UNITED STATES: Bush sacrifices environment for oil profits

May 30, 2001
Issue 

BY VIV MILEY

"The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants", George 'Dubya' Bush, January 14, 2001.

Bush and his administration definitely know a thing or two about energy. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, are both veterans of the oil business and they know first hand how hard it is to make a profit out of it.

No doubt that is the reason why the administration's new energy policy, released on May 17, is focused on giving government handouts to the big oil and energy corporations.

Devised by the administration's National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPD) and headed up by Cheney, the "comprehensive" and "long-term" policy will supposedly advance "new, environmentally friendly technologies to increase energy supplies and encourage cleaner, more efficient energy use".

But as Brian Vincent, California organiser for the national conservation group American Lands, has said, "The Bush energy plan is an all-you-can-eat buffet for big oil, gas, mining, nuclear and timber. Industry executives are salivating over this plan more than a Texan at a rib roast."

In a radio address to the nation two days after the policy release, Bush pouted "Too often Americans are asked to take sides between energy production and environmental protection. The truth is, energy production and environmental protection are not competing priorities. Both can be achieved with new technology and a new vision."

While Bush has couched the policy in terms of "sound conservation measures" and changing the "tone about the debate about economic growth and the environment", the core of his policy is to boost taxpayer-funded handouts to the most polluting and profiteering energy providers, while reducing funding to renewable sources of energy and offering no alternative to the fossil fuel and nuclear frenzy.

One of the most controversial aspects of the energy policy, and one that has been most vehemently opposed by environmental groups, is the proposal to allow areas of protected wilderness reserves to be opened up to gas and oil exploration.

So far the NEPD has recommended the authorisation of exploration and, if resources are found, development of area 1002 in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

"Congress should require the use of the best available technology and should require that activities will result in no significant adverse impact to the surrounding environment", the NEPD statement said.

According to Bush, such a development would be a positive for the country: "People have got to understand that it's possible that we could find, and likely find, 600,000 barrels of oil a day out of ANWR. That's what we import from Saudi — I mean Iraq."

According to conservationists and environmentalists, the fact that the energy policy does nothing to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is its greatest weakness. Executive director of the Republicans for Environmental Protection Jim Scaritino said, "The plan doesn't go far enough to improve our energy efficiency ... It perpetuates our dangerous dependence on oil."

Another controversial aspect of the new energy plan is its proposal to increase nuclear power generation and to give generous concessions to the nuclear industry.

According to estimates contained in the NEPD report, "To meet projected demand over the next two decades, America must have in place between 1300 to 1900 new electric plants". While natural gas is expected to fuel many of the new power plants, the NEPD gives nuclear energy "an expanding part in our energy future".

Other recommendations to boost the declining industry include streamlining the regulatory process for building new reactors, extending the life of existing facilities, renewing a law that limits industry liability for nuclear accidents and expanding tax subsidies for the construction of more nuclear plants.

The report puts forward nuclear power as a cost effective and less polluting source of electricity generation, a claim contradicted by findings from a 1998 OECD report which cited the cost of nuclear power in the US at $2079 per kilowatt hour (kWe), compared to $1200/kWe for coal-fired plants and $500/kWe for gas fired plants.

Claims that nuclear power is a solution to global warming and air pollution are also false. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from each step of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, construction of the reactor, transportation and storage of radioactive waste and decommissioning of old reactors.

When the entire nuclear chain is taken in to account, carbon emissions from nuclear power are greater than emissions created by renewable energy sources.

Another of the initiatives heralded by Bush is an 813% increase in taxpayer-funded subsidies to encourage the research and use of "clean coal", a technology which is still much dirtier than other forms of electricity production, such as natural gas.

Funding ear-marked for renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal and biomass, is designated to come from revenue raised by opening up Alaska's ANWR to gas and oil drilling, and therefore is dependent on the project going ahead.

Figures from the Department of Energy contradict administration claims to be promoting renewable energy sources just as much as coal, gas, and nuclear energy.

The Department of Energy's 2002 budget shows that funding for alternative energy sources has been slashed: hydrogen technology by 48.3%; solar research by 53.7%; geothermal research by 48.3%; fuel cell research by 14.3%; and biomass research by 6.7%.

In a move that will benefit car manufacturers more than the environment, Bush is also offering temporary income tax credits for buyers of "hybrid cars", that is, cars that utilise both petrol and electricity or fuel cell technology.

The energy crisis faced by the US is not caused by not having the technology, nor by the efforts of unfriendly foreign states to increase the price of fuel — it is rather the product of deliberate actions by US corporations.

The Bush energy plan will not solve the country's energy problems; it will exacerbate them, by enriching and empowering the companies who are causing it, and much environmental devastation, in the first place.

In California, it was deregulation that led to the "rolling blackouts" across the north of the state, with electricity providers raking in enormous profits during the supposed electricity shortage. Similarly, oil company profiteering is largely to blame for the price of oil, rather than the US being held to ransom by oil-producing countries.

The energy industry was one of the major bankrollers of George W Bush's elevation to the White House — Enron, for example, gave the Republicans just under US$750,000 — and now the industry has been handsomely rewarded.

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