"This vote on this legislation will be a shot heard 'round the world' for energy independence for America," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the third most powerful politician in the United States.

You know the line.

'The shot heard around the world' comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson is a great American writer from the 19th century. He coined the phrase in a poem called "Concord Hymn" in reference to the first cannon shot of the American War of Independence.

In the 1910s, European politicians latched on to this phrase to describe the gunshot that killed Archduke Ferdinand and triggered World War I.

Then New York's Daily News used the phrase to describe a dramatic homerun by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants in the 1951 pennant playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Last Thursday, Pelosi used the phrase again. And to emphasize her point, she actually held up a baseball signed by Bobby Thomson as she said it.

Pelosi's new "shot heard around the world" is a law called the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, it passed through the House of Representatives last week. This law – if stamped by the Senate – will have huge consequences on our investments.

Let me give you the details:

This bill still has to pass through the Senate. Frankly, it probably won't pass in its current form. Also, President Bush has said he'd veto this bill. So there's a long way to go before it becomes law. Nevertheless, it does show the direction this country is heading in. And I want to profit from this new direction.

My favorite "green energy" investment is wood.

Most people don't realize that wood is an important source of energy. Solar, wind, and ethanol get all the attention. But the fact is, wood was the world's main source of energy until the mid-1800s. And even today, wood waste still fills about 2% of the United States' energy needs.

Last month, the Minister of Energy in Great Britain announced he was going to build the largest bio-energy power plant in the world. They will build the plant in Port Talbot, in Wales. The plant will generate 350 megawatts of power. That's enough electricity to power half the houses in Wales. This plant will run on wood chips. North America will supply these wood chips.

Producing energy from wood chips is also a priority for the U.S. democratic party. Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts democrat, specifically mentioned wood chips as a destination for the subsidies the democrats want to take away from the oil companies.

Right now, there are millions of dead pine trees all over Colorado and British Columbia as a result of the massive infestation by the Mountain Pine Beetle. This wood is useless to the forestry industry, but it's a huge fire hazard if it's left standing in the forests.

If you can figure out how to move this dead wood from the forest to the wood-fired power plants in Europe, you'll make a fortune... especially if you get Nancy Pelosi and her new "shot heard around the world" legislation to subsidize you...

Good investing,

Tom

Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.