I’m usually left mildly irritated by the occasional messages that Fred Upton, my congressional representative, sends to his email subscribers. His most recent email got me thoroughly pissed. I’m pretty sure he’s not stupid, but he must think his constituents are.
If you’re chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wouldn’t that automatically make you one of the nation’s strongest advocates for the business of researching, developing, and producing green energy? You could personally help lead the nation—and the planet—into the future, toward the most vital development ever in the evolution of humanity: our inevitable transition from black energy to green.
Instead, Upton is one of the strongest proponents of same-old big oil and the Keystone XL pipeline. His email said KXL should be part of North America’s “new architecture of abundance.” He complained about the indefinite extension of the pipeline’s review. You don’t need audio to hear the whine:
We will never be allowed to take full advantage of North America’s growing energy resources if it takes over five years to simply approve a privately-built pipeline. We are going to need to build dozens of new oil and natural gas pipelines and transmission lines over the next decade to fully realize the potential our newfound energy abundance.
Questions:
- When did oil become a “newfound energy abundance”?
- How does pipelining black energy represent a “new architecture”?
- If “abundance” is the issue, how soon will we use up all our wind and sunshine?
- If the pipeline were scheduled to come through our district in Southwest Michigan, how hard would our congressional representative push for it?
- Instead of threatening the nation with dozens of new pipelines over the next decade, why isn't the energy chairman calling for ten years’ worth of all-out wind turbine and solar panel production?
Answers:
- The mid-nineteenth century.
- It doesn’t.
- Never.
- Most likely, he’d have opposed the pipeline a few years ago.
Answers to question five lie beyond the orange doober.
In December 2011, The Los Angeles Times named “Congress' 10 biggest enemies of the Earth.” First place went to Fred Upton. Here’s the reasoning:
As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Upton is the gatekeeper for many of the disastrous anti-environment bills that have been approved or proposed in the House this year. Ironically, he was once known among his state's conservatives as "Red Fred" because of a somewhat pro-environment voting record, but a recent electoral challenge from his right changed all that. Because of his powerful position and newfound disdain for green regulation, he represents one of the biggest threats to planet Earth on planet Earth.
The
Times article is right about Upton’s former “pro-environment voting record,” but the “recent electoral challenge from his right” may not tell the whole story of what
Mother Jones called his “
climate changeup.”
Upton used to be the one exception when I'd cast my otherwise straight-Democratic vote. Glenn Beck once called Upton a socialist for being environmentally responsible. If he had Palinesque eyeballs, Upton could stand in his back yard and see the Lake Michigan wind farms he advocated for in 2008. His website once said, “I strongly believe that everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions.”
That sentence disappeared shortly after Upton won his chairmanship on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in December, 2010, and then hemmed and hawed his way through this interview with Chris Wallace.
Coincidentally, it seems that being the energy chairman somehow attracted energy company lobbyists. Today, Open Secrets reports (subject to almost daily updates) that Upton’s biggest campaign contributors include Chesapeake Energy and Koch Industries.
The Upton email that got me pissed concluded with this line:
Our job as policymakers is to pursue visionary policies that will allow this Architecture of Abundance to soon become a reality.
How “visionary” is it to keep on polluting the land by drilling wells and building pipelines so we can keep on polluting the air with fossil fuel exhaust? Has Fred Upton become just enough of a visionary to understand the new architecture of donation abundance?
Here’s my bold prediction for how many “visionary policies” we can expect from the House Energy and Commerce Committee during Upton's chairmanship: None.
Upton won his first Congressional election in 1986. He’s served through two redistrictings and five Presidents. That’s enough. Please sign this petition asking Fred Upton to do the planet a favor and retire.
It's not like he'll end up on the unemployment line. He could get a job as a big-oil lobbyist making five time his congressional salary.