Congress sells out the environment - again

Among many, many other dubious items included in the energy bill that has passed the house, but not the senate, is a lovely loophole making the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act virtually useless. It’s not surprising that the Bush administration would gut any legislation standing in their way of extracting every last drop of non-renewable resources in the US. Bush's idea of being a "good steward" obviously means whoring out the land to the highest bidder. I've been biting my tongue for a week after his wonderful speech about creating more oil refineries in the US. We had the good sense to stop building them over 20 years ago so that we could look towards new technologies for energy. Of his many proposals last week, not one called for creating energy from a renewable resource. Canada and France have highly developed tidal power, Holland is famously known for it's windmills, and even small towns in Bavaria, Germany are putting solar panels on their roofs, yet America just wants more oil. The only responsible recommendation in his entire proposal is extending the tax credit on hybrid vehicles. But even that is laughable considering hybrids are already selling so well they are on months of back-order, the public would buy them no matter what, he just wants to take political credit for it. If he actually meant business about fuel efficiency he would work on raising the CAFE standards instead of lowering them. I was at the Chicago Auto show this year and was appalled by the number of cars (not suvs, cars) the auto industry was rolling out that got under 20 mpg! Not to even mention behemoths like the Lincoln Navigator that got a whopping 9 mpg.

This irresponsible give-away for the oil industry will only end up hurting it, and all of us, in the end. From an economic standpoint, what will the industry do after they've bled America dry? When there's nothing left to drill or refine?

posted by Sarai @ 1:57 PM 0 comments