The United States Congress is considering an energy bill to promote “energy independence”.
The $2.56 trillion federal budget for 2006, adopted late Thursday night by the House and Senate, includes a provision that Congress can open the refuge by enacting a particular kind of legislation, called "a reconciliation," that is not vulnerable to Senate filibusters, which have been used to kill such drilling measures in the past. Majorities in both chambers have already voiced support of Arctic drilling this year. The House approved broad energy legislation last week that includes a drilling provision. In the Senate, lawmakers voted narrowly in favor of drilling last month, when the issue came up in connection with the budget. (source)
So which radical magazine do you suppose recently published the following opinion:
[Congress] is now considering an energy bill that would allow oil drilling in pristine parts of Alaska and would dole out billions in subsidies for the oil and gas business. This is mad. America has so little oil, and guzzles so much, that it will never again be energy-independent while relying on oil. America's best hopes for energy security lie in the resilience of global oil markets, in conservation and in alternative energy sources.
Sierra Magazine perhaps? Maybe a newsletter from the Natural Resources Defense Council?
Here's another clue:
The right energy policy for governments everywhere is to get energy prices right, at home. For a start, they should halt the vast sums lavished on fossil-fuel industries as tax breaks, below-market royalty payments and other hidden subsidies. Even developing countries waste scarce resources on blanket energy subsidies. Just as important is the embrace of green taxes. Burning petrol harms human health and the environment. Add in the geopolitical costs of oil, and the case for raising petrol taxes in many countries, especially in America, becomes overwhelming.
OK, so if the article talks about “petrol”, you can guess that it's not from the U.S., so it must be a publication from some environmental group based in Europe or Australia, right? Wrong. It is from Europe, specifically the U.K., but it's not from an environmental group. It is from the lead editorial in the April 30th - May 6th issue of that radical magazine The Economist (subscription required for access to the full editorial).
The energy policy proposed by President Bush and about to be passed by both houses of Congress fails the simplest test of any policy. It misdiagnoses the problem. Read that sentence again and repeat three times.
America has so little oil, and guzzles so much, that it will never again be energy-independent while relying on oil.
America has so little oil, and guzzles so much, that it will never again be energy-independent while relying on oil.
America has so little oil, and guzzles so much, that it will never again be energy-independent while relying on oil.
As The Economist concludes:
[President Bush] should craft policies that would at last begin to wean America, by far the world's largest energy consumer, from its fierce addiction to oil. As in Churchill's day, energy security still depends on variety. But now that variety needs to be sought in sources of energy, rather than sources of oil alone.
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