Big Scary Energy Bill
Please contact your U.S. Senators today and urge them in the
strongest terms to vote against the energy bill when it comes
before the Senate in the next few days. Phone calls would be
most effective, and we've provided talking points for you below.
Please help stop this legislation by calling Senator Harkin and urging him
to filibuster this bill. A vote is expected at any time, so please call
Tuesday.
To reach the capitol switchboard please dial: 202-224-3121
On Saturday November 15th, the Republican-controlled Senate released a 1700
page energy bill representing a monumental giveaway to dirty energy
producers such as the coal, nuclear, and oil industries. This weekend was
the public's first look at the disastrous legislative language that emerged
from the highly secretive committee process.
The Senate is set to act upon this energy bill within the next 48 hours. If
passed, the bill would open new lands and waters to oil and gas exploration,
give permanent new powers to Vice President Cheney's energy task force, will
increase rather than reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and allow the
cancer-causing gas additive MTBE to be used for another decade.
This terrible legislation contains nothing remotely close to an
energy policy for the country. It is an industry wish list
directed to increased profits for some of the wealthiest
companies in the world. It is complex legislation that does harm
not just to our public lands, but to public health, consumers of
electricity, and to taxpayers generally. And it does this
without regard to the real energy needs of our country - the
need to diversify our energy sources, to move away from reliance
on fossil fuels and to use energy efficiently. With respect to
public lands, it seeks to allow the industry to open some of our
most spectacular public lands and richest offshore areas to
drilling rigs, in most cases for minimal amounts of oil and gas.
In the process, it undermines some of our most basic
environmental protections and showers subsidies on those
industries to the tune of more than $18 billion. We very
urgently need your help to stop this bill in its tracks.
***********************************
BACKGROUND: Billions for Production, Zilch for Conservation
A reasonable human would guess that if energy is precious enough
to warrant destruction of some of our most valuable public lands
that it's precious enough to use wisely. Not in this energy
bill. It includes billions of dollars in unwarranted taxpayer
subsidies to already-profitable energy companies. It includes
unnecessary exceptions and exemptions to important environmental
laws-the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act among
them. Although there are a few provisions that nod in the
direction of energy efficiency and the development of benign
renewable technologies, these provisions are minimal
window-dressing for a bill that contains billions and billions
of dollars in handouts for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear
industries. But you will look in vain for any provisions that
even acknowledge in passing the looming challenge of global
climate change.
Suffice it to say that the energy bill in its present form
effectively establishes oil and gas development as the dominant
use of public lands. Everything else - clean water, the property
rights of ranchers and farmers who own surface lands but not
minerals beneath them, wildlife and wildlife habitat, wildlands
and their protection, cultural, historical and recreational
values -- all are shunted aside in favor of energy production.
It risks turning the public servants who are supposed to manage
those lands for all of us into little more than adjunct
employees of Big Oil.
The bill also drastically limits many of our bedrock
environmental safeguards. The guiding principle of the
legislation is industry profit. Clean air, clean water, and our
public lands, take a back seat to greed in the energy bill.
Here is a short list of dangerous public lands provisions in the
energy bill. It would:
* Prohibit drilling fluids from being considered pollutants of
drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act;
* Exempt from the "stormwater" requirements of the Clean Water
Act all oil and gas construction activities, including roads,
drill pads, pipeline corridors, refineries, etc.;
* Allow the Interior Secretary via secretarial order to
designate utility and pipeline corridors across public lands
with no public involvement;
* Give applicants for federal drilling permits up to two years
to comply with application requirements but give the BLM only 10
days to make important decisions on drilling permit
applications;
* Establish an "Office of Federal Project Coordination" within
the White House to expedite the permitting and completion of
energy projects on our public lands and to override
environmental safeguards;
* Require the U.S. Geological Survey to identify any
"restrictions and impediments" to development of federally-owned
oil and gas deposits. These "impediments" include any
inconvenient rules and regulations meant to protect fish and
wildlife, wild lands, and cultural and historical values on our
public lands.
* Put the Department of Energy (DOE), which has no history or
expertise in public land management, in charge of implementing
an executive order requiring our public land management
agencies, before "taking any action" to determine whether such
actions would have "a significant adverse effect" on energy
development;
* Allow oil and gas lessees to be compensated, via reduced
royalties, for costs they incur for complying with whatever
remains of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) if the
bill passes;
* Waive existing law and allow expeditious oil and gas leasing
throughout the entire National Petroleum Reserve Alaska without
regard to wildlife and other environmental concerns, and allow
waivers of the royalties due American taxpayers from the
exploitation of these public lands resources.
IT DOESN'T END HERE
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to:
[log in to unmask]
|
