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The strategy I suggest to make that transition -- I regret to say -- must differ in many respects from that put forward by the current Administration, and by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Their approach was developed during the first half of last year by a Task Force chaired by Vice President Cheney. Neither innovative private sector companies nor the public interest were permitted to compete fairly and openly for the White House ear.
Old thinking passed through the doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue far more often and easily than new thinking. Exxon Mobil, Enron or Chevron enjoyed an access bonanza at the expense of consumers and state of the art environmental technology manufacturers. The process and its results stand as a monument to the difficulty of forcing industry and institutional change.
As a result, those most heavily invested in the current energy system have set a course for the future which, not surprisingly, champions status quo policies at the expense of new ideas and innovation. What's worse, President Bush claims that prolonging the status quo will somehow ensure "energy independence" for America, and his party's leaders happily echo his cry - as if by embracing their lack of vision we'd all be able to sit back, relax, and put our fleet of international oil tankers in drydock.
Common sense tells us that the policies that made us dependent on foreign oil - however repackaged in the mantle of patriotism - will only keep us dependent on foreign oil. America take note: if we enact the entire Bush energy plan we will find ourselves twenty years from now more dependent on foreign oil--than we are today. The Administration has not offered an agenda for energy independence. That is false advertising. It has offered an agenda that evades the tough questions -- provided blinders where we need magnifying glasses -- and slogans in the place of genuine leadership.
Nothing is more indicative of old thinking, special interest policy than the attempt by the Administration to falsely sell to the American people a rationale for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Big oil and its allies have lusted over the refuge for two decades. With each attempt they make up new arguments for despoiling a unique and irreplaceable arctic environment for a quantity of petroleum that simply will not reduce the fact of our dependency on high risk foreign oil.
When California was desperate for electricity they proposed drilling in ANWR even though only 1% of California's electricity was oil based and not an additional drop would appear for 10 years. I was publically warned by Trent Lott that the lights were literally about to go out in Massachusetts, all my constituents were going to freeze to death in the dark, and I would bear responsibility. For the record, I would like to note that the electricity is still on. In fact, we even had enough power to keep the stadium lights burning as the New England Patriots literally slid by Oakland last Saturday night.
When California resolved its crisis and the economy turned down, they then began to argue ANWR was a jobs program even though studies show far more, far better jobs in other endeavors and that all their estimates were based on false analysis. No matter.
Now the proponents are more interested in arousing our fears than in discussing the facts.
The latest claim cleverly suggests that ANWR can become a replacement for oil from Saudi Arabia or Iraq. The quick reaction of everyone is to welcome the image of freedom from buying oil from those linked with terrorism. The problem is that's all it is - an image. First, the refuge would not even reach peak production until 20 years from now. It cannot possibly impact the war we wage today.
More importantly - recognizing that under the Administration's own proposals we will be more dependent on imported oil in 2020 than we are today and that increasing demand for oil will quickly gobble up whatever comes from small U.S. supplies, it is impossible to U.S. produce our way out of dependency and avoid the increasing demand curve. The United States has only 3% of the world's reserves to be matched against the fact that we use 25% of the world's supply. And guess what - Saudi Arabia has 46% of the world's reserves. The solution is not in ANWR - it's in less dependency on oil itself.
Perhaps the most bitter irony amid all their claims of the need to drill, are the more than 7,000 existing leases for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico - 80% of which, covering 32 million acres, are not producing oil because they're being mapped or sit idle as companies wait for the price of oil to rise to maximize profits. Last May the State of Alaska completed a lease sale of 950,000 acres on the North Slope, the largest lease by any state in history and has announced another seven million acres will be put up for lease this year. The Department of Interior is putting three million acres of federal land from the National Petroleum Reserve up for sale. Maybe one day someone could make an argument for the need to
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