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In
his recent book “Power to the People,” Vijay Vaitheeswaran, energy
correspondent of The Economist, quotes an op-ed article co-authored in
2002 by the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and the Cato Institute’s Ed Crane.
Writing about the energy bill Congress was considering at that time,
the enviro Pope and the market fundamentalist Crane teamed up to
express their righteous disgust: “the legislation does nothing to
improve the efficiency of energy markets or to remedy any market
failures,” wrote Pope-Crane. In their rush to provide subsidies and
incentives to the fossil fuel industry, conservative legislators, they
charged, had ignored the elemental economics rule that if a technology
is competitive it doesn’t need public subsidies—and if it’s not
competitive, no amount of subsidies will make it so.
At the
same time, Pope-Crane said that liberal or pro-environment lawmakers
were so intent on getting subsidies for their favorite green energy
industries that they went along with the energy bill’s great gobs of
government largesse for the status quo industries (oil, coal, gas,
nuclear).
They called on devotees of Adam Smith and Rachel Carson to join hands
to propose an alternative energy bill, “one that would simply strip
away all energy subsidies and preferences from the budget and federal
tax code.” Their argument fell on deaf ears, of course, and the bill
didn’t pass in the end.
But
TEI being, in some ways, just such a Smithean-Carsonian, I thought of
their charge as I plowed my way slowly under the hot sun, title by
title, through a 1,000-plus-page Energy Bill that could clear the
Senate before the week is done: An energy bill that could well be
called a monument to the old and corrupted political thinking about
energy, and a true artifact of the energy consumption culture that is
destroying us even as we feast on it.
Arjune Makhijani, president of The Institute for Energy and the Environment Research estimated on NPR’s Science Friday
that tax breaks and direct subsidies in the Energy Bill would add up to
$34.5 billion in government giveaways. Most of these can be found in
the summary of the original House bill that passed in April. More details can be found in the tax package passed this week in the Senate Finance Committee.
Is there no giveaway left out?
Billions
for new nuclear power stations and hundreds of millions to keep the
extant nukes running. Billions for clean coal technology, whatever that
means (a subject I intend to post on at some point). Hundreds of
millions to reduce the royalties oil companies pay for offshore oil
leases–as if oil companies need it, with light crude trading at $50-60
a barrel. Incentives and subsidies for new liquefied natural gas
facilities, new and expanding oil refineries, electric transmission
lines for the electric power industry, and on and on and on. Not to
mention all the money energy corps and automakers will save through the
numerous environmental deregulation provisions in the bill. Nor the
legal absolution of MBTE producers at taxpayers’ expense. And iff you
really want to read ‘em and weep, try the article posted in Business
Week Online headlined “Lobbyists Are Gushing Over This Energy Bill”.
A new one for me: mentioned in the piece is $2 billion for oil-drilling
research that will likely go to The Research Partnership to Secure
Energy for America, which just happens to be located in Tom DeLay’s
Texas hometown.
Meanwhile, the attempt to tack on even a
milquetoast amendment to deal with global warming by making a motion
toward controlling greenhouse gas emissions collapsed, after New Mexico
Republican Pete Domenici had facetime with Dick Cheney and decided
against supporting his New Mexico Democratic colleague Sen. Jeff
Bingaman’s climate change amendment (see Reuters: “No climate change in energy bill- Domenici).
The
Energy Bill that will pass the Senate and go to conference with the
House will not lower gas prices. It will not increase our energy
security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. And it will not
reduce the growing risks associated with global warming. It does not
seriously address the wasted energy of Americans driving inefficient
cars. It does not seriously address management of electricity demand,
where the greatest energy savings and profits from technological
innovations are waiting to be had. It certainly doesn’t seriously
address climate change. And it doesn’t make energy markets more
efficient–quite the opposite. By giving the store away to Big Oil, Big
Coal, Big Voltage and Big Car, we’ll be telling the fatcats they can
relax for another 20 years.
The bill, in other words, won’t
make government the leader in making a clean energy future a reality.
No matter how much Bush primps and pouts about American tempers running
short because of high gas prices, the national energy policy that will
come from this law is an arrogant example of trying to create a more
efficient, prosperous and sustainable future with pork barrel politics.
Adam Smith, Rachel Carson: time to start rolling over in your graves.
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