elect Barack Obama and Congress launch America toward a clean energy future.

The New Apollo Program calls for a sweeping set of actions – bold commitments to energy efficiency, dramatic increases in the use of renewable energy, a reinvigorated manufacturing base for advanced fuel-efficient vehicles – to put Americans back to work here at home. And it renews our nation's historic commitment to innovation, research and development, science, and work force training and education.

Unlike the nation's first Apollo mission, this one isn't rocket science. We can put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work right away by retrofitting the buildings in this country that consume nearly 70 percent of our electricity and are responsible for almost 40 percent of our carbon emissions; constructing public transit systems to connect our neighborhoods and cities; building a smart grid to recapture some of the $20 billion we lose each year to transmission inefficiency; and using the sun and the wind to generate clean electricity for our homes and businesses.

Our economic crisis reminds us that financial engineering and manipulation are not substitutes for long-term investment and job creation. The time to change course is now.

People need jobs and relief from high energy costs. Our dependence on oil is putting our nation's security at risk. Foreign competitors are moving to exploit the opportunities offered by clean energy. We can seize the opportunity to become the leader of a new global green economy. We're Americans. Let's do it.