Stopping the energy bill (fat chance but worth a shot)
Mike Ewall, the Green Party of Philadelphia’s energy and environmental policy guru (as well as the last person they ran for the 1st District Pennsylvania seat in a non-presidential election year) passed along this urgent message:
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** PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY **
ENERGY BILL ACTION ALERT!
7/27/2005
Without exaggeration, the single most environmentally-destructive
national legislation ever — the Energy Bill — is close to being approved for
Bush’s signature.
Late Monday night, the House-Senate conference committee approved a
final version of the energy bill. We expect the bill to cruise through the
House very soon, and to come to a vote in the Senate possibly by the end of
this week - despite the fact that most legislators have not even seen the
1,000+ page bill yet!
PLEASE CALL YOUR U.S. SENATOR’S OFFICE IN DC THIS WEEK!!
ASK THEM TO SUPPORT A FILIBUSTER OF THE ENERGY BILL!
FIND YOUR SENATOR’S DC PHONE NUMBER HERE:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
(PICK YOUR STATE AND CALL BOTH OF YOUR U.S. SENATORS)
The Senate should delay their vote until after the August recess, so
they have time to learn what is actually in the bill.
Your message to your Senators is simple: No taxpayer funding for dirty
energy (nuclear power, coal, oil, etc. — more ideas below). Support a
Filibuster of the Energy Bill. …and READ the bill before voting on it!
If calling Democratic Senators, tell them that the conference report
(current version of the energy bill) does not meet the criteria that
Sen. Reid laid out for a Democratic Commitment To Energy Independence.
The Energy Bill would:
* increase gasoline prices (according to Bush’s own Department of
Energy)
* do nothing to reduce our reliance on oil imports
* do nothing to increase auto fuel efficiency
* do nothing to transition our electricity sector towards clean
renewable energy
* make us more vulnerable to terrorism by building more juicy terrorist
targets (new nuclear reactors and a new gas pipeline from Alaska)
* throw many billions of tax dollars into the nuclear industry
* promote nuclear proliferation by reversing long-standing U.S. policy
against reprocessing waste from commercial nuclear reactors, and using
plutonium to generate commercial energy
* trample state’s rights to protect their coasts from liquefied natural
gas
terminals (used so we can go to war for gas as well as oil, now that
we’re running out of natural gas in North America)
* inventory the U.S. coastlines for oil and gas, to make way for future
drilling in our coastal waters
* promote building more coal power plants
* provide incentives to cut down our national forests for energy
* create demand for building many more polluting ethanol
"biorefineries"
* subsidize landfills, incinerators and other waste facilities
* support far too many other horrible ideas to name here…
For more information on the energy bill, visit:
http://www.energyjustice.net/energybill/
The Democratic Commitment To Energy Independence:
http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/press/05/2005516616.html
(Many points that the Democrats say they’re committed to… if they’re
really committed to them, they should block the energy bill.)
Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
catalyst@actionpa.org
http://www.energyjustice.net
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Well, of course they haven’t read the legislation; their PAC donors have already told them how to vote. In fact, an earlier version of the same type of bill, before aligning details with the House, already passed weeks ago 85-12. That’s not the worst of it; only 7 of those 12 were Democrats, the other 5 were Republicans. That bill encourages heavier investment in ethanol, which has long been proven to use more energy (fossil fuels at that!) to create than it saves. This is basicially a massive pork subsidy for one powerful corporation, one of the most powerful (some would say evil) in fact, ADM. The House is more bought out by the oil industry, which likely wants more pork than the Senate was already giving them. It’s Aliens vs. Predators. Renewables, and - perish the thought! - reduction of energy use aren’t seriously on the table (in fact, the last article linked to there notes that was specifically rejected…). Not enough money in that for the piggies.
Thus about 1 in 6.5 Democratic senators are willing to even vote against this sort of pork-laden, polluting energy bill, let alone filibuster against it. I don’t see citizen action at this late date doing much on this front, what with this set of folks in office. Clearly no one has been pressured on any front, not by their own parties, not in the popular press and not by voters taking a serious look at alternative choices, to hold their feet to the fire. But as always I applaud the effort as necessary and, hopefully, um, instructional … in a "good lord these people are weasels" sort of way.
There is another pervasive silence on the issue from all of the usual Democratic shill groups, as always happens when the overwhelming majority of the elected party officials line up with the Bush agenda against their own voting constituents. I imagine it becomes necessary for folks like MoveOn (who have nothing about any of this on their website) to remain silent as attempting to motivate their donation base of actual progressives on issues like these would only lead to a healthy, proper cynicism about the party to which MoveOn transfers their money.
Senator Rodham-Clinton’s (D-IL/AR/DC/NY) major contribution to energy and environmental policy of late has been supporting tire burns at a New York facility not designed for that purpose, a move so cartoonishly anti-environment ("dirtier than coal") that she’s making a neighboring Republican governor look like a champion of the people for opposing the idea. (You might not have a great deal of success learning this sort of thing via Google…)
