W. sucks too – he said he “couldn’t” sign the energy bill – why not is his hand broken? What he is really saying is he “wouldn’t” sign the energy bill because Big Oil owns him – owns his soul, his every thought, his career his house, his kids education – owns him – his daddy, his mommy and all his friends.
What right does the Senate have caving into special interest when it’s OUR TAX PAYER MONEY! We gave them the right by OUR vote to act in OUR interest. Big money comes in and says we aren’t going to fund your campaigns anymore, and they fold like a house of cards. Where are the real men and women the leaders who have a vision for the future? Read this NY Times article below and in the Mercury News link in the title above and weep people. In an era that cries out for bold action we limp along and now we are going to be subsidizing the unprofitable nuclear industry. I am so disgusted with the Status Quo. What a bunch of vision less wimps. We are on a tiny rock with a wisp of air and a spit of water and we continue to champion dirty energy solutions. I wanna puke all over the keyboard. My resolve is more hardened we need to toss the Senate out on it’s ear and get a REAL representative government of independents and realists.
Industry Flexes Muscle, Weaker
Energy Bill Passes
WASHINGTON — Pared-down energy legislation cleared the Senate on Thursday by a wide margin after the oil industry and utilities succeeded in stripping out provisions that would have cost them billions of dollars.
The legislation still contains a landmark increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles and a huge boost for alternative fuels. But a $13 billion tax increase on oil companies and a requirement that utilities nationwide produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources were left on the floor to secure Republican votes for the package.
The tax measure and the renewable electricity mandate were included in an energy bill that easily passed the House last week. But industry lobbyists focused their attention on Republican members of the Senate and on the White House, which repeatedly threatened to veto the bill if the offending sections were not removed.
Earlier in the week, Senate leaders agreed to drop the renewable electricity section. And on Thursday, after a failed effort to cut off debate on the bill, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said he would reluctantly remove the tax provisions as well, clearing the way for passage in the early evening.
The slimmed-down bill passed 86-8.
The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned electric utilities, led the opposition to the renewable electricity mandate. Along with its member companies in the Midwest and Southeast, the group carried out an extensive lobbying campaign warning that the bill would cause sharp increases in electric rates.
The institute was joined by the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce and groups representing the paper, mining, petrochemical and refining industries.
Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the institute, said that a federal mandate would conflict with mandates for renewable power in place in more than half the states and that this could possibly complicate efforts to pass a nationwide program to combat climate change.
“The federal government jumping in now and second-guessing the states and enacting a fuel mandate in advance of economy-wide greenhouse gas regulation just wasn’t going to make it out of Congress,” Mr. Riedinger said.
The bill now returns to the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted that it would pass overwhelmingly early next week. A White House spokesman said President Bush was pleased that the bill was “moving in the right direction” and that he would sign it when it reached his desk.
The oil industry conducted its own campaign of opposition to the tax provisions, arguing that it would impose burdens on the industry when it needed all the resources it had to find and develop new sources of energy.
“We made sure that everybody knew our point of view — the White House, the House, the Senate,” said James Ford, director of government affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. “We told our story and told it thoroughly.” (READ that as the THREAT it was intended to be people)
Mr. Ford said that even with the tax provisions removed, the oil industry had concerns about meeting the bill’s requirement that 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels be blended into gasoline by 2022. He said the bill was far too specific about how much of certain kinds of fuels must be produced, whether from corn, various other plant fibers or animal fats.
“With all these boutique biofuels, we need an ability to adjust the mandate if technological advances aren’t made,” Mr. Ford said.
Environmental advocates were generally pleased with passage of the new vehicle fuel-economy standards and the biofuel provision. Dan Becker, an environmental consultant who has been working on auto efficiency issues for nearly 20 years, called passage of the bill the biggest environmental victory since enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1990.
But some environmentalists said they were unhappy that the bill would not provide large incentives for expansion of renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biothermal.
Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth Action, accused Senate Democrats of “capitulating” to Senate Republicans and the White House.
“When the Republican leadership and the polluter lobby have blocked important legislation, Senate Democrats have been all too willing to move in their direction,” Mr. Blackwelder said in a statement. “The result is that the two most positive provisions of the energy bill — a clean energy mandate and a tax package reining in handouts for fossil fuels and promoting clean energy — are being removed, while detrimental provisions, such as a radical five-fold increase in unsustainable biofuel use, remain.”
Separately, Congress reached a tentative agreement on a major energy package that it plans to enact outside the energy bill, according to a Senate Democratic staff member. The agreement, to be included in a broad government spending bill, would authorize the Energy Department to guarantee loans for various energy projects, making financing far easier.
The agreement would guarantee loans of up to $25 billion for new nuclear plants and $2 billion for a uranium enrichment plant, something those industries had been avidly seeking. It would also provide guarantees of up to $10 billion for renewable energy projects, $10 billion for plants to turn coal into liquid vehicle fuel and $2 billion to turn coal into natural gas.
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Paul Burke
Author – Journey Home
2 comments
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December 14, 2007 at 9:10 pm
johnnypeepers
I do not agree that the nuclear industry is unprofitable. France derives 80% of their power from nuclear energy. It is a much cleaner, efficient, and manageable energy source than dirty coal or petro. I think it is time we disengage from the Saudi power-brokers and our unholy alliance and embrace nuclear. Please join me.
December 17, 2007 at 9:54 pm
journeyhomeburke
Johnny thanks for your comments and your points are valid but the actual numbers do not add up for Nuclear power and nuclear power plants are literally unprofitable – they don’t make any money and are hugely subsidized by the government i.e., our tax payer dollars.
The republicans and neo-cons like to talk about the power of the free markets almost as a panacea to cure everything (no regulation is good regulation) yet they turn a blind eye when it comes to nuclear power.
One of the other things that trouble me deeply is that there is no effective way to handle, control, store, neutralize or re-use nuclear waste. It is just a huge toxin piling up with millions of years of toxicity. When nuclear power became a real option for an energy source (1970’s) our government told us the citizens and tax payers that if we approved the proliferation of nuclear power and approved the plants on the drawing board (including three mile island) they (our government) would have an answer to the nuclear waste issue and the subsequent disposal thereof in ten years.
Well they have failed so miserably so much so that even the Nuclear power companies are suing the federal government telling them to take the nuclear waste as promised.
Storing the waste in metal drums in Yucca Mountain is not the answer and until the Federal government comes up with a way to treat, dispose of or re-use nuclear waste – nuclear power is a hellish toxic minefield that can and will lead to catastrophic pollution of the water tables and land. We can not afford (in the truest sense of the word) to go forward with nuclear power until the waste issue is dealt with safely. Right now nuclear waste sits in radioactive pools at the various nuclear power sites around the country – disasters waiting to happen.
We are better off pursuing solar, wind and hydro power and I put forth that if we took half of the money that props up the unprofitable nuclear energy barons, the devastatingly polluting coal industry and the hyper profitable oil industry (who for some reason gets subsidized), and plowed that money into research and development into solar, wind, and hydro – that we could move from dirty energy sources of power to clean ones rather quickly. The answer to our energy needs rises every morning – the problem is that the status quo is too invested in the dirty energy sources from the industrial revolution. They are making money and do not and will not convert to clean energy sources until we legislate them to do it.
Secondly and this is not a minor issue – Nuclear power would still be a problem on the National security front – even if it weren’t for the hellish waste generated.