Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is once again crisscrossing the Treasure State, but instead of campaigning, he’s promoting his first book, “Power Up.energy.”

During a press conference outside the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish Friday, Schweitzer said the pocket-sized publication outlines how the U.S. can break its addiction to foreign energy sources — particularly oil from the Middle East, which he said is the reason we’re still fighting the two longest wars in history in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While he was the state’s governor from 2005-2013, he said attending the funerals of Montanans who died overseas impressed upon him the need for a new energy direction in this country.

“Every time I would go to those funerals, I would feel anger, because I knew we were so far from where we needed to be,” Schweitzer said. 

And unless the U.S. is able to become energy independent, he doesn’t see it stopping.

“Our [current] system of energy is not sustainable unless we’re willing to commit ourselves to endless wars,” he said.

The U.S. has just 2 percent of the world’s oil, and 5 percent of the world’s natural gas, Schweitzer asserted. Neither is a long-term solution, but he would like to see natural gas become a transition fuel to break the U.S.’s reliance on what he calls “petrol dictators,” like the Saudi royal family.

Solar and wind energy are already economically viable alternatives, and he said the real focus should be on improving technology to store energy for times when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

“At one point I was gonna call this book ‘It’s the Battery, Stupid,’” he said.

Power prices respond to demand over the course of the day, peaking along with demand in the afternoon, and hitting their low during the early a.m. hours. In his book, Schweitzer envisions car batteries with enough capacity to power homes and get people to and from work, where they plug directly into the wind- and solar-powered grid. The car can then act as an energy broker, automatically buying up cheap energy overnight and selling the excess during the daily peak for a profit.

“We will leave the hydrocarbon era because we’ll have an energy system that is cleaner, greener and American-made,” Schweitzer said. “There’s going to be more change in the way we produce and consume energy in this country over the next 20 years than there has been in the last 100 years.”

Characteristic of the former governor’s defiance of party lines, the book eschews the typical Democratic and Republican energy policies. He said he takes shots at both the liberal and conservative arguments on energy policy. He’s a fan of the Keystone XL pipeline, but believes the public controversy over the project misses the point.

“As [Stephen] Colbert would say, it’s a wag of the finger at both the liberals and the conservatives,” Schweitzer said.

In the book, he claims that the real issue is about neither cutting emissions nor keeping oil flowing, but establishing a long-term plan to break dependence on Middle East oil. Politicians have spent too much energy arguing over the pipeline, he said, while failing to invest more in solar panels, wind turbines and battery technology.

He said the book also takes aim at electricity companies in the U.S. which be believes currently operate under the “Stalinist model.”

Regardless of Washington’s failure to address the current problems, he said he’s optimistic about the future.

“If the politicians don’t do a damn thing ... it’s still gonna come,” he said. “Because you can’t fight the economics on this.”