There’s a zillion ways you can parse the elephantine Cheney-Bush
energy bill that’s just emerged from three years of congressional flam-flummery. One simple comparison tells the story. In the last budget signed by Jimmy Carter, funding for renewable energy and improved efficiency (adjusted for inflation) was
four times what is proposed in the current bill.
As I’ve noted previously
here and
here , the energy bill’s 1700 pages contain some bacon for just about everyone – making the whole monstrosity harder to vote against. In the House of Representatives, it’s a done deal. However, there remains the slimmest chance that the Senate Republicans won’t be able to wrangle a majority.
For instance, Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told
The New York Times : "I think we are being asked to take it or leave it. … The old adage, `It could have been worse,' is not an adequate judgment for people to vote for it."
Democrats were essentially squeezed out of the conference committee process and most of the rest of the wheeling and dealing since 2001 that brought this beast to its current state. But at least a few Republicans are not happy.
"It's an Iranian bazaar, not an energy bill. It's a leave-no-lobbyist-behind bill," said Sen. John McCain He's vowed to oppose it.
The most scandalous bit of business in what may be the worst single piece of domestic legislation in two decades is probably the
repeal of the 70-year-old Public Utility Holding Company Act. Then there’s the failure to establish a
Renewables Portfolio Standard that would require 20% of our energy to come from renewable sources by 2020.
It goes on and on. A detailed examination of the bill turns up one horrible waste of taxpayer money after another – gigantic subsidies and
giveaways of the public patrimony to well-established industries who have sucked on the federal teat for decades already: oil and gas, coal and nuclear. And, of course, not a thought given to global warming.
The Republicans finally surrendered on the issue of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. But that old shibboleth of U.S. oil independence still had a heavy impact on the bill. Utterly foolish, and impossible.
Before Markos’s infant son Ari enrolls in college, or perhaps even before he begins high school, global oil prices will embark on a permanent upward curve guaranteed to pinch prosperity in the developed world and gravely damage the economies of those countries we used to call “third world.” That’s because we’re within a decade of reaching the
peak of oil production. That is, we will have consumed half of the planet’s total
oil reserves. A few ideological diehards claim we will find huge pools of as-yet-undiscovered oil that will rescue us. This is nonsense. Even most of the optimists are finally conceding that the end of the era of cheap oil is just around the corner.
A wise, future-oriented energy plan would acknowledge this situation. The Cheney-Bush plan does the opposite – it looks backward, to yesterday’s way of doing things. Instead of preparing for a world where oil costs $100 or even $200 a barrel, the Administration pretends that it’s all just a matter of drilling a little deeper in a few environmentally protected places.
It’s not as if there aren’t excellent alternative energy plans out there. The
American Council on an Energy Efficient Economy has one, and the labor-business
Apollo Alliance has a Ten Point Plan. The Rocky Mountain Institute jumpstarted the foundation-funded
New Energy Policy Initiative and the Natural Resources Defense Council has put together
A Responsible Energy Policy for the 21st Century .
Two years ago, Steve Silberman wrote in
Wired magazine an
excellent evaluation of what we could do in the electricity arena if we just had the will.
The Cheney-Bush energy bill is about as far from these proposals as it is possible to get without reviving the steam locomotive. The best Christmas present the Senate could give the nation would be to vote it into oblivion.