ENERGY BILL A SHAM

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Energy bill is bad idea made worse **(imagine what 2 more years did for it!! D)

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
If there were truth in lawmaking, the motto for the congressional team negotiating the energy bill would be: "We're making an awful plan worse."
Republican negotiators from the House and Senate could soon release the final energy bill. The plan started with flawed premises: giant tax breaks for energy companies, less environmental protection and no major push for conservation. But the lead Republican negotiators, Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, boldly have expanded the bill.
Domenici and Tauzin are loading up the legislation with special-interest favors. Nearly $1 billion could go to loan guarantees for a Minnesota coal gasification plant, a little more than a billion would back construction of an experimental nuclear power plant in Idaho. And the two leaders want an "inventory" of coastal energy resources, which could lead to oil drilling off Washington's coast.
If they can get away with it in the Senate, the Republicans will allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. According to Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is eager for Arctic drilling, primarily to set a precedent that rolls over environmental concerns in a pristine area.
From this state's perspective, the bill will be a disaster if it promotes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's electricity deregulation agenda. Even without that, the bill is shaping up as an appalling collection of bad ideas that deserve a Senate filibuster.

ANOTHER ARTICLE

New U.S. Energy Bill speeds up oil reserve depletion, increases dangerous dependence on Middle East oil that threatens national and homeland security. Provides funding for major expansion of radioactive energy(Nukes)and continues focus on high polluting fossil energy. Discourages investment in abundant clean energy resources and and protects windfall profits of big oil and energy. Visit www.cleanpeace.org for more information.
(PRWEB) July 30, 2005 -- The energy bill Congress sent to the White House today guarantees America's continued dangerous, dependence on Middle East oil. The U.S. holds between 2 percent and 3 percent of world oil reserves, the Persian Gulf nations hold 50 percent and the Middle East dominated OPEC cartel controls 61 percent. Middle East dictators have oil staying power; the U. S. and Western democracies do not.“The bill subsidizes more rapid depletion of dwindling U.S. oil reserves. Subsidized oil production means faster oil depletion, an increasingly dangerous dependence on Middle East oil, the dictators who control it and the terrorists who influence them,” said author Roy McAlister, a Cleanpeace. org Co-President and a world authority on clean fuel production from wind, wave, biomass and solar energy.America's prosperity and security depend on adequate supplies of the cheap oil that powers the nation's economy. Increasing dependence on Middle East oil supplies that can be disrupted by violence or political change at any time threatens both. Without adequate cheap oil supplies America could face recessions, depression and worse.The energy bill's policies will not fill the oil gap, improve the environment, reduce global warming or encourage use of America's abundant undeletable energy.The bill heavily subsidizes depletable radioactive energy (nuclear power), coal and other fossil fuels while short-changing undepletable energy.This severe imbalance in funding and policy advantages makes fossil and radioactive energy appear less expensive than undepletable energy discouraging its commercialization and sustaining windfall profits for big oil.“Earth collects more energy from the sun in one day than all the oil it ever contained. Nature stores vast amounts of this energy in wind, wave action, biomass and direct solar in sun-scorched deserts. All these abundant forms of solar energy can be converted to hydrogen and fuel America's existing utility, industrial, transportation and agricultural engines without pollution.” said McAlister. But,Congress prefers to serve big oil profits rather focus policy and funding on this clean energy source that could bring real energy independence, cleaner air and water and strong national security.“The bill protects oil and OPEC from real competition. It stacks the competitive deck against undepletable energy and that stacks the deck against America.” said Bill Garrett, a Co-President of Cleanpeace.org, a non-profit clean, undepletable, energy advocacy group.Radioactive power (Nukes) can not safely fill the oil gap. The fossil resources subsidized by the energy bill cannot be mined and processed into oil fast enough to replace the gushes of oil that have fueled American and world prosperity. “The energy bill's priorities are simply wrong, Said Garrett.“It would take over 2000 mammoth one giga-watt radioactive fueled nuclear power plants to make up oil's decline. Storing and protecting the radioactive wastes these nuclear plants will produce prohibits nuclear power from being cost effective.” Said McAlisterMcAlister continued, “Congress' energy bill amounts to little more than a Big Oil boondoggle and a multi-billion dollar giveaway to giant energy corporations. It puts taxpayer money in the wrong place, at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. It continues short-changing abundant solar resources and it fails to equalize subsidies and policy advantages between depletable energy and undepletable energy. The bill should be dubbed “The Great Mistake”“By passing this bill, Congress sent a message to America's friends and foes that the United States has surrendered its energy future to those who hold the oil when it needed to send a Declaration of Energy Independence and set an undepletable energy policy to back it up.” said Garrett.For more information:www.cleanpeace.org