The Washington Post has a
good analysis of the new energy bill, three years in the making. What does the GOP say about it? The Post
reported Bush's reaction yesterday: "
A good energy bill is part of my six-point economic plan to create the conditions for job creation and a sustained recovery. By making America less reliant on foreign sources of energy, it will also make our nation more secure."
Of course, as usual with Bush, his view reflects an alternative universe to ours, where up is down, black is white, and two and two make five.
GOP lawmakers said in yesterday's Post report that
... the 1,700-page bill would speed up the development of domestic energy resources, ease congestion on the nation's overburdened electricity grid and provide new tax incentives to revive a dormant nuclear power industry. Conservation measures, they said, would eliminate the need for 130 conventional power plants by 2020. A new trans-Alaska pipeline envisioned in the bill eventually could bring natural gas from the Arctic to the Midwest, they said.
Then, there's reality, as the Post reports in its analysis, "...industry officials and environmental activists of widely divergent viewpoints generally agree that it will have only a modest impact on the nation's most pressing energy problems, including its reliance on foreign energy supplies, an overburdened electricity grid and fuels that pollute the air and may alter the atmosphere.
"For those who want to deal aggressively with the dangers of climate change and air polluted by auto exhausts, power plants and factories, the bill is a disappointment.
"But for those who believe the United States needs to dramatically increase its domestic energy production in the interest of national security, the legislation also falls short."
Lots of mediocrity to pass around, along with the billions of dollars in tax breaks for GOP friends in the energy industry. There's no effort to increase minimum fuel efficiency standards in autos (in fact, some analysts believe that parts of the bill will lead to a decrease in average auto fuel efficiency). The measures to reduce energy consumption in the bill amount to saving a laughable three months of the projected U.S. total between now and 2020. Senate-approved measures to require utility companies to steadily ratchet up use of renewable energy sources has been dropped in the consensus bill. Shamefully, but not surprisingly, the energy bill does nothing to acknowledge global warming.
Worst of all, the energy bill repeals the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act, which limits utility industry mergers. Once again, the GOP proves that it believes in a competitive free market, as long as industry backers of the GOP get a pass on the "competitive" and "free" parts of the market.
The $20bn intended for an Arctic natural gas pipeline is simply pork for Gov. Frank Murkowski's (R-AK) benefit, as CBS' "60 Minutes" has reported. Worse, the Post reports that "the incentives are not enough to get the project going, say officials of ConocoPhillips, a primary backer. Even under the best of circumstances, the gas would not arrive for a decade."
At least Artic National Wildlife Refuge drilling was dropped from the bill to increase its chances of passage. However, I take major issue with the way the Post's analysis characterizes this: "Opposition to new oil and gas drilling off U.S. coasts proved so strong that GOP negotiators also dropped a proposal merely to inventory offshore energy reserves.
"As a result, the bill will not significantly slow the increasing U.S. dependence on crude oil imports, according to senior oil industry executives."
You bet this view comes from oil execs. By my calculations using a 1998 US Geological fact sheet on ANWR, if we started developing an oil drilling infrastructure there today, don't alter our oil importation and consumption, and assuming modestly favorable estimates of ANWR oil reserves, ten years from this oil would represent just over 8% of our net oil imports. Even if we did drill ANWR, we wouldn't significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The Post's analysis of the energy bill best describes the bill thusly: "Instead of a broad deal, the final package contains dozens of pieces of two clashing visions of the nation's energy future."
All pork and industry tax breaks with nothing substantive accomplished -- the outcome we've come to expect from Bush and the GOP.